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- 13 details you may have missed in 'Unlocked,' Netflix's Korean cell phone thriller
13 details you may have missed in 'Unlocked,' Netflix's Korean cell phone thriller
- "Unlocked" is a Korean-language thriller about a man that stalks and kills women through their phones.
- Na-mi (Chun Woo-Hee) loses her phone, allowing Jun-yeong (Yim Si-wan) to destroy her life through spyware.
The opening song of the film is 'Hello,' by PiPiBand.
The song is a 1995 cut by the band PiPiBand, which is sometimes romanized as Pippi Band. Later in the film, Na-mi sells one of the band's CD's to Jun-yeong.
The opening phone sequence to the film includes several cultural references and moments of foreshadowing.
A hectic opening montage takes us through Lee Na-mi's life via her phone screen. That includes her secret Instagram account, @kirke_nm, where she posts about trendy food, like mint chocolate konjac jelly, playing into a South Korean food trend that brought mint chocolate flavor to everything from desserts to tteokbokki to fried chicken.
During the montage, we also see Na-mi trying and failing to buy tickets to a baseball game — seats that she later ends up purchasing from Jun-yeong. Na-mi also later negotiates with a potential buyer for her Pippi Band CD, whom she doesn't sell to, planting the seed for Jun-yeong to eventually buy it from her.
And, of course, there's a cheeky Netflix logo included in the montage as well.
Jun-yeong posts a photo of a meal that features chamnamul, a food that his father later says reminds him of his son.
Jun-yeong — or rather, the man impersonating Jun-yeong, who we'll continue referring to using that name for simplicity's sake — uses several hashtags on an Instagram post that doesn't appear to be on his account. They include the hashtag #참나물 (#chamnamul), a vegetable that we see plated with the rest of the meal.
Jun-yeong's father Ji-man later visits his son's mother, hoping to find information about their son. When he arrives, he goes through Jun-yeong's texts with his mother, where she asks for his address in order to send him some chamnamul. Later, during a shared meal, Ji-man mentions that chamnamul reminds him of Jun-yeong.
As the film approaches its twist, that Jun-yeong is dead and the film's antagonist has assumed his identity, Ji-man's police chief calls him to ask why "a package your wife sent was found at a victim's home." It's presumably the chamnamul package that she sent, which would also explain why Jun-yeong has it at the beginning of the film.
The cafe in the film is named after one of its production studios.
Na-mi works at Cafe Mizi with her father, and the cast visits the establishment several times throughout the film. It seems to be named after Mizi Film, one of the production studios that made the film and shares a logo with the studio.
Jun-yeong's laptop has multiple images of women that he's stalked and presumably killed.
After returning Na-mi's phone with the spyware installed, Jun-yeong changes his laptop background to a photo of her smiling.
What's more striking, however, is the row of photos that show smiling young women and dismal photos of them bound and fearful in alternating order.
Jun-yeong finds Na-mi's old phone in her desk early on.
When Jun-yeong infiltrates Na-mi's apartment, he comes across her old spare phone in a desk drawer.
He presumably installs spyware on it as well, because later in the film, he's able to take control of the same phone after Na-mi switches back to it to avoid him spying on her.
The real Jun-yeong and Na-mi are both united by a love of plums.
Na-mi loves the plumade that her father makes, but typically doesn't sell due to lack of demand, at the cafe. While the fake Jun-yeong orders plumade from the cafe multiple times, he casts suspicion on the real Jun-yeong by burying his victims near a plum tree that Jun-yeong planted with his family.
Na-mi later tells the fake Jun-yeong that she and her father grow the plums themselves.
Jun-yeong uses a debit card belonging to one of his victims.
Jun-yeong withdraws cash using Eun Mi-gyeong's card, which he crushes after obtaining the money. Later, we learn that Mi-gyeong was likely one of his victims, a woman whose mother believes that Mi-gyeong ran away with to Thailand.
It's possible that Mi-gyeong is the woman whose Instagram account he posts on earlier in the film, when he shares a photo of ramen with the hashtag #ThailandLife and the location set to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
There are vials of plant food scattered on the flooded floor of Jun-yeong's apartment.
When Ji-man returns to Jun-yeong's apartment, after receiving an unsettling series of texts from the man, he discovers several vials of plant food scattered on the ground. They're the same vials of plant food that were found near the buried bodies, and the same that Jun-yeong's notes reference planting in order to frame the real Jun-yeong for the murders.
Everyone who's walking past Na-mi after she gets fired from her job is on a phone.
There's a shot from above showing Na-mi in a red shirt standing among a moving crowd of people wearing neutral tones. All of them are looking down at their phones.
Na-mi writes a message on a business card after Ji-man and his partner drop her off at her father's home.
Later, we see what she wrote, which directly contradicts what she told Ji-man and his partner verbally. While she told them that she would text them to let them know she was alright, her note read, "No texts, only calls."
This becomes critical later on when Jun-yeong forces her to send the police a text, thereby letting them know that she's in trouble.
Jun-yeong's bag of phones are labeled in order of victims.
Ji-man eventually finds his son's cell phone, which the fake Jun-yeong has labeled as number "0," corresponding with the real Jun-yeong's designation in his notes. Other cell phones visible among his belongings bear numbers that presumably correspond to his other victims.
Na-mi's friend attempts to reconcile with her shortly after Na-mi shoots Jun-yeong.
As Na-mi's loaded into an ambulance, a policeman picks up her phone. It displays a text from her friend, who's saved as "Drop-Dead Gorgeous," asking for them to "meet up and talk."
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