Chung-Hyun Lee

(Netflix Streaming, December 2021) There’s a very amusing misdirection in the opening moments of Kol, right after it establishes its premise of two young girls communicating across twenty years through a magical phone. One is in 1999; the other in 2019 — So the one in 2019 knows things but the one in 1999 can do things. For half an hour, save for the menace of a wicked stepmother, we think it’s going to be a kind of heartwarming drama à la Frequency, with the two girls taking care of each other’s problems. But then, well, Kol takes a sudden jump into the horror genre, cutting short its main dramatic thread and going into surprising territory. It plays hard on the horror, and even the beginning of the end credits is not a respite. As mean and nasty as South Korean cinema can be (which is a lot), this thriller from writer-director Chung-Hyun Lee is not always smooth on characterization but it certainly makes good use of its premise (despite scientific plausibility being, at best, an afterthought) and carries viewers screaming all the way to its terrifying climax. A modest but effective surprise, Kol is good enough to make me curious about The Caller, the 2011 Puerto Rican film on which it’s based.