How to make a nu-Far Eastern Horror movie (based on Phone, and all the other Tartan Asia Extreme movies that keep popping up).
a) Lots of spooky black hair (cf Ring/Phone)
b) Scary evil kid (cf Phone, Ju-on, Ring)
c) Ghosts whose reason for killing people is never made clear (Ring, Ju-on, Dark Water)
d) Spooky phones (Phone, Ring)
e) Spooky lifts (Dark Water, Phone)
f) Televisual/computer equipment that keeps working after unplugged (Ring, Phone)
g) Sweet heroine – usually a journalist (Ring, Phone)
h) Plots which don’t quite make complete sense (all of em).
Phone was Ring mixed with Stir Of Echoes, and has one boffo great idea in amongst its cliche defining sequences. The boffo idea is a girl being possessed by the spirit of her fathers dead mistress. there is something supremely chilling about a young girl coming on to her father in a sexually precotious way. Unfortunately Phone drops this two thirds of the way through in favour of lengthy exposition (which only illustrates how little sense the film makes). But now the genre is well defined, Idon’t really want to see another one going through the motions. Less mobiles more scary.