Ji-won gets a new cell phone and suddenly strange things start to happen. The first strange thing being her friends daughter who plays around with Ji-won's phone and then all of a sudden starts to scream in terror from what she heard. Ji-won later discovers that other people who use to have her new number before have all died under mysterious circumstances. At the same time her friends daughter's starts to act more and more weird and Ji-won tries to seek out the person who first got the number and finds out that apparently it belonged to a high school girl named Jin-hie. Is she somehow connected to all that's going on and if so, why?
It has been a little bit more quiet for a while now but with the flood of new Asian horror movies coming out before, too many of them kinda contained the exact same elements and became more and more unoriginal.
The Phone might not be that original either but it definitely ranks among the best new Asian horror flicks when it comes to fright, scares and suspense.
I could give it a lower rating considering that's it's not very original and may have borrowed a few things from other movies, but I still think it's so entertaining and delivers scare after scare that really works well. So when it comes to actual horror, it's a terrific flick and therefore the high rating.
 
Yeah it borrows from Ringu for sure but it's not that big of a deal as it's still very interesting. Also with a lot of Asian horror flicks being slow-paced let me tell you that this one is not one of those. I have nothing against slow movies if they end up delivering in the end but it's nice with a faster Asian horror flick for a change and that it works really well this way too without a slow build-up.
The scares comes early in the movie and then they last the movie throughout which is nice. And even though if it's not that scary all of the time, it's still kinda hard to really sit back and relax, it's more likely that you sit and wait for the next scare to hit, and then the next and the next and so on.
And yes, there's a female ghost too with long black hair as seen so many times before. But again, it works really well in the Phone and the ghost actually do a real fine job being scary, direct and manages to be frightening.
As most other Korean movies; the Phone features good actors, looks fantastic, is nicely directed and all that and even if it's not original, the story is still interesting enough and the actual horror works truly well. If you like Asian horror but haven't had the chance to see this one yet, I suggest you go and rent it asap.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Pon
MOVIE YEAR: 2002
DIRECTOR: Byeong-ki Ahn
WRITING CREDITS: Byeong-ki Ahn
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Ji-won Ha, Yu-mi Kim, Woo-jae Choi
COUNTRY: South Korea
RUNTIME: 104 min
RATING: 9/10
Phone Website/IMDB Click here
Phone Trailer Click here
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