Derek Childs (totalovrdose) Some movie goers are adamant when viewing a feature that all cell phones be turned off. This idea is less of a suggestion, and more of a mandatory fixture when watching Phone, a movie that blends thriller and horror genre properties together to create a feature in a similar vain to What Lies Beneath and One Missed Call, although it is not to be mistaken with the aforementioned franchise.As a horror movie, Phone is superb, grabbing you from the opening credits with its great effects and disturbing atmosphere, causing the audience to not only visually experience the terror, but feel it, crawling along their skin, a sense of dreadful cold shooting up the viewer's spine. Although a certain amount of liberty is taken with regards to the directionality of the horror components associated with the plot, which can be a little coincidental on occasion and abandon some degree of reasoning, this aside, the scares are guaranteed to shock even the most well adjusted horror fanatic.Despite the end of the feature potentially requiring a more conclusive finale, a terrific aspect of the plot evolves around the mystery, and just when you think you've figured it out, you discover you haven't even scratched the surface. Ji-won (Ji-won Ha) is a brilliant investigative reporter, her adept skills being used to report on a nefarious sex scandal, and though she has done a service by exposing the truth, she has inadvertently put her life in jeopardy.Receiving a series of phone calls from a vicious stalker, whose attempts to unhinge her gradually become more and more disturbing, Ji-won's sister, Ho-jeong (Yu-mi Kim), and brother in law, Chang-hoon (Woo-jaw Choi), invite Ji-won to temporally settle in the house they plan to eventually move to.With a chance to hopefully start over, Ji-won acquires a new phone number, ironically exchanging phone calls from a stalker, for phone calls from a vengeful spirit, tied to the new number. When Ho-jeong's daughter, Yeong-ju (Seo-woo Eun) decides to eventually answer the phone, her reaction to the call, not to mention what comes after, is very unsettling. As her character begins to entirely change, Ji-won's investigative skills are put to the test as she rushes to not only uncover the truth, but attempt to save her family from the horror she has invited into their lives.Powerful, emotional, intelligently written and fabulously brought together by the actors and director alike, Phone is an astoundingly brilliant horror film. Although not always unique, with several elements of stereotypical Asian horror been included in the plot, this aside, the film will inevitably lead you to question whether it is safe to answer the phone.

nguyenlow This movie captivated me as a horror movie doing everything right that had to be right for a horror movie to be good. A chilling atmosphere, a feeling of threat and a slowly building feeling of terror amounted to a well made tension throughout the first half of the story that had you satisfyingly nervous. After the first half, however, the linear storyline experiences a break. A lot of flashbacks to the background story of the happenings taking place changes the story into a full blown drama. For anyone who had been looking for a constantly frightening and bloody horror movie this break would have been a rather inconvenient interlude that distracts from the main story. However, I think the drama part was just as well thought out and agitating as the story's horror parts, and with it, the whole movie unfolded into an interesting overall story. I've given the movie an 8 out of 10, because I thought the movie has really been a very good, entertaining, and exciting one. On the other hand, the break of the movie into two very different lines makes this movie suffer in consistency as it is neither a horror nor a mere drama. It takes the viewer from an qualitatively good horror that has you high- strung the one minute, to a drama that basically drags on for too long of the story as a whole the other.

tomimt Phone begins as a horror movie about a mysterious phone number, that seems to kill people. A reporter, Ji-Won (ji-Won Ha) gets a new number, after she begins to get telephone calls she suspects to be connected on a underage sex scandal she has revealed. But the calls continue.But then somewhere in the middle the plot turns into more of a thriller mystery with supernatural themes in it and the whole ghost thing gets a form of "who did it".The script is okay, but the direction jumps a bit too much from one place to another and lot of things happen very suddenly and unexplained. Other than that the film is okay and manages to give a scare or a two, but it really depends a bit too much to a viewer to make a leap of faith a couple of times too many .

lost-in-limbo Ji-won is a reporter who's has just exposed a child-sex crime ring and from that break through she starts receiving threatening phone calls from a stalker. So, she moves into her sister's vacant house and also switches her mobile number to escape it. But the harassing phone calls still keep on coming and one day her niece Yeong-ju answers it and not too long she starts acting rather unusually. Ji-won continues to receive these eerie phone calls, which she comes to learn that her new number happens to be cursed by the spirit of Jin-hie, a love-struck girl.Asian horror films really love their fashionable technology or either vengeful female ghosts. And this one is no exception to the trend. Now it's the dreaded phone's turn for some paranormal activity in the form of the medium. This is definitely the phone call from hell! You'll be hoping they'd put their mobile on silent with the constant ringing. You can only take so much within a short time. Now you're probably thinking it'll be the been-there-done-that musty modern Asian ghost story and I can't say it isn't at times. Some scenes and ideas absolutely resemble "Ringu", "Ju-on" and "Dark Water". Although saying that, the Korean entry "Phone" does provide an effectively, glum mystery-thriller, where the supernatural tone is more a smokescreen to the bigger picture. The twists are not so predictable and I found it to offer many surprising revelations… mainly the climax. Inconsistencies and lack of logic makes its way into the knotty story, but at least it wasn't terribly convoluted like most of the same field. It was definitely a compelling slow-burn type of story that slows up drastically in the mid-section, but really picks up for the final third. Mixed through the plot are interesting side-stories, the traditional flashbacks and the investigation into the curse that all ties in. Sounds derivative, but it's far from uninspired. The strongest aspect of the film has to be that it's a highly polished and slick looking production, which manages to invoke such a menacing claustrophobic feel from its murky backdrop. Director Ahn Byeong-ki does well in streamlining the film with eerie set pieces and visually striking images without so much of telegraphing them. Helping the subdued air of mystery and dread is the elegantly pulsating score and a good mix of bone rattling sounds. Special effects are steadily controlled within the story and they're executed to perfection. The performances were mild by the leads Ji-won Ha and Yu-mi Kim, but with the exception of Seo-woo, who's very good as Yeong-ju, the scary little girl who can't stop pulling ugly faces and hissing.After watching this you'll won't be waiting by the phone for too long. A traditional Asian entry into the contemporary tragic ghost story, which is entertaining and technically well made.