Bezenby I gave up on J-K-L-M-N-O-P-horror after having to sit through half a dozen films that were either A: Exactly the same as the rest or B: Just genuinely crap. No longer did I believe that horror films from the far East were better than those from Hollywood, because I realised that both industries were just rehashing ideas in order to part me from my cash.So imagine my non-surprise when Phone revealed to me the usual cavalcade of vengeful ghosts, spooky kids, hair coming out of taps, ominous storms, a scene in a lift, ghostly phone calls and crazy Asian schoolgirls. The only thing that genuinely shocked me was the realisation that, clichéd though it is, Phone manages to be one of the better horror flicks that clog up the world cinema racks of Global (Video?) A journalist chick has just exposed an underage sex scandal that forces her to go into hiding to avoid stalkers and that. Luckily for her there's an empty house owned by her sister and brother in law in which she can hide out in. Unluckily for her this is a horror film and empty houses don't bode well for people (plus she seemed to be out in public rather a lot for someone being stalked by a psycho).Level-headedly changing her mobile number, she selects a number that appeared seemingly at random on her computer while she was looking at gory pictures of herself that her stalker had sent - and that when the troubles begins. Well, the supernatural trouble, not the old 'getting killed by a stalker' trouble.While hiding out in public with her sister and niece, journalist chick manages to draw even more attention to herself by letting her niece pick up her phone when it rings and start throwing a complete screaming fit. One thing this film has got going for it above all else - the kid in this one can act creepy, instead of just staring at things and looking bored like the kid in the Grudge.The kid begins to act up in a way that reminded me of the kid in Beyond the Door 2 - that is, disturbing sexual advances towards their parents and the hostile attitude to their mothers. But what has this to do with the phone? What has moonlight sanata got to do with the phone? What about that giant hairball the chick dreams in on her bed? Eh? EH? EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH? This is one of those films where there's many twists and turns into more of an investigation than an all out fright fest, and to be honest is all the better for it. Quite a bit of the last portion of the film is told in flashback and what I've learned from this film is that I'm never having an affair with a Korean schoolgirl nor indeed doing any DIY ever. It did have all the clichés up the kazoo but at least had a good story to draw you in. And for those of you who like things falling downstairs you get that too.

Tokyo-1997 Phone is one of my favourite horror films. Although this film is not as scary and electrifying as One missed call. I found the scares in this movie to be quite unique and creative. This movie has a wonderful storyline about a love triangle between two women and a man. It is a really good story about love. This movie isn't really scary for the 2nd half of the movie, but really very sad. I cried and was shocked when the main character tore open the wall and found a dead person to be buried inside there. It just looked so sad and so real just like one of the articles I read in the newspaper years ago when someone was buried in the wall. This movie has good pacing, although it gets a little boring somewhere around the middle. It uses the technique of the young girl getting possessed. And her acting was really real. The scene which the girl commits suicide by making herself fall down the staircase was awesome. It is a good show on Karma. This show has very good mystery elements. It probably has one of the scariest opening scenes. However, this movie still has its flaws. I didn't quite understand why the main character threw her phone in the sea at the end. The second half of the story has a good storyline but wasn't really scary. Other than that this movie is awesome and highly recommended. Score:9/10

Anthony Pittore III (Shattered_Wake) Phone focuses on young journalist Ji-won (Ji-won Ha) who begins to receive threatening calls on her cell phone after publishing a piece on pedophilia. To put a stop to the rush of her journalist life, Ji-won gets a new cell phone number and leaves town to get away. Soon after, a friend's daughter uses Ji-won's phone and begins to scream in terror and abruptly turns into a little daddy-obsessed weirdo. This triggers a series of strange & disturbing events that surround Ji-won and lead her to uncover a mystery of the past.If I'm going to start out with a good Asian horror, this feels like it would be a pretty good start. It hasn't been remade (yet), it's reasonably well known, and it's received a solid response from viewers. I can't say the story was completely original as the "cursed electronics" theme seems common in Asian horror these days, but it's just about how the writer uses the idea. This concept was done well enough for me. Byeong-ki Ahn's direction took the creepy script and translated it well to the screen and made it into a wickedly spooky little horror. The house Ji-won moves to really helped out with the spookiness using the mix of the unfinished interior and modern style for a creepy little setting. For me, acting quality is a bit more difficult to gauge when it comes to a language and culture I'm not familiar with, but the cast here seemed to deliver strong performances and played well with the rest of the film (especially Seo-woo Eun who played the little maniac disturbingly well). On the negative side, it does have a few problems when it comes to the cheap & cliché scares it goes for, along with some of the far overdone effects that we see in too many movies these days. Granted, it has been a few years since its release which has given plenty of time for other movies to do what Phone did here, but some of these effects were overused even before its 2002 release. Another issue I had shows as the film does go on. The story does get a little muddled once it starts to tell the backstory of Jin-hee (something that is not helped by the choppy dream & flashback sequences). Once the backstory has been established and the film heads toward completion, however, we're given a very creepy, very weird, and very interesting conclusion that makes for a well rounded film. Overall, while this variation on the tech-horror subgenre may not be the best, it does serve an interesting story with some well designed characters in a quite disturbing & reasonably well structured story.Final Verdict: 7.5/10 -AP3-

tomimt Phone begins as a horror movie about a mysterious phone number, that seems to kill people. A reporter, Ji-Won (ji-Won Ha) gets a new number, after she begins to get telephone calls she suspects to be connected on a underage sex scandal she has revealed. But the calls continue.But then somewhere in the middle the plot turns into more of a thriller mystery with supernatural themes in it and the whole ghost thing gets a form of "who did it".The script is okay, but the direction jumps a bit too much from one place to another and lot of things happen very suddenly and unexplained. Other than that the film is okay and manages to give a scare or a two, but it really depends a bit too much to a viewer to make a leap of faith a couple of times too many .