It’s impossible to review the South Korean psychological horror-thriller Phone without reference to the phenomenally influential Ringu. That movie set a new frame of reference for everything that would follow in its wake, in the same way that, for example, no 80s slasher could be assessed without orientating it to the ground broken by John Carpenter with his movie Halloween. Ringu not only reinvigorated interest in the South East Asian supernatural genre, it also redefined its rules and introduced a series of highly iconic horror images to the Western audience. When Ahn Byong-Ki unleashed Phone on the Korean market in 2002, it swiftly became the second highest-grossing movie of that summer, ending up ranking 8th for a domestic release for the whole year. Supported by Buena Vista Korea, Disney’s newly founded subsidiary, its production was a telling sign of South Korea’s increasing significance to Hollywood in terms of fresh ideas and new talent. Phone assimilates, corrupts and manipulates the conventions of the new subgenre as skillfully as Kairo, The Eye or Ju-On did. Ji-won is an investigative journalist who begins receiving untraceable terrifying phone calls after writing an expose on a local pedophile ring, involving some very unpleasant characters who decide to intimidate her with threatening phone calls. Multiple death threats and a few close calls later, Ji-Won decides that she needs to hide out for a while -- and also change her number. With the help of a befriended couple, she finds shelter in their vacant house. But strange things soon start to happen again on her new phone and even more foreboding occurrences unfold when her friends’ daughter Yeong-ju inadvertently answers her phone. Ji-won realizes that something’s fishy when Yeong-ju’s behavior becomes erratic, worrying and downright scary ever since. Employing her journalistic skills, she sets out to investigate all the weirdness surrounding her and her friends ever since she got her new phone number. Skillful directing, crafty scriptwriting and fine acting performances culminate in a quality chiller. Phone possesses the right blend of atmosphere and chills to keep this movie from becoming pretentious or crossing the line into realms of the ridiculous. Ji-won Ha has the perfect combination of beauty and intelligence to carry off the part of the talented reporter Ji-won who takes it upon herself to unearth the phone’s mystery. The standout however is the 5-year old See-woo Eun as the little girl Yeong-ju. This perfectly cast, angelic little girl is transforming into a demonic creature with impressive facial contortions, who develops a sudden hatred of her mother and sexual feelings for her father. Her extremely focused performance lends gravity to her tormented child character but is at the same time bone chilling. Yu-mi Kim is also very convincing with her dramatic portrayal of Yeong-ju’s troubled mother Ho-Jeong, but Woo-jae Choi is bland as the father Chang-hoon, looking like he’s about to fall asleep on the set anytime. Ahn Byong-ki’s direction is quite impressive and shows that an atmospheric movie doesn’t have to be slow in pacing, plot deployment, and character development. While many of the basic Asian horror formulae are followed, this movie, even though a lot in it has been seen and done before, continues the consistently rewarding tradition of Southeast Asian quality cinema. Phone takes a fairly familiar premise and re-invents it to an effective enough degree as it strays back and forth between horror and thriller, with the first half of the movie delivering the scares and the second half slowly unraveling the incidents and motivations behind the characters. While the horror remains prevalent throughout the movie, it gradually becomes subtler, turning it into a more psychological piece. To add to its merits, the movie boasts some memorable scenes. The elevator sequence in the overture is the most harrowing lift-horror-scene I’ve yet to see in any movie, and Yeong-ju’s cataclysm easily rivals Haley Joel Osment’s best moments in The Sixth Sense, Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist or Heather O’Rourke’s in Poltergeist. That’s not to say that I don’t have some issues with the movie. A few cuts could have and should have been tightened up, and a couple of camera shots could have done with better angles or framing. The plot resolution takes some attention on the viewer’s part to follow as well. This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself at all (speaking as one who loves movies with a challenging and demanding narrative) but in this case it’s just a bit detrimental to the overall tension in the movie’s suspense arch as it comes on top of the subtitle reading that you’ll have to do -— unless you’re fluent in Korean of course. It’s not a dialogue-heavy movie, but whatever is said is essential for you to understand the logic in the onscreen proceedings. Many backgrounds are embedded and explained in dreams and flashbacks, and these layered contexts soon become nonsensical if your focus is taken elsewhere. But the movie is hardly an ordeal to sit through, and it offers surprising depth and versatility in its subtexts. The cell phone itself has become an indispensable cinematic device, but here it’s transformed from an inanimate and benign communication tool into an instrument of terror for malicious calls, and ultimately into a technological ouija board as the story goes deeper into supernatural territory in its middle and final reels. The phone’s ring-tone, often triggering preconditioned Pavlov-reflexes in most people, is rendered evermore sinister throughout the narrative, heightened by the film’s exquisite light design, impressive score and extremely effective sound design. And behind the exploration of the supernatural premise lays a thought-provoking and tense psychological thriller which touches on issues like pedophilia, infidelity, sexual abuse, stalking and, ultimately, redemption. The superficial viewer will probably notice the similarities between Phone and Ringu. Both have strong female journalists as leads, both have longhaired ghastly appearances, both have the premise of cursed modern technology. Ringu’s influences are undeniable and inevitable, but possessed or evil women or children and hairy ghosts have been devices of terror for Asian audiences as long as fanged creatures and cursed corpses have inspired horror movies for Western audiences. Ringu’s director Hideo Nakata found the right formula to open western viewers up to what makes their horror ticker tick, and serving Phone off as a Ringu rip-off with cell phones for videotapes would be like calling Scream a Halloween plagiary, or Near Dark a Dracula ’31 remake. It’s a respectable piece of work that treads on familiar territory but definitely adds something of its own. It blends elements of Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock with this new Southeast Asian horror subgenre to create an entertaining, harrowing and fascinating movie experience.