Trying to live her life, a livestreamer getting over a bad breakup who comes into possession of a seemingly-cursed phone that she comes to believe houses the ghost of a girl who was bullied when she was alive, and sets out to help her get revenge on the group who tormented her.
Overall, this was a rather solid if problematic genre feature. Among its better factors is a simplistic storyline that brings together some traditional Asian ghost-movie elements with a more modern approach to the genre. Still relying on the cursed object that comes into the hands of an innocent victim to unleash a supernatural curse, bringing together the victim and the ghost, it brings a classic element to the genre that provides the background to why she needs the phone in her life as a livestreamer who needs to connect with her audience. Showing how popular and well-received she is in the community, even with the sympathy of breaking up with her boyfriend, there's a strong setup required to bring these together. With the series of strange incidents that begin almost immediately after the arrival of the phone she took from her neighbor including the strange report on the violence with her friends, the strange messages she hears over the phone, or the mysterious objects in the photos she takes, there's a fun idea here by bringing together the different eras into a fun starting point. This setup brings about some great supernatural activity to take place. The initial photographs and videos she catches of ghostly figures lurking around the outskirts of their life provide a fun way of getting a traditional atmosphere established. That carries over into a solid series of encounters with random characters, where they meet up with the phone that turns into full-on supernatural retribution carried out with some fun scenarios. It becomes even better when the final half brings up a set of backstories on each character that met up with the ghost that involves bullying the ghost girl that plays a big part of the reasoning but never faced retribution before she killed herself so that the introduction of the ghost carrying out revenge killings against the ones who bullied her while she was alive becomes a fine touch. It enhances the early storyline quite well while giving everything a satisfying touch for a generally enjoyable feature. There are some other big problems here that keep it down. The main issue is the generally rushed narrative that never gives anything a chance to breathe before moving to the next setpiece. Immediately introduced to her career as a livestreamer, her breaking up with her boyfriend, and her phone troubles in ten minutes, it's not much longer after that point that we learn there's been an accident involving the cheating boyfriend and his partner through the newscast. This matches the tempo at which everything else later on happens at where the cursed phone gets involved in someone's life, only to then have them meet a gruesome accident. A lot of the interstitial dialog explaining what's going on, including the demands of her career or the different characters who come across the phone, who meet their deaths soon after, tries but never comes close to giving the film enough time to breathe before rushing to the next scene. It's a big factor with a tempo that doesn't give the film a chance to explore what it brings up before going to something else. That goes along with the generally cheap, low-budget presentation being the main drawback holding it back.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.
