It’s no secret that Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is an excellent piece of cinema. Not solely did it scoop the best picture Oscar in 2019, it catapulted viewers over the 1-inch subtitle barrier right into a treasure trove of South Korean movies.
On that very same glowing pile sits one other impeccable South Korean flick: 2020’s The Call. Released on Netflix, The Call shares the identical Oscar-nominated editor as Parasite: Yang Jin-mo. If you want your storytelling environment friendly, distinctive and wrought with suspense, The Call will generously present.
Oh Young-sook (Jeon Jong-seo) is a drive to be reckoned with.
Netflix
The Call is about in rural Korea, the place 28-year-old Kim Seo-yeon makes the journey dwelling to go to her estranged, sick mom. Crucially, she loses her cellphone on the prepare journey over. This deadly error sees her compelled to make use of a cordless cellphone. After one fateful cellphone name, a real nightmare unfurls.
Seo-yeon interacts with one other 28-year-old girl — Oh Young-sook — who cries for assist from her personal “loopy” mom. The trailer-advertised reveal: Both girls are in the identical home, however from completely different occasions. One is in 2019, the opposite in 1999. Cue superior ’90s Korean grunge music.
With this unusual connection, Seo-yeon within the current timeline is enticed to tinker with the unlucky occasions in her previous. The solely catch is that this depends on her friendship with the opposite girl on the road, whose circumstances could be much more hellish than her personal.
The truth these girls work together with out assembly head to head reveals the profound ability of actresses Park Shin-hye and Jeon Jong-seo. They embark on a cat-and-mouse tug of struggle, tiptoeing throughout a minefield of unknowns and potential threats. The stress is unrelenting.
The ensemble is rounded out by the ladies’s moms, performed by the equally extraordinary Kim Sung-ryung and Lee El. Lee El particularly produces the type of unhinged mum or dad efficiency that haunted children like Carrie, Coraline and Norman Bates.
Every side of the filmmaking course of has clearly been siphoned via a fragile sieve. The consideration to element is immaculate. As properly as editor Yang Jin-mo, the filmmaking staff consists of Avengers: The Age of Ultron and The Great Gatsby colorist Vanessa Taylor. You’ll discover a purple hue sheathing the scenes with Seo-yeon within the current timeline, representing her unhappiness and despair. In the previous, Young-sook’s scenes glint with pink, refracting anger, hazard and violence.
The stress you’re feeling as the sport performs out is testomony to how deeply The Call attracts you in. Yes, it presents a high-concept time journey mind-melder, however it’s all propped up by the pillars of the mother-daughter relationships. Oh, and there is a lesson in there someplace concerning the value of adjusting your destiny, however fortunately this is not thrown with a splat in your face.
Like a Bong Joon-ho movie, right here director and author Lee Chung-hyun drops a surprising halfway twist that adjustments every part concerning the enjoying area. It all wraps up in an emotionally satisfying ending earlier than squeezing out one final heart-clunking shock.
The Call is verdant, ingenious, subtle storytelling that leaves you buzzing for the type of top-notch movies that do not usually discover their means onto Netflix. Dislodge it from the again of Netflix’s streaming cabinets ASAP.
