The Call

The Call (Korean: 콜, Kol) is a South Korean psychological thriller and science fiction horror film directed by Lee Chung-hyun. The narrative follows Kim Seo-yeon, a young woman who returns to her childhood family home in a quiet rural village to visit her ailing, estranged mother. After misplacing her smartphone on a train, Seo-yeon plugs in an antiquated cordless landline phone tucked away in the house. Almost immediately, she begins receiving frantic, distressed calls from a woman named Oh Young-sook, who claims she is being held captive and abused by her adoptive shaman mother.

As the conversations unfold, Seo-yeon makes the shocking discovery that Young-sook is living in the exact same house, but twenty years in the past, in the year 1999. Bound by shared feelings of isolation and complicated family wounds, the two women forge an improbable bond across time. When Young-sook discovers she can alter past events that tragic incident in Seo-yeon’s life, their cross-era collaboration initially brings miraculous relief.

However, as alterations in the 1999 timeline trigger volatile, ripple-effect transformations in the present day, Seo-yeon realizes that intervening in the past comes with catastrophic collateral damage. The supernatural telephone connection shifts from an avenue of salvation into a high-stakes cat-and-mouse duel across decades, where every word spoken and every choice made threatens Seo-yeon's existence.

Director Lee Chung-hyun crafts an allegory about the catastrophic danger of unbridled regret, escapism, and the ethical perils of tampering with consequence. The film demonstrates that trauma and grief cannot simply be excised through retroactive shortcuts without giving rise to worse horrors. Through the interplay between Seo-yeon and Young-sook, the film warns that running from personal accountability and manipulating history to satisfy desires disrupts the delicate moral and temporal fabric of reality, turning unearned fortune into a living curse.

The film invites several distinct narrative and thematic readings:

The Call arrived during a major renaissance for South Korean genre filmmaking on global streaming platforms. Building on the global attention garnered by Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (2019) and Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan (2016), the film proved that mid-budget Korean thrillers could attain international critical acclaim without theatrical distribution.

The film subverted traditional Korean thriller formulas—frequently dominated by male detectives, gangsters, and revengers—by anchoring a high-concept sci-fi thriller entirely around four distinct female lead archetypes. It also cemented Jeon Jong-seo's reputation as one of the most electric performers of Korean modern cinema following her breakout in Burning (2018).

The Call received highly positive reviews, achieving an estimated 80–85% approval rating. Critics and general audiences universally lauded Jeon Jong-seo's electrifying, unhinged villainous performance, the seamless visual world-building, and Dalpalan’s pulsating musical score. The escalating tension, dynamic visual transitions, and relentless female-led structure were singled out as major achievements.

Minor criticisms focused on temporal paradoxes and logic inconsistencies typical of time-travel mechanics (such as the timing of how memories and physical objects alter in real time). Additionally, the bleak mid-credits stinger generated polarizing debate between viewers who admired its uncompromised nihilism and those who felt it undermined the hard-won emotional climax.