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Unlocked review: Why we don't need to panic about our phones

What is all our screen use really doing to us? Pete Etchells's new book counters the scare stories by sticking to the science, says Chris Stokel-Walker

By Chris Stokel-Walker

20 March 2024

In the Netherlands, schoolchildren must leave their smartphones outside the classroom

Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock

Unlocked Pete Etchells (Piatkus)

DURING the course of writing this review, I looked at four separate screens. There was my laptop, onto which I typed this text; there was my phone, pinging and buzzing with messages from friends and colleagues; my iPad, for hunting additional details; and, in the background, a TV passively showing programmes.

So far, so normal in 2024. But what do all those screens and the time spent with them do to us? Plenty of books and…

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Unlocked’ on Netflix, a Korean Thriller About a Serial Smartphone Stalker

Where to stream:.

• Unlocked (2023)

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Birth/Rebirth’ on Hulu, a Frankensteiny Horror-Thriller Rooted in Feminine Dread

Stream it or skip it: ‘monster’ on netflix, a dialogue-free indonesian horror-thriller, stream it or skip it: ‘past lies’ on hulu, where a group of women’s lives are turned upside down by a pact they made in the ’90s, stream it or skip it: ‘eileen’ on hulu, a dark, sexy noir-thriller starring anne hathaway and thomasin mckenzie.

Paranoia is the main character in Unlocked (now on Netflix), a Korean thriller from first-time director Kim Tae-joon in which a serial killer gets his sick kicks by using his victims’ smartphones to wreak havoc on their lives before rendering them dead as heck. There was a time when guys like that used to just throw their victims in a pit in the basement or slash them in dark alleyways, but modern technology not only brings the world to our literal fingertips, but also apparently gives unsound minds all kinds of creative murder/torture options. So maybe the movie will function as a cautionary tale or a metaphor; let’s find out.  

UNLOCKED : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with a day in the life of Na-mi (Chun Woo-hee) from the point of view of her phone. Music, selfies, food, social media, etc. It’s a long, crazy day that wraps with a heavy buzz and bedtime crash and when she wakes up, she panics. Her phone is missing. We know where it is, because the camera was with it on the floor of the bus when she got off and a highly suspicious pair of shoes shuffled up next to it. Those shoes belong to Jun-yeong (Im Si-wan), a quiet weirdo loner. He “answers” when Na-mi uses a friend’s phone to call, and by “answers” I mean he uses a fake voice app to speak so his voice won’t be recognized. CURIOUS. 

Before we see the rest of his possibly needlessly convoluted scheme to put a tracking device and spyware in her phone so he can monitor her every move and do god knows what else to her, we cut to a very gross dead body unearthed in the woods, which surely has nothing to do with Jun-yeong and is merely a coincidence in this plot, right? As police detective cop guy Ji-man (Kim Hee-won) investigates the death, we get to the god-knows-what-else part. Na-mi works in her father’s (Park Ho-san) cafe, and does marketing for a startup. The former is a good place for Jun-yeong to masquerade as a lover of plum juice and stalk her, the latter is something she loves that he can destroy using the power he has over every app in her phone. 

Meanwhile, we learn that Ji-man suspects his long-estranged son is the murderer. And it becomes pretty clear that Jun-yeong is a sociopath, since he fills yellow legal pads with teeny-tiny script and methodically wrecks Na-mi’s life by abducting and torturing her father, posing as a tech guy who can help fix her hacked phone and driving a big fat wedge between her and her bestie (Kim Ye-won). A mess of bodies turn up in the woods. Ji-man is increasingly tortured as he ignores the obvious conflict of interest and continues investigating the deaths. Jun-yeong turns out to be a classic monologuer. And Na-mi fights not just for her life, but for the ability to compulsively Instagram everything once again.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Unlocked sits somewhere between neo-tech thriller Kimi and phone/tech-based horror crud like Unfriended .

Performance Worth Watching: Although her character is an underwritten protagonist, Chun Woo-hee holds the film together with a performance that foregoes the usual cliches of horror-movie final girls or female stalker-victims. 

