Director: Lee Chung-hyun
Year: 2020
Country: South Korea
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psycho/Thriller
Plot:
Trying to locate her lost phone, a woman inadvertently finds herself on the phone with a woman who lived in the house decades earlier and begins a relationship with her over the phone calls, but when this gradually changes their relationship she goes to extremes to get back to the status quo which threatens everyone around her.
Review:
Overall, this one manages to be wholly entertaining. One of the best attributes is the engaging start-up that offers a fantastic mystery to look into as she starts the search for her missing phone. The frantic quest to find it leads nicely from the mysterious calls inquiring about someone who doesn’t live there to the discovery of the boarded-up room inside the house. Even getting to see how it happened with the incident in the past with the burning room to the phone conversations here which comes off in a novel manner as the girl realizes the hidden connection they have with each other starts the film in a rather impressive manner.
Moreover, that causes the start of the strangeness to begin amplifying considerably. Not only does she manage to use their meetings to help her overcome her insecurities and change the past she had in her diary, but those changes are also shown to pay dividends in the future timeline. Even though she gets her parents to return and they share music and news from the future with each other, the shift in their connection through the changes that have been wrought meaning no time for each other to talk anymore causes cracks in the foundation of their relationship. The resulting snap and series of challenges that are in place during the finale are fun, creative and pack a nice punch throughout here, giving the film a lot to like.
There are some slight issues with this one. One of the main issues is the film’s insistence on adhering to the usual trials and tribulations that are usually found.in time-travel films that belie any sense of how that works. The idea of moving along through time and focusing on past efforts chasing the present means that the various situations and encounters should have already been a fixture of their lives in the change. Getting scalded with water to the point of a permanent burn on their body or complete room rearranging shouldn’t be shown taking place in the present, it would’ve already been second nature as the timeline has been altered to those changes being the new standard. The characters would’ve had no knowledge or memory of the incidents, and the discrepancies in the storyline stand out due to that.
The finale also stands out for making everything complex and confusing. The continuance of the inability to pay attention to the time-travel conundrums not only allows this one to feel incredibly flimsy in terms of why she snapped but also alters the timeline of the events. These changes are never given any kind of explanation and just seem to exist solely to serve as surprise shocks. This becomes apparent, especially once things dip into the post-credits work which is where the most egregious aspects occur by tacking on too many explanations and extraneous circumstances to feel like overkill after the third extra scene. The film would’ve been fine cutting at the credits instead of continuing on with the post-credits scenes, and overall these issues really lower this one.
Overview: ****/5
A fun and quite chilling thriller for most of its running time, this has an impressive amount of likable qualities with just a few minor issues to hold it back. Most fans of thriller or Korean genre cinema in general would be very impressed and enjoy this one immensely without much complaints at all.
This review was originally published on Asian Movie Pulse and is gratefully reprinted with their cooperation.
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