Pon/Phone (Ahn Byung-ki, South Korea, 2002)

Phone is one of the most intriguing, but also one of the most frustrating, of the spin-offs from the Ringu films. It is self-consciously derivative: again an aggrieved female ghost is using modern technology (here the cell phone) to communicate her rage; again this kills people; and again the figure investigating the deaths is a female journalist, Ji-won (Ha Ji-won). At the same time, ghost motifs and references to other ghost films are effectively blended in, and the film also incorporates a striking family melodrama. There are, however, problems. The most serious is that the narrative (script by Ahn and Lee Yoo-jin) is very awkwardly structured, with long explanatory flashbacks, ‘which tend to unroll as if the heroine were learning the information but then take over the main narrative thread’ (Newman 2004: 77). When the film begins, there is already a backstory which includes horror, melodrama and ghost elements, much of which Ji-won only gradually uncovers. I will unravel these at the outset.

The past melodrama has two threads. First, when her close friend Hojeong (Kim You-mi), an artist, learnt she was infertile, Ji-won provided her with eggs, and the daughter born as a result of this, Yeong-ju (Eun Seo-woo) is now about five. But there are suppressed tensions: on the one hand, Ho-jeong is grateful to Ji-won; on the other, Ji-won spends a lot of time with Yeong-ju. Although Yeong-ju calls Ji-won ‘aunt’, in a late scene, Ho-jeong reveals her fears: ‘Do you know how jealous I get when you look into Yeong-ju's eyes? Maybe she would see you as her mother’.

Second, Ho-jeong's husband, Chang-hoon (Choi Woo-jae), a company CEO, has had an affair with schoolgirl Jin-hee (Choi Ji-yeon), who fell in love with him. The eponymous cell phone was given to Chang-hoon by Jin-hee for their private communications. But the phone also revealed the affair: when Chang-hoon began ignoring Jin-hee's calls, a suspicious Hojeong found the phone with Jin-hee's string of messages, and these revealed she was pregnant. Ho-jeong confronted Jin-hee, a violent fight ensued, and – partly in self-defence – she killed Jin-hee. She then concealed her body – Jin-hee's hand still clutching her own cell phone – behind a wall in a house in Bangbae that Chang-hoon had bought for the family in the future.