In the annals of genre cinema, time-travel has been a relatively common occurrence from everything like “Event Horizon” and “Haunter” to “Timecrimes” and “Army of Darkness,” exploring outlandish concepts in a fairly common-place setting. Director Lee Chung-hyun is the latest to tackle this concept, as he uses it for his feature-film debut, the chilling new thriller “The Call” now available on Netflix.
Heading out to the countryside, a lost phone causes Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) to begin looking for an answer to what happened. Eventually, she manages to reach Young-sook (Jun Jong-seo), a girl who claims to have lived in the same house twenty years earlier. Communicating over the phone, they begin to talk to each other about what happened over the years. When it transpires that something in the past affects the future timelines of each other, the resulting changes begin to affect the relationship they have, eventually resulting in a series of double-crosses that showcase Young-sook to be capable of far more deadly actions than anticipated. When they start affecting history altogether, Seo-yeon tries to prevent history from affecting her.
Overall, “The Call” manages to be wholly entertaining. One of the best attributes is the engaging start-up that offers a fantastic mystery to look into. The frantic quest to find the missing phone leads nicely from the mysterious calls inquiring about someone who doesn't live there, to the discovery of the boarded-up room inside the house. Getting to see how it happened with the incident in the past, with the burning room to the phone conversations here comes off in a novel manner as the girl realizes the hidden connection they have with each other. This factor starts the film in a rather impressive manner.
Moreover, that causes the start of the strangeness to begin amplifying considerably. Not only does Seo-yeon manage to use their meetings to help Young-sook overcome her insecurities and change the past she had in her diary, but those changes are also shown to pay dividends in the future timeline. Even though she gets her parents to return and they share music and news from the future with each other, the shift in their connection through the changes that have been wrought ,meaning no time for each other to talk anymore, causes cracks in the foundation of their relationship. The resulting snap and series of challenges that are in place during the finale are fun, creative and pack a nice punch throughout here.
There are some slight issues with “The Call.” One of the main ones is writer/director Chung-hyun's insistence on adhering to the usual trials and tribulations that are usually found.in time-travel movies that belie any sense of how that works. The idea of moving along through time and focusing on past efforts chasing the present means that the various situations and encounters should have already been a fixture of their lives in the change. Getting scalded with water to the point of a permanent burn on their body or complete room rearranging shouldn't be shown taking place in the present, it would've already been second nature as the timeline has been altered to those changes being the new standard. The characters would've had no knowledge or memory of the incidents, and the discrepancies in the storyline stand-out due to that.
The finale also stands out for making everything complex and confusing. The continuance of the inability to pay attention to the time-travel conundrums not only allows “The Call” to feel incredibly flimsy in terms of why Young-sook snapped but also alters the timeline of the events. These changes are never given any kind of explanation and just seem to exist solely to serve as surprise shocks. This becomes apparent, especially once things dip into the post-credits work which is where the most egregious aspects occur. There are way too many explanations and extraneous circumstances that feel like overkill after the third extra scene. “The Call” would've been fine cutting at the credits instead of continuing on with the post-credits scenes.
A fun and quite chilling thriller for most of its running time, “The Call” has an impressive amount of likable qualities with just a few minor issues to hold it back. Most fans of the thriller or Korean genre cinema, in general, would be very impressed and enjoy this one immensely .