Memorable Dialogue: Jun-yeong should’ve punctuated this line with an evil MU-ha-ha-ha laugh: “We live in a world where we’re connected by the touch of a finger. Ironically, it also means we can be disconnected just as easily.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: And to think, if someone hacked your phone, you’d be worried they’d order 10 grand worth of junk on your Amazon credit card or eff up your painstakingly curated Instagram feed. The nugget of an idea at the core of Unlocked is the paranoia we feel for having so much personal data inside a smallish plastic rectangle that’s so easy to leave behind at Chipotle, and how that rectangle could (can?) be so easily used to surveil your every move, embarrassing or otherwise. So what’s scarier, someone draining your Paypal account, or someone having video of that time you used your selfie-cam to locate and yank a pesky, shockingly coarse nose hair?

Sure, that’s an honest-to-blog 21st-century fear, but Unlocked surrounds that baseline idea with a bunch of bland characters participating in a heavily contrived plot. The situations aren’t particularly plausible, nor does it deliver the type of over-the-top nutso entertainment that might inspire fits of laughter. The movie exists in a neverwhere between fantasy and reality that hits a consistently drab tone best characterized by its villain, whose banality is supposed to create an air of menace, but ultimately inspires ennui. Kim Tae-joon uses some nifty camera maneuvers and creepy POV-via-phone shots to notable effect, but stylistic flourishes can’t compensate for narrative tedium (this doesn’t at all need to be nearly two hours) and an inability to generate any surprises or suspense.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Unlocked is almost a passable tech-isn’t-evil-unless-it’s-used-by-evil-people paranoia thriller, but almost just ain’t enough.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Den of Geek

Unlocked review

Noomi Rapace stars in Unlocked, a new spy thriller from director Michael Apted. A new franchise in the offing? Ryan takes a look...

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Are filmmakers having trouble titling their spy thrillers? Think about the names of classic examples of the genre: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The Ipcress File. Three Days Of The Condor. The Day Of The Jackal.  Cool. Evocative. Enticing.

Now consider the following: Salt. Spectre. The Double. Unlocked. Don’t exactly get the pulse racing, do they?

Still, there’s plenty of tension and paranoia to go around in Unlocked , even if its name slips from the mind as soon as you’ve looked at the poster. Noomi Rapace stars as Alice Racine, a former CIA interrogator who’s reluctant to return to the fold after a she failed to foil a terrorist plot five years earlier. But a new threat – in the form of a biological weapon – forces Alice back into action, as she engages in a mad dash around London to track down the killer virus before it’s triggered.

What follows is a fairly rote thriller in the mode of Jason Bourne or TV’s Spooks (which got a forgettable big-screen spin-off, The Greater Good, in 2015). The good news is that veteran director Michael Apted has form in this kind of thing, having brought us the good-but-not-great 90s Bond outing The World Is Not Enough ; he brings a decent number of whizzes and bangs to most of Unlocked’ s action sequences, which are far more spiky and bloody than in your average Bond or Bourne flick.

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The bad news is that the plot’s taken straight from the big book of generic spy films. There’s a sage mentor figure – played by Michael Douglas in a spectacular white roll-neck sweater – an icy handler – Toni Collette, with a cut-glass accent and an even sharper Annie Lennox haircut – and a ruthless CIA boss – played by John Malkovich, who turns in a very Malkovich performance. You know, hard stares, abrupt bursts of shouting, that kind of thing.

At times, it’s difficult to tell whether we’re supposed to take Unlocked seriously or not. Screenwriter Peter O’Brien conjures up the phantom of international terrorism, and Apted, with his unwavering documentary-maker’s eye for the everyday, grounds the movie in a believably multicultural, contemporary London: apparently shot in the middle of October, Unlocked is all steel-grey skies, social housing blocks and run-down concrete car parks. Yet O’Brien throws in the occasional oddity to give us pause, which land on the screen like artefacts from another dimension: Orlando Bloom with an EastEnders accent as an ex-soldier and burglar (seriously, he’s in the middle of pilfering a television when he literally bumps into Alice); Malkovich mugging at Toni Collette over Skype; a terrorist riding a tiny bicycle like a refugee from BMX Bandits.

It’s all very odd, and we haven’t even got to Noomi Rapace’s leading performance. Softly spoken and surprisingly apologetic, Rapace entirely lacks the cool resolve of, say, Angelina Jolie’s turn in Salt – a movie Unlocked resembles, with all its assorted twists and changes of allegiance. (If we didn’t know better, we’d say Unlocked began life as a Salt sequel, in fact – the two movies even share the same producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura.)

