The Call:
A Chilling Connection Through Time
Director Lee Chung-hyun had already won several awards with his 2015 short film Bargain before embarking on the creation of his first feature film. Staying with the proven genre of the thriller, he chose the British and Puerto Rican film The Caller (directed by Matthew Parkhill) as the basis for The Call. He did not exactly create a remake, but rather an adaptation supplemented with numerous new elements and scenes (obviously, one does not see a Korean shaman in the original film).
At the film's press conference, Director Lee stated that Tarantino’s Kill Bill had a great influence on him, and following that, he wanted to direct an unusual thriller whose evil character is a woman—especially considering that this is rare among Korean films of similar genres.
At the beginning of the story, Kim Seoyeon moves back to her rural, uninhabited childhood home for a while. To replace her lost mobile phone, she unearths an old cordless telephone, which soon receives a strange call: an unknown girl asks her for help. As the calls repeat, they engage in conversation, and it soon turns out that there is a twenty-year time gap between them. Seoyeon realizes that Oh Youngsook, who is the same age as her, is a previous resident of the same house, an orphan being raised by her stepmother. Seoyeon, on the other hand, lost her father. Since she reveals to Youngsook what caused her father's death, the girl intervenes in the events, thereby changing Seoyeon's life and giving her family back to her.
Youngsook, however, does not share in similar joy. Her adoptive mother is a mudang, or shaman, who subjects the girl to exorcism, repeating that she sees the girl's future. The actress Lee El portrays a modern, enigmatic shaman woman who would hold her own even in a Gothic tale.
Due to the occasionally agitated calls, Seoyeon looks into the girl's identity and discovers from contemporary reports that Youngsook was killed by her stepmother. She warns the girl, who thus avoids death but kills her stepmother, which also changes the future.
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| Kim Sung-ryung, Park Shin-hye, director Lee Chung-hyun, Jeon Jong-seo, and Lee El at the film’s press conference |
Seoyeon realizes that she has unleashed a dangerous killer upon the world, who begins to blackmail her for information in her possession that allows Youngsook to avoid her fate. However, every intervention into past events rewrites the future, and accordingly, the girls' fates are always rewritten as well.
Director Lee stated that, alongside the main thread of the story—the relationship between the two girls—he also considered the subplot very important, in which the girls' very different relationships with their own mothers are outlined, and how this relationship between Seoyeon and her mother is changed by the occurring shifts. In this sense, the film is also a story of possibilities, because the relationship between mother and daughter becomes filled with either hatred or love depending on the situation serving as the starting point for each turn.
The film's casting is a true star parade, down to the smallest roles, including Park Ho-san, who plays Seoyeon's father. Park Shin-hye, who provides a great performance here as well, and Kim Sung-ryung, who plays her mother in the film, need no introduction. However, the film also inaugurated a new female star, Jeon Jong-seo, who appears in the role of Youngsook. We first saw her in Burning (a film by Lee Chang-dong) two years earlier, where she earned numerous newcomer acting nominations, and with her performance in this film, she has already won the Best Actress award.
The film is beautifully photographed throughout, with sumptuous images serving our shivers. No small amount of blood and cruelty accompanies the story, in which we move forward among increasingly decaying backdrops.
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| Director Lee Chung-hyun |
Although it is a SPOILER, I will reveal that to know the unsettling conclusion, one must watch the film until the very end of the credits.
One of the most excellent composers, Dalpalan, provides the audio backdrop for the tension; he has already won the award for Best Music with five of his films (including the unforgettable soundtrack of A Bittersweet Life).
Lee Chung-hyun has entered the circle of noteworthy directors with an innovative, fresh, and high-quality work. The film has been included in Netflix's offering, which may also give a significant boost to the director's career.
Regarding the barely 30-year-old director, who is the same age as Park Shin-hye and extremely handsome, many articles have noted that he would easily hold his own among pretty young actors. To the interesting question of what he would say to his self before the making of The Call if he received a phone call similar to the one in the film, he replied:
"There are more than a hundred little things I would like to do differently. But I would choose not to mention them. I would only tell him to go ahead and make a film." [Source]
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