Phone

Review

This is a horror movie that is done correctly, unlike several that I have seen lately. There is good suspense; excellent acting; a plot that makes sense, and no great lapses of logic or intelligent thought.

The basic idea is a lover's triangle between a husband, his wife, and a high-school girl that the husband has sex with. There is also another plot about strange telephone calls that can result in people's death, and the movie weaves both plots together very well.

The characters are also believable, especially Ji-won, the investigative journalist. She goes about trying to unravel the mystery of what is going on in a manner which shows she is a very intelligent, very thorough young woman. The little girl displays acting ability which you wouldn't think some one as young as she is can achieve.

This is a very good film, one of the better ones that I have seen.

Synopsis

The movie opens with a woman going down on an elevator, getting off, getting on another elevator, and going up. The elevator lights start to flicker and then the elevator starts to shake. The phone rings and she answers, telling whoever is calling to stop it. Strange noises start and then the elevator falls.

Ji-won, an investigative reporter, has done a controversial article on underage sex scandals. The newspaper has had calls threatening her if she doesn't stop the articles.

She gets another hate call. She decides to go somewhere for a while and leaves the next day. Some friends of hers offer to let her stay in a house of theirs. There's a security system in the house, but she leaves her car parked on the street. Maybe there's no garage?

She sets up in a really nice house. Whoever is after her is still sending her e-mails.

Her friends daughter. Her friend is an artist.

The young girl answers the phone and there are strange noises on it. She screams while she's listening to the phone.

Ji-won goes into the bedroom and some woman appears to be in there and crying. Turns out it's a dream.

The little girl is still having trouble. A detective friend gives Ji-won a taser.

She picks up a hitchhiker (not the smartest move in the world), then later seems to run into someone but she gets out and checks and no one is there, but the hitchhiker also seems to be gone.

She's at a sink washing her hands and some hair comes out of the facet. The mirror shakes, and she sees another face in the mirror.

Ji-won's friend is having sex with her husband when she sees someone strange, then moments later her daughter runs in and says she's scared of something.

Ji-won is taking care of the young girl and finds out that the person that called on the phone and scared the girl was not a man but was a woman. Moments later, when she looks in the window and sees her reflection, it's not the little girl on her back but some other, older, girl.

A number had appeared earlier on her computer screen, and detective finds out something interesting about the number. Meanwhile Young-ju, the little girl, is acting stranger and stranger.

She finds out about one of the people killed who had the phone number, and he was getting calls with strange sounds in them, just like the ones she has gotten. It is appearing less and less like the calls have anything to do with the articles she had written, and are being made by someone else. She also finds out he died in a car crash in the same area she is currently staying.

The parents have Young-ju looked at in a hospital, and the doctor says the girl is thinking of her father in a sexual way, but it's something that should just be temporary.

Ji-won finds out information about the woman who died who had the same phone number (the one in the elevator at the start of the film.) The elevator later malfunctions when Ju-won is using it. The detective is attacked, someone trying to murder him.

The same guy attacks her.

She's hanging onto the railing, dangling over a long fall. The phone rings and the guy answers it. He hears the noise and screams.

Later, Ji-won is in her bedroom and sees in the mirror a woman playing the piano, but the woman actually isn't there. The little girl goes completely bonkers.

Ji-won talks to another person about the phone number. The girl was named Jin-hee and she recognizes the girl in a photograph. She finds out about ghostly piano music, the same music that appears to be coming from the home she's staying in. The girl was the first to have the phone number. Then the next two people died strange deaths.

She explains to the parents that the spirit of the murdered Jin-hee may have taken over their young daughter, but the father doesn't believe that at all. We also find out that Ji-won provided the eggs used for artificial insemination that led to the birth of Young-ju.

Ji-won talks to someone who says Jin-hee's vengeful spirit is the phone on the phone. She says that one day the guy Jin-hee was in love with started ignoring her phone calls.

She examines Jin-hee's diary and finds a photograph with some people she knows. This lets her know who Jin-hee's lover was.

There are a series of flashbacks through the movie that help fill out what is going on. We find out that he and his wife had separated, apparently, for a while but his wife had returned. He told Jin-hee that they two of them shouldn't see each other for a while.

The little girl contemplates matricide.

Meanwhile Ji-won confronts her friend's husband about his relationship with Jin-hee. (This is about the only spot in the movie where I think something illogical happens, and that is that Ji-won leaves the diary with the husband. I think she should have kept it as proof.)

The girl has stabbed a photograph. She then runs away.

Young-ju has come to Ji-won's house. She even plays the piano, the moonlight sonata which was Jin-hee's lover's favorite. <,p>

Young-ju is standing at the top of the stairs, about to throw herself off. (And the very young girl does some extremely good acting here, and actually in the rest of the film, too. ) She ends up falling down the stairs but is not killed.

Later Ji-won answers the phone and it's the strange sounds. She goes to unplug the laptop from the wall but pulls out the entire socket and notices something on the back of it.

She pulls on the line and the wall, which is very thin, splits open, revealing a body behind it.

It's Jin-hee. Jin-won turns around and finds her friend's husband is there, but he leaves quickly.

Her supposed friend uses the taser on her husband and then on Ji-won, taping Ji-won to a chair in the room with Jin-hee's body. Then the film shows things that happened to the wife, and how she found out about her husband's playing around.

Jin-hee claimed to be pregnant.

The wife tricks Jin-hee into coming to the park. She has Jin-hee go to the new house with her and they talk. Jin-hee is very defiant.

The two get into a fight at the top of the stairs. When the wife pushes Jin-hee off her, Jin-hee falls down the stairs.

Jin-hee is not quite dead yet. The wife has encased her in plastic, but she gets up and tries to attack the wife again. The woman takes a statue and hits Jin-hee with it.

She seals Jin-hee up in the wall.

The wife finishes the fake wall.

The wife plans to kill both Ji-won and the husband, making it look like the husband killed Ji-won and then killed himself after finding out Jin-hee was dead.

The wife pours gasoline on Jin-hee and Ji-won but before she can set fire to them Jin-hee starts to come out of the wall.

It's daylight before Ji-won is able to free herself. She finds the wife dead and Jin-hee still in the wall.

Ji-won throws the cell phone into the water, but as it sinks it starts to ring.

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