The Call: Worth a Watch?

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New Korean sci-fi suspense thriller The Call sees two women communicate across two decades via a mysterious landline phone. Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye), from 2019, warns Young-sook (Jong Seo-jun) of an impending catastrophe in 1999, but when it transpires Young-sook is a card-carrying psychopath, Seo-yeon begins to regret saving her.

Recently dropped on Netflix with little to no fanfare, it would be easy to miss The Call. It's far from a perfect movie, yet its high-concept premise is an excellent basis for a twisty cat and mouse conflict between the past and present.

It's definitely more of a horror-adjacent thriller than a true horror flick, so will disappoint committed gorehounds, but it's still very much worth a shoutout on here.

Read the film's pros and cons below to find out if it's worth a watch.

This is a spoiler-free zone.


The Call's hits

  • The movie's time-bending premise is excellently exploited. We see how each woman has an advantage over the other - Seo-yeon has a knowledge of Young-sook's future, while Young-sook can hold the past versions of Seo-yeon's family hostage in order to get what she wants. The way the characters cunningly exploit their temporal separation is a joy to watch.
  • Young-sook is a fantastic villain, going full-on psycho after we start to empathise with her in the film's first act. Her resourcefulness and determination to get what she wants at any cost make her a compelling character. It's a great performance from Jong Seo-jun, who some may recognise from the enigmatic 2018 flick Burning.
  • Its themes of the dangers of unintended consequences and how people in the present are at the mercy of the past have echoes of Looper and The Butterfly Effect, yet there's also plenty of murder and mayhem to enjoy alongside the film's more cerebral elements.

The Call's misses

  • Some of the plot elements can get a bit silly, especially near the end. While the history-altering stuff is pretty solid, other areas of the film are littered with plot holes and some of the movie's surprise revelations fail to land.
  • The film is a little longer than it needs to be at just short of two hours, although the pace picks up significantly in the second half. The lengthy scenes of ropey CGI could have done with ending up on the cutting room floor.
  • All of the characters aside for the two protagonists are very one-dimensional - a large part of the plot revolves around Seo-yeon's relationship with her parents, but neither her mum or dad are very developed as people in their own right.

The Call is available to stream on Netflix.

Still looking for something to watch? Why not check out more of the Worth a Watch? series.

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