Park Shin Hye Takes Viewers on a Thrilling Ride in Netflix’s “The Call”

Fans of psychological thrillers can expect highly of Netflix’s latest crime addition, The Call, starring South Korean actresses Park Shin Hye and Jeon Jong Seo. Trending with relatively positive reviews, the movie is praised for a smooth and straightforward production complemented with powerful and hair-raising performances that give the audience chills.

The Call tells a twisted story revolving around two women living in the same house but in different timelines. It begins in 2019 with Seo Yeon (played by Shin Hye) returning to her childhood home in a rural area to visit her sick mother. Home alone, she discovers an old cordless phone ringing and picks it up to only hear a stranger crying for help. She later finds out that the stranger is named Yeong Sook (played by Jong Seo), who used to live in her childhood home 20 years ago. They become friends while bonding over their differences in time, but little do they know that the seemingly small changes they made for each other turned out to be much bigger than they thought.

Sharing a similar plot to the 2016 drama Signal, in which two detectives from the past and present connect through a walkie-talkie, the film offered viewers a sense of familiarity. The production team also showed a detailed construction of two contrasting worlds by using different lightings to differentiate the two characters. The film’s lighting operator shared, “In Seo Yeon’s world, we used a blue tone to represent sadness and despair, while Yeong Sook’s world was red to reflect anger, danger, and violence.”

Since the story took place all in one house, some viewers praised the simplicity while others thought it was a shame because it restricted the horror to fit only inside a basket. Despite the suspense and surprise, the film lacked a sufficient core.

Viewers also disliked the cliff-hanging twist at the end, as the movie should have just ended when Seo Yeon’s mother appeared. Also, they believe that Seo Yeon had too little power against the psychotic and dominating Yeong Sook. A netizen expressed, “After her final scream, the audience thought there would be a huge counter-attack made by her, but there was none, so that was disappointing as there was nothing to look forward to.”

Source: HK01

This article is written by Minna for JayneStars.com.