Canned Tatsu
Note: This article contains spoilers
On November 27, the Korean movie "The Call" produced by Netflix was released on the online platform, which immediately triggered a warm response from audiences in Various Asian countries, and searched on the South Korean website Naver, it can be seen that director Lee Cong-hyun, two female lead actresses Park Shin-hye and Jeon Jong-seok have each been interviewed by more than a dozen media outlets, and "Telephone" also ranked first in Douban's recent popular movies.
Telephone poster
Although "Parasite" won the Oscar for best picture in February, the performance of Korean films this year is not satisfactory, in addition to "The Ministers of Namsan", the rest of the films that have been given expectations, such as "Busan Line 2", "Alive", etc., the word-of-mouth and box office performance are far lower than expected, and "Telephone" as an online platform released film, it is not too much to say that it is at the end of the year to save the bland Korean film industry.
The film is based on the 2011 American film The Caller, but interestingly, The Phone scored 7.2 on IMDB, surpassing the original 6.1. On the Douban movie, this adaptation also scored 7.6 points, while the original work was 7.0. As an adaptation of the film, it is not easy.
Douban scored 7.6, with more than 50,000 people scoring it
The plot setting of "Telephone" can see the shadow of some Hollywood suspense works, the heroine Shuyan returned to her hometown because her mother suffered from a brain tumor, because the mobile phone was lost on the high-speed rail, she had to use the landline of her hometown, at this time she received a mysterious phone, the girl on the phone was urgent, as if she had been abused by her mother.
Park Shin-hye as Shu-yeon
Shuyan found a diary when cleaning the old house, the contents of the diary turned out to be very similar to the girl crying on the phone, and the diary, in addition to the photo of the Korean idol Xu Tae-chi in the late 1990s, also had a photo of the owner of the diary - this girl was called Wu Young-sook, and Shuyan also found that the phone call received seemed to come from 1999, and the location was the house in Shuyan's hometown.
Jeon Jong-sui as Wu Young-sook
From the phone, Shuyan learns that Young-sook was abused by her stepmother in the house in 1999, and the reason for the abuse is full of oriental religious overtones, and Young-sook's mother prepared incense candles and paper, laid out the Dharma Array, and whipped Wu Yingshu's body with peach wood. Oh Young-sook needs Shu-yeon 20 years later to help her escape from her stepmother's clutches, and So-yeon hopes that Young-sook will save the life of her father, who died unexpectedly in 1999.
The above is the original setting of the movie plot, from which it is not difficult to find that in addition to the original "Overtime Call", you can also see the shadow of "Butterfly Effect" and "The Night the Comet Came" in this "Telephone". When the audience sees this, they will instinctively think that the unfolding of the film will be related to the direction of family affection, and the novelty of the film is also here, from this time on, the plot goes to a complete horror.
Yingshu is actually bloodthirsty and is an out-and-out murderous demon. When the audience thinks that the story is beginning to move towards warmth, Young-sook's slaughter and Shu-yeon's bad luck have just begun.
The sense of despair set off by "Telephone" is also the most exciting part of the film.
This sense of despair is shaped, first of all, by the solidity of the text of the film play. In the film, 1999 can call 2019, but it cannot be called back to 1999 from today's time and space. What happened in the past can change the future, but the future cannot control the past, from the first distress call that Shuyan received, she seems to be able to rescue Yingshu and has become a lamb to be slaughtered. From one-third of the way through the film, there is a depressing feeling of suffocation until the end is dark.
Stills from "The Telephone"
The role of art in the film is indispensable, and from the lighting and composition of the picture, you can clearly judge the situation that the character is facing at this moment. This is clearly reflected in the death of a key character in the film (in order to avoid spoilers, I will not specify which character it is), his death occurred after the heroine Shuyan went upstairs, and Shuyan rushed downstairs after learning of his death, and the scene downstairs did not change specifically, only the light changed from just warm and bright to some gray after the death of the character.
Another point is that the car driven by Shuyan and her father drives into the tunnel, and the beautiful rural scenery suddenly turns into darkness, and the most desperate plot in the movie takes place at this moment.
The film text and artistic techniques of a commercial film have little to do with artistic creation, and it reflects the maturity of the film industry as a whole. From the movie "Telephone", it is not difficult to see that the overall level of the Korean film industry has been quite complete.
In addition to the maturity of the film industry itself, South Korea's film reserve talent training system is also admirable.
The technical work mentioned above is often completed by veteran filmmakers who have been immersed in the set for many years, but director Li Congxian is only 30 years old this year, and "Telephone" is a work that he shot when he was in his twenties, shelved for two or three years, originally planned to be released in the first half of this year, and only produced by Netflix at the end of the year due to the impact of the epidemic - so in the movie, Shuyan's "now" does not specify which year it is, presumably it is also the result of the film's shelving and delay in release.
Directed by Lee Chung-hyun
The film was his first commercial feature film, after Lee Cong-hyun won the Best Short Film Award at the 11th Paris Korean Film Festival and the Jury Prize and Short Film Award at the 14th Asiana International Short Film Festival for his short film Body Value.
If the mature and complete technical work is only the flesh and blood shell of the film, then the performance of the two heroines undoubtedly injects soul into the film.
The fate of Shu Yeon, played by Park Shin-hye, is always determined by another heroine, Young-sook, so there is not much room for this role to play. Park Shin-hye has been an actress for 17 years, so the role of Shu-yeon seems relatively easy for her, and she also does a good job of completing a weak and frightening female figure.
Although the role of another lead actor, Jeon Jong-seok, is not as good as Park Shin-hye, her role Young-sook is one of the ones who decides the direction of the plot in the movie, and as a perverted serial killer who is cruelly treated by her stepmother, Young-sook's flawed personality and neuroticism are easy to over-perform, and Jeon Jong-seok's grasp is just right.
It is even difficult to find the highlight moment of Quan Zhong rui from the movie, because she plays with ease in the whole film.
When abused by her stepmother in the early stages, the role of Young-sook actually exudes a sense of weirdness, when the camera closes up her back injured by peach wood whipping, the twisted posture makes Young-sook wear a neurotic coat in addition to gaining the sympathy of the audience. In the later stages, Shuyan's mother and the police come to the door, and Young-sook sits alone on the couch bored to watch the New Year's Eve countdown, the two contradictory emotions of nervousness and laziness merge into one in her, of course, every slight action contains Young-sook's killing machine - Jeon Jong-seok is still a post-film in a purely commercial movie.
Born in 1994, Jeon Jong-seok stood out in a thousand-person cast and starred as Shin Hae-mi, the heroine of Lee Cang-dong's film "Burning". "Burning" was praised by the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and eventually won the Palme d'Or that year.
Stills from Burning
With the young and sharp director Lee Chung-hyun's attempts at the subject matter, coupled with Park Shin-hye's steady and steady play, Jeon Jong-sui's neurotic breakthrough, supplemented by golden green leaves such as Lee Ae and Kim Sung-ling, it is no surprise that "Telephone" can have quite excellent quality.
Of course, the film also has hard wounds, for example, the author noticed that the words in the film that the police did not write in the book with a red pen in 1999 appeared in the future, and many film review websites mentioned that when the objective facts of the past changed, only the memory of the heroine Shuyan was not updated. But there are more or less minor problems with the logic and details of genre films that intersect time and space, and in my opinion, they are flawed.
The film maintains the coolness of the viewing experience throughout the film, sacrificing a part of the deep excavation of human nature, which is a pity, and Korean movies often have such common problems: there are more than one turning point in the plot of the whole film and the exploration of human nature and artistry are insufficient, but as a commercial film, "Telephone" has done a beautiful enough.
The director and the two female protagonists are both post-90s, and they can kill a bloody road in the hierarchical Chungmuro Road, which is enough to see that Korean films have not only not lacked high-quality masterpieces in recent years, but also the talent training system has begun to improve. Today, post-90s filmmakers in South Korea can create a mature commercial masterpiece to save the market.
It is worth our attention to the film production platform Netflix, the producer of "Telephone" is the well-known Korean film company NEW, this company and another well-known giant involved in film and television dramas, Lotte, has established in-depth cooperation with Netflix, the production of film and television dramas can be directly connected to the latter platform, and CJ, ShowBox and other large companies, in the near future will be established with streaming media strategic cooperation is also foreseeable - I believe that friends who like to watch Korean movies, These companies are already well known by the titles of different films.
Recently, the science fiction film "Victory", starring Song Joong-ki and Kim Tae-ri, which costs up to 24 billion won (about 140 million yuan) to produce, will also be released through Netflix, and as the epidemic becomes long-term, the cooperation between Korean films and streaming media has gradually deepened.
Editor of this issue Chang Chen