Profile
-
Movie: The Call
-
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
-
Director: Lee Chung-Hyeon
-
Writers: Kang Sun-Joo, Lee Chung-Hyeon
-
Producer: Jung Hee-Soon
-
Cinematographer: Jo Young-Jik
-
Release Date: November 27, 2020
-
Runtime: 114 min
-
Distributor: Next Entertainment World
-
Language: Korean
-
Country: South Korea
Cast
-
Park Shin-hye as Kim Seo-yeon
-
Jeon Jong-seo as Oh Young-sook
-
Kim Sung-ryung as Eun-ae, Seo-yeon’s mother.
-
Lee El as Ja-ok, Young-sook’s mother
-
Oh Jung-se as Seong-ho
-
Lee Dong-hwi as Baek Mi-hyun
-
Park Ho-san as Mr Kim (Seo-yeon’s father)
-
Park Hyung-soo as Man-voice
-
Kim Min-ha as Young Seon-hee
Synopsis
It is the year 2019 and Kim Seo-yeon is back to her rural hometown to meet her sick mother, Eun-ae, diagnosed with a brain tumour. Seong-ho, a strawberry farmer, finds Kim Seo-yeon midway and drops her at the country house. Knowing that she lost her phone on the long journey, he offers his phone to Seo-yeon but she refuses. As she gets in the house, she finds an outdated cordless phone for making emergency calls inside her old cupboard.
After a while, she receives a disrupted phone call from a woman asking for Seon-hee and saying that her mother is torturing her. Confused, Seo-yeon says that it is the wrong number and goes to the hospital to visit her mother.
The doctor informs her about her mother’s condition and refers her to a super speciality hospital. After having an unpleasant conversation with her mother, she leaves the place. Back at home, she again receives the call from the same number. This time the woman raises her voice and asks Seo-yeon why she is tricking her and hangs up.
Later that night, as Seo-yeon was dozing off, she hears a thudding noise which horrified her. She finds that a family picture that has been hung in the living room had fallen off. Trying to keep it back in place, she discovers a basement hidden behind the wall. Aghast, she gets down and tumbles upon a box of someone’s personal possessions. Amongst those things, she finds a journal with lots of photographs of a girl.
The next morning, she visits Seong-ho on his farm and enquires about the girl in the picture. He mentions that the girl is Young-sook and she used to live there in the 90s and that is all he knows. On her way back, she comes across ‘Seon-hee Stores’ and sees a woman sitting in front of it. Seo-yeon gets reminded of the call she got last night but did not directly approach the lady. As soon as she gets back home, she receives the call and hears a cry for help. The woman on the phone is beseeching Seon-hee to come and save her from the cruel mother, who is trying to kill her.
The scene then shifts to the backstory of the woman on the call, who is seen dragged through the floor by her mother to the basement to perform some rituals. Her mother, Ja-ok, is a traditional sorcerer and is preparing for a ceremony with fire, using her daughter. While evading her mother, the young woman pushes her over, causing the fire stick to fall down and burn the place. The fumes produced are seen in the present, at Seo-yeon’s house.
Just as she was fathoming the origin of the fumes, she received the call. Spontaneously picking it up, she asks the young woman for her address and cross-checks it with her addresse and found it to be the same. Seo-yeon details her identity over the phone and asks if her name is Oh Young-sook. She further adds that she learnt about it from a photograph of Young-sook, dated back to November 26, 1999.
Raising an array of doubts, Seo-yeon gets a reply remarking that she is absurd and the day is November 18, 1999, for the young woman. Later, after reading out parts from Young-sook’s personal diary over the phone, it is understood that both of them are living in the same house but on a different timeline, 20 years apart. Seo-yeon asks her to confirm the news of a plane crash, which is supposed to happen later that night in Young-sook’s timeline.
As the movie progresses, Young-sook is seen sitting for dinner with her evil mother. She feels repugnant seeing the food in front of her but starts to devour it unmannerly. Agitated by this, Ja-ok approaches her and talks about leaving the house as she thinks it is awry. At the same moment, Young-sook comes across the television news regarding a plane crash. She dials up Seo-yeon afterwards, confirms the events and asks about her age.
