(2023) Unlocked - An Interesting South Korean Thriller Adapted from Japanese Novel

This movie was released on Netflix on Friday night which usually was the time for me to watch new films on that streaming platform. But as I was with my wife seeing the latest Marvel movie, I had to skip this and only watch it last night. It had interesting premise which made me eager to see. All right then, let's find out more, shall we?

Brief Story Line

Na-mi (Chun Woo-hee - Sunny, Be Melodramatic TV series etc) was a young active woman working in a jelly company but also part time helped in the cafe owned by her father (Park Ho-san - Night in Paradise, Prison Playbook TV series etc). One night Na-mi lost her handphone and unfortunately it was found by a mysterious man (Yim Si-wan - Emergency Declaration, Tracer TV series etc) who tried to unlock it and ultimately tracking her every move.

Meanwhile on the other side of the city, a body was found and Police detective Woo (Kim Hee-won - Pawn, On the Line etc) was investigating the case. 

So what would happen to Na-mi? You could find out in this thriller movie.

End of Brief Story Line

As I said above, the premise was what intrigued me to give this a try. And it was indeed quite interesting and a rather eye opener of how easy someone could access to another persons' handphone just by doing something simple and seemed reasonable enough. And obviously it was even more dangerous when the person doing so was someone like the villain here. This marked the second time I saw Yim Si-wan playing a villainous role and once again he did a convincing performance. 

The movie was not having a fast pace but it was enough to keep me invested in watching, especially how the tracking of Na-mi's movement was done. Now the story was moving from two directions, one was focusing on Na-mi but the other was what detective Woo was doing. And it was not surprising to see how they would connect. However there was something shocking later that I did not see coming, which I thought was awesome. The ending though, was a bit too predictable but perhaps would be somewhat satisfying for audience.

When I saw the closing credits of the movie (which did not have any mid or post end credit scene), I noticed it was based on the 2018 Japanese movie Stolen Identity and also the novel of that same title written by Akira Shiga. But I am not sure if it followed closely to the novel. This film was written and directed by Kim Tae-joon in his directorial debut. Pretty good for a debut to my personal opinion. Now one thing that had to be noted when watching this is you got to be in full concentration to have better appreciation. I regretted a bit that I was doing it while in tired and sleepy mode as I had to repeat certain scenes multiple times due to missing out on important detail.

For a thriller movie, it would also need to have good enough cast to make us invested in the characters (which is a necessity since it had a duration of almost 2 hours). And like I mentioned earlier, Si-wan was quite wonderful while Woo-hee was pretty good as well. Aside from those cast above, the movie was having other support cast like Kim Ye-won (Welcome to Waikiki 2 TV series etc) as Na-mi's best friend and Ryu Seung-hyun as Detective Woo's partner who were OK. Overall this was a movie that was quite thrilling and intelligent and reminded us to be careful when you experienced something similar. It was intriguing to see how the story would conclude and that twist was fantastic too. So if you are looking for an interesting thriller film available on Netflix, you could give this one a try.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars