Welcome back to the thirteenth and final Korean horror film recommendation! In a way, I feel like I have saved the best for last, as the film that I will recommend today is one of the films that has left a very deep impression on me after watching it; Phone.
Other people may not find this film as scary as I did, but Phone is a supernatural horror film and this particular genre is terrifying to me. Gore and violence are things that I can easily handle, but this movie mostly steers clear from these two aspects and just hits you with continual, bone-chilling paranormal scenes. This film left me looking over my shoulder for days, and even now I feel wary at any odd noises in my house.
Phone is about a reporter called Ji Won, who has recently written a series of articles exposing the issue of paedophilia and its related sex-trafficking. She begins receiving threatening phone calls and horrific emails of a drawing of a woman with a likeness to herself being murdered, and it appears to be the doing of one of the men named in her articles. She changes her number and even moves into the spare house of her friends Ho Jung and Chang Hoon in Bang Bae, but eerie phone calls and messages on her computer seemed to have followed her. These new phone calls consist of white noise and a woman screaming on the other end and seem to be from someone else entirely. When Ho Jung and Chang Hoon’s young daughter, Young Su, picks up one of these calls she is left terrified, and slowly her behaviour starts to change; she begins to show an attraction to her own father and rejects her mother.
Meanwhile, Ji Won keeps receiving the strange phone calls, and has even seen and heard a girl playing the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ in the house. After investigating hernew phone number, Ji-won discovers that the original owner of the number, Jin Hee, had vanished and the two next owners of the number have mysteriously died in unusual circumstances. Her further investigation about Jin Hee discloses that the teenager was absolutely disturbed with her obsessive love for a man that had broken the relationship with her.
What I liked about this film was that it provided thrills and chills at all times, and despite being afraid of the supernatural aspects I enjoyed that there was little-to-no reprieve in the horror. This is definitely an ideal film for any fan of real Asian horror, as it contains all the classic elements such as a vengeful long-haired spirit, bone-chilling messages and possession. If creepy children and incest-by-proxy make you uncomfortable, then perhaps give this a miss.
I can’t believe that these past thirteen days have passed so quickly! I have really enjoyed sharing some of my personal favourite horror films, and it’s a shame that there wasn’t enough time for me to recommend even more. If you watched any of these films, I hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as I did, and I hope you found something here that you liked. I’ll be sure to do something like this again, so I’ll see you guys again sometime soon!
If there is something that you would like recommendations for, be it another genre of films or anything k-pop related, then let us know!