Both of them are twenty-eight years old. The phone acts as a medium for the two to connect. The two women talk over the phone more about their lives. Young-sook is living with her stepmother, who considers her an evil fortune. She has never left the house and is caged in a badly lit room. Seo-yeon lost her father in a gas leakage accident, caused due to the irresponsibility of her mother.
Afterwards, on a day in 1999, a couple, with their girl child, visits Ja-ok at her house along with a real estate dealer. They are here to check out the house. As they were journeying over, Young-sook came out of the room. She approaches the young girl, who is frightened seeing her, and asks if her name is Seo-yeon. Apparently, the family who made a visit is actually Seo-yeon’s family.
Inside the room, she calls Seo-yeon and holds the receiver up to Seo-yeon’s father’s voice. This made Seo-yeon emotional and that is when Young-sook strikes up with an idea to save her father from death, which happened on 27 November 1999. So the next day, Young-sook eloped from her house and ran to save Seo-yeon’s father. As she reaches their house, Seo-yeon is playing in the living room with her mini cooking set, following the instructions given by a lady on the television. Young-sook watches Seo-yeon’s mother, Eun-ae, leaving the house and keeping the key under the flower vase.
The next instant, adult Seo-yeon is seen sitting with her smartphone in a new setting. She had some scars on her knees from the fire accident that had happened and it abruptly started to vanish. Since Young-sook avoided the mishap back in time, Seo-yeon is now living happily with her parents and is leading an entirely different life. This incident reveals the fact that both of them have the power to change and influence each other’s lives. Seo-yeon is ecstatic about her new life and thanks Young-sook. As she spends more and more time with her family, she fails to attend Young-sook’s calls. The latter feels avoided and one day screams over the phone in frustration with Seo-yeon.
Unfortunately, Ja-ok pries upon Young-sook and interrupts the call, asking Seo-yeon not to contact her ever again. She drags her daughter down the basement and tortures her. A petrified Seo-yeon does an online search to find out more about Young-sook and comes across a news article about her death that very night at the hands of Ja-ok while conducting a ritual. She lets Young-sook know about this.
Young-sook escapes from her mother’s dagger and questions Ja-ok’s motive to which she replies that her (Young-sook’s) horoscope points out the possibility of death of many people with her hands. Ja-ok was trying to avoid this in future. This triggers Young-sook and she stabs her stepmother to death. She then calls Seo-yeon, who is anticipatedly waiting for the call, to inform her that everything is fine.
Oh Young-sook is now a liberated soul and is having the time of her life. She enjoys new food and experiments with current fashion trends. Days pass and one fine day Seong-ho visits Seo-yeon’s family with a carton of strawberries. The same scenario happens, in 1999, at Young-sook’s house where a young Seong-ho comes in with boxes full of strawberries. He was startled seeing her transformation and was invited inside.
Following her request to keep the strawberries in the refrigerator, he proceeds to the kitchen and as he opens the fridge, he finds some stinky plastic bags containing sliced body parts. Horror-struck he repels backwards and dials the police but the call is received by Seo-yeon. Young-sook, watching all this, kills him too. This erases Seong-ho from Seo-yeon’s house. Seo-yeon runs to the police station to enquire about Seong-ho and from there she gets a diary highlighting the past events with a picture of Young-sook in the criminal column.
Back in 1999, two policemen visit Young-sook’s house and interrogates her about Seong-ho’s missing. The opacity in her answers creates a wave of disbelief in them. Meanwhile, Seo-yeon visits Seon-hee at her store and enquires about Young-sook. Seon-hee explains her unpleasant experiences and this proves the psychotic nature of Young-sook. Upon reaching home, Seo-yeon dials Young-sook and questions her. She finally discloses what she had learned from the police journal, that Young-sook was a serial killer and was detained.
