1)
In my opinion, the director’s portrayal of the storyline interest and strike me most because of the way the director made many key information ambiguous to viewers, leading viewers on with curiosity. Initially, the film did not explain why Su-mi and Su-yeon had been away from the house for quite some time and why Su-mi’s father reiterates the point of Su-mi being ‘sick again’. The director had therefore used these ambiguities to add impact to the moment of truth as the film came to an end. The film was also rich in layers and twists. Firstly, viewers were led to think that the film was a typical fairytale extension in modern life in which the two sisters were victims of the evil stepmother’s oppression. The first twist was then revealed when Su-mi was confronted with her sister’s death, leaving her to fight against the stepmother alone. However, the later confrontation of the real Eun-ji, led to the final twist that Su-mi was in fact fighting her own guilt which was projected on the figure of Eun-ji. 2)
Although Ring and A Tale of Two Sisters are of a completely different storyline and background, they both share some similarities in their plot. Firstly, they are both adaptations of their local traditional folklore and thus allowing their local audience to easily relate to the horror. The slight difference is that Ring displayed a richer cultural relation as the director constantly made references to the Japan’s cultural past such as the eruption of volcano and the distraught of wartimes in the viral video. Secondly, in both films, females are portrayed as the strong and powerful figures yet also the source of the films’ horror. In Ring, Reiko was a strong divorced career woman who had to juggle between work and her role as a single parent to her son. She later then became the cause of the widespread of the curse on the viral video (unleashing Sadako, an even more aggressive figure of horror) which exposed her son to a death curse and eventually killed her ex-husband. In A Tale of Two Sisters, the horror revolved around the tension between the two strong female protagonists, Su-mi and Eun-ji, in which violence from the two female characters eventually led to deaths such as the death of Eun-ji’s pet bird and the death of Su-yeon. In the film, the overwhelming female power could also be seen when Su-mi’s father remained the quiet figure even though he was aware of the tension in the house which portrays the helplessness of the male. Thirdly, both films portrayed the root of haunting as a result of maternal neglect and male oppression. In Ring, this can be seen in the doubling of Shizuko/Reiko and Sadako/Yoichi1; Shizuko abandoned Sadako when she committed suicide, which then subjected Sadako to the oppression of her father who brutally killed her, turning her into the vengeful ghost while Reiko’s negligence towards her son, Yoichi, led to his exposure to the cursed video which almost killed him. In A Tale of Two Sisters, Su-mi’s mother chose to commit suicide which in turn caused Su-yeon’s death and Su-mi’s psychological unstability, which was the root of the film’s horror. Both films made a clear relationship between feminism and death.
Apart from the similarities in plot, the two films also displayed similarities in filming style. Firstly, the haunting ghost of A Tale of Two Sisters resembled that of the Ring in which both are feminist ghost, with the characteristic long black hair and one eye peering out and they entered the scenes crawling creepily on the floor towards their victim. Secondly, both films used water bodies to extend their emphasis of feminism and death. In Ring, the film started with a scene of dark, crashing waves which was later explained in the film as being related to the vengeful ghost of Sadako while in A Tale of Two Sisters, the lake became an evidence of death when the director used a clever comparison of the scene by the lakeside at the beginning and at the end of the film to emphasize on the death of Su-yeon. In both cases, the establishment of the relationship between water bodies, feminism and death was successful because of the cultural background of the films since in both cultures, water bodies are associated with negativities such as pollution and impurity and are symbolically associated with a feminine space.
In spite of the similarities discussed, the two films also displayed distinct differences. Firstly, unlike Ring, in which majority of the horror of the film came from the haunting of the unrested ghost, the horror of A Tale of Two Sisters resulted from the drama of the film rather than the haunting of an actual ghost. In fact, there were not many scenes of a ghostly figure in A Tale of Two Sisters. Also, while Sadako in Ring haunts for vengeful reasons that were slowly unfolded in the film, the ghost in A Tale of Two Sisters do not excessively revolve around the theme of revenge. Towards the ending of A Tale of Two Sisters, the reasons for which Eun-ji was haunted for was explained but the film did not explicitly account for why Su-mi was, too, disturbed by the ghost. Instead, A Tale of Two Sisters left viewers with uncertainty as to whether the haunting of Su-mi was real or unreal due to her psychosis. Secondly, Ring had a strong emphasis on the dark side of modernity and technology as the vengeful Sadako haunted her victims via phone and television which have become inevitable devices in modern lifestyles. This would suggest that progression is undesired as technology has become a powerful tool used to spread the deadly curse. On the contrary, A Tale of Two Sisters had more emphasis on the need to progress as it was slowly unfolded in the film that it was Su-mi’s denial of past events that led to the horror in the house as part of her hallucination and daydreaming. Also, A Tale of Two Sisters portrayed technology, represented by Su-mi’s father who was a doctor, as a tool to stop the horror as Su-mi’s psychosis was later treated for in the institution.

3)
Phone and A Tale of Two Sisters both display a strong sense of the emerging Korean horror trend, especially in the aspect of sonyeo’s sensibility. In this aspect, both films used female protagonists to display the transformation of girls’ sensibility into the root of horror. In Phone, the adolescent character was projected onto Jin-hee, a high school girl, who had developed obsessive love for a married man, which eventually led to her death as she challenged the man’s wife, Ho-jung for his love. This film therefore explored girl’s sensibility in their pursuits of love and how love can transform into hatred, as Jin-hee revenged on Ho-jung and her husband by possessing their daughter, Yeong-ju and causing her to fall brutally down a flight of stairs. On the other hand, A Tale of Two Sisters explored girl’s sensibility in their rejection of a stepmother and how they view the stepmother as a role of destruction and jeopardy to their lives. Also, both films used the fragmentation of familial relationship as the root cause of horror and projected females as the victim of masculinity even though females are essentially the figure of horror. Infidelity of men in both films had resulted in the growth of destruction within the family, rendering the patriarchal nuclear family image as a façade. Both films had also cleverly employed a secondary plot line to mislead viewers. Phone began with Ji-won being threatened by a psycho killer, leading viewers to think that it was related to the core of the movie which wasn’t the case. A Tale of Two Sisters used the secondary plot line to confuse viewers as to who was the propagating figure of horror and to added layers to the movie. Initially the film led viewers thinking that the tension was between the two sisters, Su-mi and Su-yeon and their stepmother, Eun-ji, then as Su-mi’s father confronted her with Su-yeon’s death, the film led viewers thinking that the tension was between Su-mi and her stepmother but the final confrontation of Sumi and the real Eun-ji, revealed the moment of truth that it was Su-mi against herself as she’s burdened by the guilt of causing Su-yeon’s death. This has therefore made the film richer in content as compared to Phone.

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