PHONE

The impact that Hideo Nakata's Ringu series has had on Asian horror cannot be underestimated. And mind you, that is not a bad thing. Doing away with the irony that had so recently plagued American horror (like the Scream movies), Ringu scared the crap out of you the old fashioned way: by messing with your mind. The influence sprawled across Asia, with a ripple of horror hits with Ringu's influence written all over them. One of these is Phone, a smash hit in Korea, that barely even tries to hide its mimicry of the formula that has worked so well in other recent Asian horror movies.

Ji-won (Ji-won Ha), a reporter who recently broke a sex-with-underage-girls scandal, is not a popular woman with the men whose careers she destroyed. After getting a bunch of menacing phone calls from these disgruntled johns, she changes her cell phone. But just when she thinks her old phone number is trouble, her new one rings with untraceable calls of a more disturbing nature: A woman screams and shrieks incomprehensibly on the other end of the line, causing the person on the receiving end to lose their mind.

Well, to make matters more fun, Ji-won's cute-as-a-button neice Young-ju (Seo-woo Eun) picks up the cell phone, hears the message, and starts screaming in fear. You know that trouble of another sort has begun the girl starts peering at folks out of the top of her eyeballs and tries making out with her dad (model-handsome Woo-jae Choi). And sweet mom Yu-mi Kim doesn't know what to make of it, despite the obvious warnings of waking up with her 5-year-old daughter standing next to her with a kitchen knife.

Phone has some excellent, top-notch cinematography and music that work the viewer's deepest fears. There are reflections, shadowy figures, jump cuts, and poorly lit hallways that will give you the heeby-jeebies. But for the first half or so, the plot is all over the place. It starts to reflect unfortunate American thrillers for a bit, throwing in the plot tangents that are supposed to trick you, but lead absolutely nowhere, then get dropped. But luckily it starts to tighten up again, and the last chunk of the film is surprisingly satisfying.

The extras on the DVD are the usual behind-the-scenes stuff, the most interesting being the makeup artists at work on their frozen-in-anguish bodies and the requisite big stringy hairballs that seem to be in all Asian horror these days. But surprisingly fun is the commentary part. No, we are not forced to listen to the director or the main actors crowing about each other, but instead get to hear our 5-year-old demon girl Seo-woo Eun prattle on about the fun of working on a movie. The interviewer asks about one particularly impressed freak-out scene towards the end of the movie. He says, "So, did the blood scare you?" and in the best kid-fashion, she says, "No, it wasn't blood... it was WHEAT GLUTEN! It was tasty!" And THAT, my friends, reflects the magic of movie-making more than anything I've heard in a long time!