Hearing this, Young-sook persuades Seo-yeon to do something to avoid future events that might land her in jail. Seo-yeon repulses and cuts the call.Unluckily, Young-sook hears a bell at the door and finds out that young Seo-yeon and her father have come to fix the talk about purchasing the house. Rejoicing her victory, Young-sook invites them inside and kills her father. This rubs off Seo-yeon’s father in the future and once again her life takes a turn. She runs back to her house and finds it in a dilapidated form, as in the beginning. There she receives Young-sook’s call and yells at her for the cruel act.
Apparently, Young-sook took little Seo-yeon hostage and over the phone, asked adult Seo-yeon to find the evidence which might end her up in jail. Even though Seo-yeon finds the reason, she guides Young-sook to a place where an explosion was bound to occur. However, Young-sook gets away and tortures young Seo-yeon. She then bares the fact that Seo-yeon was actually responsible for her father’s death in the past as she was the one who turned on the stove following the cooking instructions on TV. Hearing this, adult Seo-yeon runs to the police station to get hold of any details of the incidents.
Meanwhile, in 1999, Eun-ae files a complaint to the police regarding her missing daughter and husband. At the same time, Young-sook sets on to discard the evidence that might get her caught and the timeline again changes, causing noticeable changes in the outlook of the house.Seo-yeon gets inside the house in 2019 and sees a woman, who is Young-sook, as she did not get arrested back in 1999. Seo-hyun later finds out about her mother’s arrival at the scene, in 1999, at a later time from the police diary.
The scene shifts to the house of Young-sook in 1999, where Eun-ae arrives with a police officer. They thoroughly search the whole house but get no trace. Seo-yeon’s mother is not convinced and takes up the cordless phone to try her husband’s number. Despite Young-sook’s intimidation, she dials the number and contacts the adult Seo-yeon. She explains the whole situation and was asked to flee the house by Seo-yeon, but that’s when Young-sook knocks down the police officer with a dagger.
Her mother runs off and hides in a room. At the same time, adult Seo-yeon was smashed down to the floor by Young-sook in 2019. When she gains consciousness, she combats Young-sook, climbs up the stairs and locks away in a room with the phone.
Adult Seo-yeon and her mother, from 1999, keep in touch over the phone. She asks her mother to look around to find some objects for self-defence. A fire extinguisher is caught in sight and Seo-yeon asks her to attack Young-sook with it but that’s when child Seo-yeon is found by Eun-ae. Young-sook dashes in to attack them and but both, Eun-ae and Young-sook, fall off the balcony. This erases, Young-sook from the current scene in 2019. Seo-yeon runs to the hospital to find her mother but can not find her and later, she arrives at her father’s graveyard. There she meets her mother and both of them pace away, but her mother vanishes after some time.
As the credit rolls, we see that Young-sook was not dead in 1999, as she was aware of all the happenings that were about to happen. The present Young-sook let know the past Young-sook of all the events that were going to take place and advised her to safely keep the phone at any cost. Thus, Young-sook gets up from the floor after falling and kills Eun-ae. The movie ends with a shot of the petrified face of Seo-yeon behind a white cloth denoting she is under Young-sook’s custody.
Theme
Awards
- 20th Director’s Cut Awards 2022
Best Actress (Film) – Jeon Jong-seo (2022) - 57th Baeksang Arts Awards 2021
Best Actress (Film) – Jeon Jong-seo (2021) -
30th Buil Film Awards 2021
Best Actress – Jeon Jong-seo (2021)
Interesting Facts about The Call
-
‘The Call’ was supposed to be released in theatres but instead got aired on Netflix in November, 2020 due to Covid-19 outbreak.
-
The filming of the movie started on January 3, 2019
-
Park Shin-hye is globally well-known for her role in #ALIVE.
FAQs
-
Who is the director of the movie ‘The Call’?
Lee Chung-Hyeon is the director of the movie. -
What genre is the movie ‘The Call’?
Mystery / Thriller -
When was the movie ‘The Call’ released?
The movie was released on November 27, 2020 - What is Park Shin-hye instagram ID?
Her instagram ID is ssinz7 - What is Jeong Jong-seo instagram ID?
Her instagram ID is wjswhdtj94
