Ballerina: A Different Type of Fairy Tale

I don't know when Netflix first posted about the impending arrival of Ballerina but I've been waiting for it impatiently ever since. The image of a messy-haired young woman (played by Jeon Jong-seo), clearly in action-movie mode, coupled with this short description was just so irresistible: "Grieving the loss of a best friend she couldn't protect, an ex-bodyguard sets out to fulfill her dear friend's last wish: sweet, sweet revenge." I suspected the subtext here was "a young-woman/former-assassin in a loving relationship with lesbian undertones takes on the patriarchy, one slay at a time." And I wasn't far off.

Our heroine, Ok-ju (Jeon Jong-seo), is indeed a loner assassin who finds a new life purpose after a reunion with a high school crush Min-hee (Park Yu-rim) inspires her to massacre a mass of misogynist pimps, drug-dealers, and sex traffickers — particularly a long-haired, porn entrepreneur (Kim Ji-hoon) and his drug king boss. Will they be able to survive once Ok-ju gets gun-power from two geriatric arms dealers (Kim Young-ok and Joo Hyun) and further fuel for her fire from a sex traffic survivor (Shin Se-hwi)? Doubtful. Shoutout to director Lee Chung-hyun and whoever the cinematographer was for making the whole affair look so damned beautiful.

Call: Redial at Your Own Risk

I was honestly hoping that this K-horror flick was going to be a Korean remake of The Caller, an American film in which a landline telephone links a contemporary young woman (Park Shin-hye, this time) to another girl (Jun Jong-seo) the same age but in the past. Then, while watching this 2020 Netflix release, I kind of wished it were more of a thriller like The Call, the Halle Berry vehicle about a 911 operator with PTSD issues. But Lee Chung-hyun's Call is definitely indebted more to the former — a supernatural movie about two young women with a disastrous telephonic connection stretching over a decade.

When these two realize that their relationship can alter the future, one major good thing happens followed by one terrible thing after another. Should we be surprised? In what universe does messing with history not lead to disaster? Yet the temptation to make minor adjustments is so great, can any of us really resist? My question became, however, if time isn't linear then is there a way for the person in the future to impact the past of the one in the past? And could the person in the future's present be constantly in flux without impacting their memory like a variation of Groundhog Day? But there are no wedding bells at the end of Call because the butterfly effect sounds a death knoll when it's controlled by a sociopath. Do not pick up. Send directly to messages.