A call from hell leads to heaven and hell

Serenity 2022-02-07 14:57:14

Author: Bind

In 2018, "Burning" directed by Li Changdong got the highest score in the Cannes magazine and attracted thousands of discussions.

At the same time, the film also sent a promising actress to the audience - Jeon Jong-seo , who stood out in the contest of thousands of people .

After a two-year hiatus, she finally returned this month, with partner Park Shin -hye contributing this rare thriller version of "Black Hole Frequency" to this year's dead South Korean film .

The story takes place in an empty mansion standing alone in a remote village. If there is no tragedy there, I am sorry for the temperament of these six relatives who do not recognize each other. Park Shin Hye's Shu Yeon returned to the mansion because of her mother's serious illness, but her heart was full of irritability.

Many years ago, her mother forgot to turn off the stove, which caused a fire to kill her father. Shu Yan was always worried about this, and even refused to bury her parents together.

The things on the mother's side continued, and Shu Yan's mobile phone accidentally fell on the high-speed rail when she came back. In desperation, she had to temporarily find out the use of a wireless phone like her eldest brother.

This phone can be described as a thread between heaven and hell.

In addition to the normal call for the first time, Shu Yan kept receiving nervous calls from a strange woman.

While dealing with the family portraits, she discovered an underground darkroom hidden behind walls, as well as diaries and old photos that recorded exorcisms.

The owner of these two items is the weird guy on the other end of the phone, Young-sook played by Jeon Jong-seo .

This call connected 1999 and 2019. After confirming this fact, the two 28-year-olds on both ends of the phone just chatted and listened to Seo Taiji at first.

But as Yingshu's timeline came to November 21, Shuyan came to the mansion with her parents when she was young, and Yingshu realized that she might be able to change the trajectory of her life and save Shuyan's father.

On November 27th, everything went as planned, the original world was spinning, and Shu Yan's life was completely changed.

This time, it was her who came to look for the past and helped Yingshu change her life against the sky, but was the person she knew only by her voice really as she imagined?

When her past has become someone else's future, in fact, Shu Yan's life and the lives of the family have always been in the hands of the strange Young Sook. The "Black Hole Frequency"-style family warm moment came to an abrupt end, followed by the blood-splattered "invisible demon".

As the biggest highlight of the whole film, Jeon Chung-seo and Park Shin-hye supported one by one "hell" conversations through performances.

Chun Zhongrui, who hasn't seen him for a long time, is still very old-fashioned, playing an anti-social borderline personality disorder "madman" to the point where the hair stands on end.

The frivolous and careless details of doing things are in stark contrast to the appalling dismemberment and evil deeds, and every move makes it impossible to guess how she will kill her next.

The middle-aged Young-sook was gloomy, even more gloomy than a basement full of corpses.

Park Shin Hye has made great progress this time. When Shu Yan was scalded as a child, she fell to the ground twitching and screaming as an adult. This content was improvised and the effect was vivid. It's a pity that some of the characters that were revealed at the end of the character only stayed in the infancy, and they failed to make more reversals, which resulted in Park Shin-hye's lack of much room for development.

Even so, the performances of the two are still good enough. Among the 8.4 points scored by the Korean NAVER audience, 40% of the praise was given to the film's performance. It can be said that their performances hold up the whole movie.

23% of the praise went to director Li Congxian , who can make his debut by looking good .

The same age as Park Shin-hye, at the age of 30, he only had short films before. This feature film debut was originally planned to be released in theaters in March, but was eventually sold to Netflix after several turnovers due to the impact of the epidemic.

Although it is the first feature film, the overall effect of "Phone" is not inferior to many commercial masterpieces.

In addition to the horror and horror, the director also brilliantly showed instant time feedback, the reorganization of the fragmented world when the history changed in the first half, and the appearance of new traces left by the 1999 struggle from across time and space in 2019 at the end, which is very touching.

The film also mixes many classic elements that are used in thriller movies. Needless to say about the cold mansion and the serial killer in the basement, Young Sook's religious line is similar to "Witch Carrie" and "Sao Po He" .

Young-sook, tortured by an exorcism, also corresponds to the film's "if" theme:

What if the father survived? What if Young-sook stayed in a mental hospital for treatment? What if Shuyan chose to borrow her uncle's phone?

Using a parallel world to analyze every change in the world line, the logic of the movie from effect to cause simply tortures the brain, and the setting of Shuyan's ability to retain memory is also quite troublesome.

Think of it this way: treat each "if" as a developmental possibility that the director chooses to connect.

Caught or not, dead or not, the three changes and endings of the mansion endow Yingshu and Shuyan with the screenwriting function of "writing the script", and the phone is the pen in their hands.

For the ending of this film, I think a reasonable explanation is: In 2019, the disappearance of Young-sook was not death. That phone call had changed her fate. At this moment, she was not in the mansion, and Shu-yeon did not see her disappear. .

And then she called the phone to 1999 again and told herself what she was going to do, which is why she made her past self definitely hold the phone, which led to a slightly abrupt ending.

but! This is not in line with the setting that Shu Yan stays where she is and has no memory of the new world no matter how she changed her life.

So right when this is another "if", even the darker ending is in line with the rhythm of Shu Yan's life changing and falling apart, so he pays attention to "sometimes in life there must be something, and there is no need to force it in life".

It is not a film that is rigorous enough to fit perfectly. Many details are difficult to understand clearly. For example, when the exorcism ceremony took place in the past, the audience could not see any changes in the world line. In 2019, the basement began to smoke. .

The time problem in "Telephone" can't be seen or explained, and it's even more unnecessary to torture yourself with this. After all, the thrilling chill and the two heroines are the highlights.

View more about The Call reviews

Extended Reading
  • Alexanne 2022-03-19 09:01:10

    The logic is untenable, the inexplicable crossing of the setting and the time line, and the operation of the heroine is so stupid that I really don't understand who is applauding this film, it is probably because of science fiction and suspense films. less, it is recommended to make more

  • Lisa 2022-02-07 14:57:14

    I was surprised when I saw the cast and crew. This post-90s fresh meat director is so handsome that he can make his own debut. It seems that the second female has always had the upper hand because she walked in front of the timeline, leaving the first female always passive. Park Shin Hye is also too beautiful~ ps comment area a group of hindsight...