Solidly shot, quite tense in its best moments, Unlocked feels like one of those films you’d catch by accident on a late night cable channel, or might stumble on while flicking through the in-flight entertainment on a trip abroad. It’s by no means an awful film, but it’s several furlongs from a remarkable one. Ironically, it’s Unlocked ’s weirder moments that prevent it from being as forgettable as its title: Orlando Bloom muttering about his love of tagines; Toni Collette firing a machine gun the size of a family car; an incredibly strange moment involving a tattooed man, a lift and a pair of angry dogs.

If only the film had continued further down this route, and brought us a more outré take on the traditional spy thriller. More Michael Douglas in ill-advised sweaters; more of Bloom’s opinions on North African cuisine; more terrorists on tiny BMX bikes. Unlocked is one thing – Unhinged would have been far, far more interesting.

Unlocked is out in UK cinemas on the 5th May.

Ryan Lambie

Should You Watch ‘Unlocked’? Review of Netflix’s New Korean Movie

Our PLAY, PAUSE, OR STOP? Review of the new Korean thriller.

Unlocked – Picture: Netflix

The new Netflix Korean Thriller, Unlocked , is now streaming, but should you give it a watch?

As noted in our review of the post-climate crisis sci-fi thriller JUNG_E last month, Netflix has taken note of the demand for more Korean content and set up a massive slate of 34 upcoming titles this year , including 6 brand-new original films.

After JUNG_E kicked off with modest reviews ( including my lackluster “Pause” review ), Netflix and Korean film fans hope for a better outcome with the latest Korean thriller dropping this weekend, Unlocked , the debut feature from actor turned director Tae-joon Kim.

Based on the novel by Akira Shiga and adapted from the Japanese movie, Stolen Identity , Unlocked centers around the smartphone-obsessed Na-Mi, who loses her phone after dropping it on the bus coming home from a night out with friends. After a stranger finds the phone, he returns it to her with spyware installed to track her every move. Na-Mi’s life is turned upside down as she and everyone close to her is at the mercy of the whims of this dangerous man.

The film stars Woo-hee Chun ( Be Melodramatic ; Bong Joon Ho’s Mother ) as Na-Mi, Si-wan Yim (Tracer, The King Loves ) as the dangerous stranger known as Jun Yeong, and Kim Hee-won ( The Man From Nowhere ) as police officer Ji Man.

Picture: Netflix

As smartphones and computers have been around controlling our lives for some time, the “hacker running havoc on someone’s life via personal devices” is not a fresh plot narrative. With this film, director Tae-joon Kim attempts to update the story by dividing the story between the three main characters: the victim, the criminal, and the officer who believes the criminal may be his estranged son that is connected to a recent murder victim found in the mountains. By doing so, the film shifts away from the standard “whodunnit” mystery to a creepier analysis of how and why this stranger would ruin a seemingly random woman’s life.

While the cyber criminality aspect of the story did make me want to throw my cellphone into the ocean and install a landline once again, I felt that the three main characters didn’t grab me in their respective roles.

Na-Mi is a very average victim with an incredibly thin personal connection to her stalker that develops after her phone is stolen. Her life is not particularly interesting or intricate in design, so when her life is upended, the drama is turned down until the stakes become potentially lethal at the very end of the film.

The stalker we know for most of the film as Jun Yeong has no true motive for his crimes. He’s a psychopath, a liar, and a decent hacker, but overall his presence in the film does not meet the level of the escalation in his offences. This is partially because Si-Wan Yim seems to be miscast in this type of role. He doesn’t convey creepiness or a level of menace that would denote a criminal of this level. He seems to play his character with a flat effect that barely moves the needle even as the danger increases. He also journals his every intention which takes away most of the surprise as the plot unfolds.

The only mystery element in the story belongs to the connection between the detective working the case and our criminal lead. While he quickly deduces that his estranged son is somehow involved, the detective still bungles many aspects of the investigation including identifying the criminal when they trap him late in the film. The plot unveils a late change that gives us a more charged ending and a bloody showdown, but it’s not enough to save a more pedestrian crime drama before the conclusion.

Overall, Unlocked doesn’t build upon the inherently terrifying cyberstalking reality we could all face at any time. With seemingly no motive, very little personal connectivity, and a lack of presence in the characters that matter most, the film fails to bring this story to a boil.

Watch Unlocked on Netflix if you like:

• Stolen Identity
• Unfriended: Dark Web

MVP of Netflix’s Unlocked

Park Ho-San as Na-Mi’s Father.

While his character may not have had a great time, I enjoyed the father-daughter relationship between Park Ho-San’s character and Na-Mi. Their connection and chemistry lead to some of the more compelling scenes at the end of the film. Park Ho-San continues to perform well in Korean Netflix films as he is quite good in The Call and Night in Paradise .

PLAY, PAUSE, OR STOP?:

While not a movie you will feel comfortable screening, the less compelling narrative and lead characters will make you think it’s worth the risk.

Andrew Morgan is a film critic & podcaster with 20 years of experience on the sets & offices of film & television. Current podcast host of the entertainment review show, Recent Activity. He lives in the Northeast of the United States.

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Unlocked (2023) review: Dragged out but gets better as it progresses

In Unlocked , a murderous individual stumbles across an innocent woman’s smartphone and uses it to threaten her relationships and life. The Korean thriller film is now streaming on Netflix.

Lee na-mi (Woo-hee Chun) has no idea that leaving her phone on a bus after a night out is about to change her life for the worse.

Unfortunately, the person who stumbles upon it is Woo jun-yeong (Si-wan Yin), a serial killer who has a history of using people’s smartphones to eventually end their lives.

Meanwhile, his former victims are found by Woo Ji-man, Woo jun-yeong’s father, who realises that his son is the killer when he finds a plum tree near the body which was planted by him when he was younger.

Jun-yeong cleverly gains access to her phone and starts using it to eliminate the important people in her life. It’s all a game for this psychopath.

Jun-yeong had run away from home and Ji-man still blames himself for how his son turned out and wants to be the one to put a stop to him.

Performances

Si-wan Yin is stunning as a serial killer who lacks any emotions. He is genuinely terrifying at times and will give nightmares to many.

Woo jun-yeong is also solid, although not to the same extent as Si-wan Yin. Her character also lacks depth, restricting her.

The twists and turns that Unlocked throws at you are extremely unpredictable. It’s also not afraid to be as bizarre and terrifying as possible.

While it’s questionable where the narrative is headed at the start, it picks up pace eventually and displays a riveting finale.

The final twist changes everything completely and all that you, as viewers, and even the characters believed isn’t the reality.

The primary antagonist of the film is quite interesting. His psychopathic mind and actions keep you on the edge of your seat as nothing is too far for him.

The film drags at several points and struggles to hold your attention. Especially the first half moves at a snail’s pace.

Unlocked claims to explore how people in the modern world are disconnected while being more connected than ever through smartphones.

But this attempt is half-baked and only thrown in at a few points. It’s just a satisfactory thriller, not a well-written social commentary.

Unlocked is a decent thriller that isn’t hard to watch but doesn’t manage to stand out amongst the vast library of the genre on Netflix.

Director: Tae-joon Kim

Date Created: 2023-02-17 19:13

Also Read: Love to Hate You review: Mediocre love story aggravated by half-baked commentary

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Graphic images, peril, language in Korean hacker thriller.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Young women can outsmart and display as much or mo

Friends forgive each other for mistakes. Na-mi is

Set in South Korea and shot in Korean. The main ch

A killer has murdered multiple people and their bo

In the subtitles: "s--t," "hell," "ass," "a--hole,

The premise of the film is how much of our lives,

Adults smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. The mai

Parents need to know that the South Korean thriller Unlocked contains graphic violence, death, and peril. The film also has quite a bit of swearing in the English subtitles, including "s--t," "hell," "ass," "a--hole," "bastard," "bitch," "imbecile," and more. The film builds suspense in the plot of a young…

Positive Messages

Young women can outsmart and display as much or more courage as men of any age. Technology can lead to social alienation and loss of privacy. Relationships in real life are worth preserving in an age where much time is spent online.

Positive Role Models

Friends forgive each other for mistakes. Na-mi is brave in scheming to bring down a dangerous hacker. Jun-yeong is a psychopathic killer who seems to enjoy hurting his victims. Parents care for their children.

Diverse Representations

Set in South Korea and shot in Korean. The main character is female.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

A killer has murdered multiple people and their bodies are dug up in a mountain area. The bodies are shown in somewhat graphic detail. The killer takes photographs of his victims before they die. People are tied up, gagged, hit over the head, threatened with sharp objects, pushed to the ground, beaten until bloody, and shot at close range. The killer is physically and emotionally cruel, and he seems to enjoy watching his victims suffer. A woman is stalked online and in person after she loses her phone. A man suspects his own estranged son is a killer.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

In the subtitles: "s--t," "hell," "ass," "a--hole," "bastard," "bitch," "piss off," "imbecile," "idiot," "jerk," "weirdo," "jeez."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The premise of the film is how much of our lives, including economic transactions, we live online, on smartphones and social media platforms like Instagram. Hyundai, BMW, Netflix, and local Korean brands.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. The main character loses her phone after falling asleep on a bus following a night of partying.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the South Korean thriller Unlocked contains graphic violence, death, and peril. The film also has quite a bit of swearing in the English subtitles, including "s--t," "hell," "ass," "a--hole," "bastard," "bitch," "imbecile," and more. The film builds suspense in the plot of a young woman who is stalked by a murderous hacker, who in turn is being investigated by a detective who believes the perpetrator might be his estranged son. The detectives discover multiple bodies buried in the mountains, and some of these are shown in graphic detail. The killer takes photographs of his victims before they die, and he seems to enjoy torturing people. Characters are tied up, gagged, hit over the head, threatened with sharp objects, pushed to the ground, beaten until bloody, and shot at close range. Adults smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. The main character loses her phone after falling asleep on a bus following a night of partying. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say

There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

After a night of partying with friends, Na-mi (Chun Woo-hee) accidentally leaves her phone on a city bus at the start of UNLOCKED. A stranger, Jun-yeong (Yim Si-wan), finds the phone and hacks into it. He begins tracking her every move through the phone and works his way into her life, slowly alienating her from her friends and father. Meanwhile, Jun-yeong is being tracked by police, who believe he's responsible for a string of murders. One of the lead detectives on the case is Ji-man (Kim Hie-won), who believes Jun-yeong may be his long-lost son. Na-mi begins to work with the detectives to try to capture Jun-yeong and get her life back.

Is It Any Good?

This South Korean thriller starring a female lead crafts a disquieting tale with shades of Parasite and a cautionary social message about our collective smartphone addiction. Where that earlier, award-winning film saw class resentment devolve into violence, the social ills in Unlocked revolve around the isolation that stems from our overreliance on technology. Staring at a phone all day isn't just an annoying habit or a hindrance in human relationships in this film, it's also the means by which a psychopathic hacker invades his victims' lives.

The cinematography underscores that message through inventive shots, like the urban masses all staring at their phones, or a repeated overhead shot of people walking on a gridded walkway looking like automated pieces on a screen. Uncomfortable or intrusive camera angles, including ostensibly from inside a phone, also help build the film's suspense. As Na-mi, Chun has to shoulder that suspense, and although her character outwits all the men in the movie, we aren't given a lot of detail about what makes her tick. Other less-than-masterful touches in this slightly-too-long movie include an unnecessary use of slow motion in key moments of action and an at-times confusing alternating back and forth between Na-mi's story and the police uncovering the perpetrator's trail of crimes.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the reality of how much a stranger could find out about us by hacking into our online lives, as happens in Unlocked . What privacy precautions can you take?

The movie seems to have some themes about absentee parents and strained relationships between parents and grown children. Where do you see this? How does it tie in to the main characters' motivations?

What tools does this film use to build suspense? Did you find the film scary? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : February 17, 2023
• Cast : Woo-hee Chun , Yim Si-wan , Kim Hie-won
• Director : Tae-joon Kim
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Thriller
• Topics : STEM , Book Characters
• Run time : 117 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Unlocked review – spies and jihadis battle it out in entertaining thriller

Noomi Rapace, Toni Collette, John Malkovich and Michael Douglas star in Michael Apted’s vigorous drama

V eteran director Michael Apted has put together an entertaining espionage action-thriller, on the time-honoured theme of the agent going rogue because the bosses are complicit in the dirty dealing; Apted is working with a script from feature newcomer Peter O’Brien. It doesn’t break much in the way of new ground, but that isn’t exactly the point – it rattles along and Apted tackles it with gusto. It’s also satisfying to see Toni Collette let rip with a machine gun.

Noomi Rapace plays Alice, a CIA agent undercover in London; