By the way, I read a fucking hilarious thing in a publication the other day. I think it was about Michael Moore Hates Canada or something.
Anyway, to return to the subject of the film about a phone, and how it can't make up its mind what it wants to talk about.
We get sex-scandals, and then spooky paintings, and then a kid answers the phone and hears some demented nonsense or other, and next thing you know she's looking menacingly up past her eyebrows all the time, sometimes growling and so on.
Once, she even says shit.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, Ji-won gets the crazy notion to go and hunt down folks what used to have the same number as her. She has a list of them all, and goes around trying to hunt them down, like when Sylvester Stallone went looking for all those women called Sarah Conner in The Terminator.
Turns out, all the folks that had those numbers were all young attractive females, and they all ended up disappearing or dying or perhaps getting thrown down wells. Also, they seem to have all been learning to play the same tune on the piano, a melancholic ditty by the name of Moonlight Sonata, most famous for its role as Thing What Gets You The Gold Emblem in Resident Evil. It might have been a hit for Cannibal Corpse.
Phone ends up being much more watchable than you'd imagine, thanks to some reasonably effective scares and beautiful cinematography by Yong-shik Mon. There's a genuinely unnerving atmosphere to it all, but it's impossible to feel especially tense, since ideas and narrative-tics are constantly being thrown like wet slurry against canvas, but very little of it sticks, and what does just smells bad and makes you wish they had thrown something else instead.
The whole thing is distastefully derivative too. Visual echoes from the vastly superior Ringu abound, be it the grey waves crashing onto eerily unpopulated beaches, or the kid with the hair all down her face, or the whole notion of the phone being the harbinger of some vile, diabolical text message of doom. In addition, Kairo, another Korean number, is plundered for its scary web-net shenanigans. Stir Of Echoes, too, gets a thorough going over, and there's even a touch of The Exorcist in there.
Article comments
1 - srp
weird. this sounds sort of interesting because i've been researching weird voyeur porn and stuff and had no idea how freakin' weird people can get. i mean, pee cams? and these ain't staged: these are real men, women, and even KIDS (not barely legal, either, i mean Kids like 9) in poses from their parents etc. And then there are tips on how to hook up spy cams on your sexy young wife neighbor, even rape requests that are fulfilled, all buried deep within "legit" sites that ARE staged; but if you go deep enough, you find creepy stuff; so this idea Duke, that you mention, that technology is evil, is as you said, intereting. to me as well...
since my work involves IT a great deal - the whole idea that technology that was developed to help us is being manipulated for what i can only think of as evil (you'd have to see these things of kids), then it's again, the people - but it's such a compelling topic. I'd be curious to know if Snuff and the like are a big deal in Asian films and if so, are they staged or real? i've heard that most are staged and i believe that - but the stuff i recently saw of children, was most certainly not staged - these were little kids; anyway
going OT but i found your piece really interesting and it hooked into some work i've been writing lately -- if you have any related links etc. or film suggest. for this topic, please do post or private email me.
cheers and thanks for such an interesting piece.
srp
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
srp, thanks for the comments. its well late in the night, so i just have time to suggest these links to other reviews de duke what you might find interesting, since they cover similar subjects. Especially of interest, based on what you said, will be the review of tesis.
Review Of Tesis
Review Of Mondo Cane
Review Of Mondo Cane No. 2
Review Of Cannibal Holocaust
Review Of Mountain Of The Cannibal God
Review Of Africa Addio
phew! hope you find something of worth.
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
shit, those links mostly don't work. hopefully these ones do;
Review Of Tesis
Review Of Mondo Cane
Review Of Mondo Cane No. 2
Review Of Cannibal Holocaust
Review Of Mountain Of The Cannibal God
Review Of Africa Addio
4 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
yep, those work