Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a Korean crime, horror, mystery film from 2020, titled The Call.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
Seo-yeon arrives at the village where she used to live as a little girl and Sung-ho
picks her up to take her to her house.
Her mom is very sick, so on the way there, he asks the young woman if she went to see
her at the hospital.
She doesn't answer because she realized that she had lost her phone at the station and
she's worried about that.
As soon as she gets inside the house, she finds a cordless phone and plugs it in.
A bit later, the phone rings and Seo-yeon picks up and hears a woman's voice, misplacing
her for someone else, saying her mom is crazy.
When she realizes she has the wrong number, the woman hangs up.
Later that day, Seo-yeon visits her mother's doctor, who tells her she has a tumor in her
brain that is operable, but that the procedure is very difficult and she needs to be taken
to a specialist.
She sits with her mom in her hospital room for a bit and the woman tells Seo-yeon that
she needs to begin with the arrangements for her burial.
Seo-yeon gets very upset when her mom tells her to ask if she can be buried with or next
to her father so she storms out of the room.
She visits he dad's grave next, where it states that he died in 1999.
When Seo-Yeon comes back home the mysterious phone call returns as well.
She realizes that the woman calling her is saying that she's calling from her own address.
That night Seo-yeon is woken up by a loud clatter in the house, goes to investigate
it, and sees that it was only a photo that has fallen from its post.
She tries hanging it up again but discovers that the wall it was hanging from is fake,
covering up the existence of an entirely different room.
After she breaks down the wall, she goes into the room with a flashlight and finds a box
filled with different things, including a girl's journal.
As she flips through it, a photo of the girl drops from it.
Next, Seo-yeon shows the photo to Sung-ho and he says that it's Young-sook.
The house used to belong to her stepmom, who was something like a shaman.
After telling her the bare minimum, he pretends that he can't remember anything else from
that time.
Seo-yeon realizes the photo is dated to 1999.
On her way home, she sees a store that has the name of the woman, Sun-hee, her mysterious
caller has been asking for.
That night she gets another call with the woman on the other side frantically screaming
until she gets dragged away from the phone by her stepmom.
The mom tries to burn her, but they struggle and light fire to the room that Seo-yeon discovered
previously.
Seo-yeon goes over to the opening she made in the wall and can see smoke and fire crackling
on the stairs.
Sometime later, the phone rings again and Seo-yeon tells the woman that she knows she's
Young-sook and that she's found her photo from November the 26th, 1999.
Young-sook says that it's only the 18th, so Seo-yeon reads a passage from her journal
of the previous day.
She checks what she wrote and when she confirms it's the same, Young-sook gets scared.
Seo-yeon, aware that it might sound unbelievable, tells her that her theory for what's happening
is that they're both living in the same house but at a different time.
To confirm her idea further, she finds a newspaper article for November 18th and tells Young-sook
to watch the news that night for a report on a plane crash.
Young-sook has dinner with her mom that night and the woman threatens her that if she doesn't
eat she'll take her back to the institution, so she begins stuffing her face.
After getting her mom upset, she sees the report on the plane crash and calls Seo-yeon
again.
The two women connect as Seo-yeon tells Young-sook about the future like her favorite musician
returning to the music scene as well as new technology that still sounds bonkers in 1999.
When Young-sook tells her that her biological mom has died and the woman torturing her is
her stepmom, Seo-yeon tells her how her father died.
There was a fire in their house when she was young because her mom forgot to turn off the
gas and her dad died in the fire.
On November 21st, 1999, Seo-yeon and her family arrive at Young-sook's house to take a look
at it, thinking of buying it.
At this point in time, her father is still alive.
Young Seo-yeon runs upstairs and they find Young-sook room, asking her stepmom to open
the door.
When Young-sook appears at the door and realizes who the people are, she calls older Seo-yeon
again and lets her listen to her father talking.
It's a very moving moment for Seo-yeon who hasn't heard his voice in 20 years.
Young-sook comes up with the idea to save her father from the fire herself.
On November 27th, when Seo-yeon's father was supposed to die, Young-sook manages to escape
the house without her stepmom knowing and travels to the house where Seo-yeon lived
before they moved.
Younger Seo-yeon is watching TV and her mom is painting her nails, while there's lunch
cooking on the stove.
Later, the mom leaves the house and Young-sook steals the key while Seo-yeon plays with her
dad.
Young-sook enters the house as the fire is starting.
Back in the present, Seo-yeon's cell phone is back in her possession and the burn scar
on her leg disappears.
Suddenly, her entire house begins to change as well as herself and her room.
Seo-yeon walks downstairs, then out of the house when she sees a beautiful glasshouse
garden.
As she enters it, first she sees her mom, and then her dad shows up.
Seo-yeon begins to cry when she sees him in front of her, then hugs him, confusing both
of her parents.
Later, she calls Young-sook to thank her.
Seo-yeon spends time with both of her parents, then shares new music with Young-sook over
the phone.
The two of them keep communicating over time and keep getting closer.
Until one day when Seo-yeon can't talk on the phone because she's spending time with
her parents.
Young-sook keeps calling her and gets mad when she doesn't call her back.
When they finally speak again, it starts becoming apparent that Young-sook isn't well.
Seo-yeon hears screams over the phone and then Young-sook's stepmom's voice, telling
her to stay away from her or she'll get hurt.
In the past, Young-sook's stepmom is performing an exorcism on her, convinced that she can
help her like that, as the young woman keeps begging her to stop.
The stepmom flogs her and then speaks chants over her crying face, as Young-sook apologizes,
hoping that will make her stop.
After that, Young-sook stepmom goes to Sun-hee's store and notices that Young-sook has been
there too.
She sees the wound that the woman has on her leg.
In the present, Seo-yeon can't help herself from searching for Young-sook online.
When she can't find her on any social media, she searches for her address and reads a news
report about Young-sook's untimely death during an exorcism that her stepmother had performed
on her.
Young-sook calls her and Seo-yeon tells her that she thinks that she will die that night.
Her stepmom gets a knife from the aquarium and goes up to her room.
She winces as she flings up the knife and begins stabbing the bed, where she thinks
Young-sook is sleeping.
The woman however isn't in the bed as the stepmom discovers in horror.
Young-sook laughs at her, then get the fire extinguisher to incapacitate her.
She finds the knife in the hazy room and confronts her stepmom, then kills her, getting a taste
for blood.
After that, she calls Seo-yeon, who waits worried by the phone and relaxes when Young-sook
tells her that she's fine.
Furthermore, she says she feels reborn.
Young-sook can be seen in the next shot, finally outside of the house, happy that's she's been
freed.
First, she treats herself to a meal she actually likes, the buys herself new clothes.
In the present, Seo-yeon welcomes Sung-ho into the family home, as he comes in to deliver
their strawberries.
Everyone is excited about the fruit and thanking Sung-ho for bringing it to the house.
He makes a different delivery to the house in the past, but this time Young-sook opens
the door.
She's happy about her new clothes and shows them off to Sung-ho, then invites him in.
Sung-ho asks about her mom, but she just wants to know which of her new things he likes better
and lives him alone in the den, as she runs off to find other pieces she's bought.
Meanwhile, Sung-ho goes to the kitchen to take care of the strawberries when he finds
a bunch of foul-smelling black plastic bags in the fridge.
As he moves one to make room for the fruit, he drops it on the floor and when he picks
the bag up, he realizes that it's filled with body parts.
Sung-ho freaks out just as Young-sook finds him in the basement, wearing the other outfit
she wanted to show him.
She's angry that he opened the bag and disappears into another room to grab the fire extinguisher,
as the man stupidly sits in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, back in the present, Seo-yeon's family is having some tea with him and his
little dog, having a nice conversation, and eating some of the strawberries.
The phone rings and Seo-yeon pick it up from her room.
She hears Sung-ho's sobs from the past over the phone and Young-sook cursing that she's
ruined her new clothes.
The phone call drops suddenly.
Seo-yeon has a bad feeling about the conversation she just had and when she comes back downstairs,
she sees that Sung-ho isn't there anymore.
In fact, he was never even there and her parents have never even heard of him.
Just in case, she checks the refrigerator, then walks over to his strawberry farm, only
to find it desolate.
Seo-yeon goes to the police station in the village and asks the police officers if they
know him.
While the younger police officer has never heard of him or his strawberry farm before,
the older one does.
He asks Seo-yeon why she would be asking for someone that has been dead for 20 years and
shocks her with the question.
The officer takes her in the back and shows her his notes on the crime, where it's stated
that he was murdered by Young-sook at her home.
The police visit Young-sook in the past as well, making inquiries about Sung-ho, before
they knew she was the one that murdered him.
She tries to lie to them that she doesn't know him, but one of the cops, which is the
older one that Seo-yeon talked to in the future, notices the discrepancies in her replies.
Young-sook says that she doesn't know him and that her mom isn't there to tell them
if she's seen him, but the officer notices the strawberry delivery in the house.
She lies to cover her tracks again, but the cop can tell she isn't being truthful and
takes down a few notes, making her nervous.
Young-sook blabs something about a murder in the village, but the police officer, even
though suspicious, still leaves her house.
Older Seo-yeon finally goes to talk to Sun-hee, the shop owner, to ask her about what actually
happened to Young-sook and her stepmom.
Sun-hee tells her that she thought Young-sook was a well-behaved girl, who would listen
to her talk about her husband for hours.
Sometimes, she would sneak snacks into her room, until one day she hurt her really bad.
If it wasn't for Young-sook's stepmom, Sun-hee would have been dead.
Later, Young-sook calls Seo-yeon as she thaws out the body part from her fridge.
Seo-yeon picks up and immediately asks her if she killed Sung-ho.
Young-sook lies to her, so Seo-yeon reads her a newspaper heading about the day she
was arrested by the police as a serial killer and sentenced to life in prison.
A life sentence doesn't sound too grand to Young-sook so she drops the act, making it
apparent to Seo-yeon that she really killed the strawberry farmer.
Young-sook then begins questioning Seo-yeon how the police found out that she committed
the crime and tells her that she will need her to find out how that happened so she can
prevent her own capture.
She won't let Seo-yeon forget what she did for her and gets really angry when Seo-yeon
keeps hanging up on her.
Both women react very differently to the whole situation, one is terrified and crying, unable
to do anything from her end, while the other is angry and vengeful, dialing Seo-yeon's
number over and over.
The cop keeps investigating Young-sook in 1999, seeing that she has some mental health
issues.
As Young-sook keeps trying to reach Seo-yeon in the future, she hears a knock on the door
and when she opens it, she sees her younger self there, together with her father.
He tells Young-sook that they are looking for her stepmom, who was supposed to meet
them at the realtor's office some time ago.
Young-sook says that she must've fallen asleep and invites them to wait for her inside.
Seo-yeon is with her father in the future as well.
He notices that she's worried and asks her about it, but she says that she's fine.
Her dad stops the car and makes her drive so that he can cheer her up.
He tells her that she needs to be more gentle with the pedal so that when she stops the
car she won't spill the coffee.
Seo-yeon successfully does that by his instruction.
Back in the past, Young-sook is getting ready to hurt him, as he waits with Seo-yeon in
the den.
The little girl is eating one of the strawberries as she sees Young-sook approaching and spraying
her dad with the fire extinguisher.
In the present, Seo-yeon drives into a tunnel when she sees her dad vanishing slowly right
in front of her eyes and that version of the future crumbles away with the broken glass
of the car.
Cut to a terrified, young Seo-young who backs away from her father's blood and the image
of Young-sook killing him.
The older version of her wakes up in the tunnel, without her dad.
Young-sook approaches the littler version of Seo-yeon and tells her that her dad's death
is her fault for not picking up the phone.
Present-day Seo-yeon runs back to the house, finding it in an awful state and seeing the
words "Seo-yeon, answer the phone" written in blood on the floor.
Sure enough, the phone rings and she has no hesitation whether she should pick it up.
Young-sook toys with her about the way she killed her dad, making Seo-yeon angry as heck,
threatening to kill her.
There's one problem though, while Seo-yeon can't get to Young-sook, she has the younger
version of her strapped to a chair, making her the one with the upper hand in the situation.
Young-sook tells her that she has one hour to find out how the police will arrest her
or she'll hurt her mother too.
Seo-yeon has an idea how to get herself out of the situation and takedown Young-sook for
good.
Her plan is to send Young-sook to a place where she has researched that an accident
will happen and retroactively kill her that way.
Seo-yeon sends her to a location where a gas explosion should happen, telling Young-sook
that there she will find the man who discovers the knife with her bloody fingerprints.
She waits to see it happen on her phone, but Young-sook manages to save her hide again
because she leaves the building before it explodes.
Needless to say, she's very angry with Seo-yeon when she calls her back after.
Young-sook shows her just how upset she is with her, by leaving her on the phone as she
burns her younger self with scorching water and scars appear on the older Seo-yeon's body
as well.
To make it even worse, she plays Seo-yeon a voice message her mom left her dad, saying
that she's coming after them.
And Young-sook doesn't stop there either but keeps turning the figurative knife further,
by telling her that she was the one responsible for her father's death in the first place.
It seems that her mom turned off the gas before she left the house that day and that it was
Seo-yeon who turned it back on, mistakenly thinking she's doing the opposite.
In the present, Seo-yeon sees no other way but to actually find the information she wants,
so she breaks into the police station to get her file.
She opens the police officer's notebook and learns how they finally caught her, sending
Young-sook in the right place this time.
Young-sook finds the man when he discovers the knife with her prints that she thought
she had disposed off and kills him with it too.
The information vanishes from the notebook, but new information appears od her mom searching
for Seo-yeon at the local police station.
Seo-yeon sees a play-by-play of what is happening in the past inside the officer's notebook,
who decides to help her mom when he learns the address where her husband and daughter
were supposed to go to.
Suddenly, all the information about Young-sook disappears from it and the house begins to
change again.
Seo-yeon runs away from the house but keeps on reading that her mom and the cop went to
pay Young-sook a visit searching for her and her dad.
Young-sook lies that they left the house earlier, but Seo-yeon's mom finds her hair bow.
She and the officer ask to search the second floor of the house but find nothing there.
Meanwhile, when Seo-yeon comes back inside the house in the future, she discovers that
Young-sook has had a particularly prolific career as a serial killer.
She comes down into the room she found at the beginning of the movie and finds the phone
down there.
In the past, Seo-yeon's mom has the idea to call her husband's phone to make sure if he's
there or not.
The mom uses Young-sook's phone to make the call and instead of her husband, calls her
daughter in the future, screaming at her to get out of the house.
Simultaneously, Young-sook hits Seo-yeon over the head and the line is broken.
In the past, Young-sook kills the officer in front of her mom's eyes and asks for the
phone.
The older Young-sook taunts Seo-yeon, as her younger self calls her on the phone.
The women struggle for the phone until Seo-yeon knocks Young-sook out and grabs the phone.
A simultaneous chase happens in both the past and the present, with Young-sook chasing after
Seo-yeon and her mom in both timelines.
They both hide in the same room as the homicidal maniac slams at the door.
Suddenly, the phone rings and it's Seo-yeon's mom calling the police, but Seo-yeon from
the future tells her to calm down and find a weapon.
The woman finds a fire extinguisher, removes the safety pin, and waits until Young-sook
opens the door.
Unfortunately, the Young-sook from the past has the devious idea to get the mom out of
the room by placing her kid in front of it, calling for her.
Young-sook attacks her with a knife, as her older self gets closer to getting inside the
room with Seo-yeon.
Before Young-sook can stab her mom in the past, she grabs onto the knife and struggles
with her for it.
Seo-yeon from the future sees the blood from the struggle on the walls, as Young-sook comes
into the room at last.
However, Seo-yeon's mom tackles Young-sook in the past before she can strike the child
and they both fall over the railing.
The older version of Young-sook vanishes from the future and Seo-yeon finds herself in the
desolate house alone.
Later, Seo-yeon from the future runs to the graveyard, thinking that her mom is dead too.
The woman, however, shows up there as well, smiling and asking her why she's crying.
Seo-yeon is happy to have her mom alive still and realizes that she's actually kinda great.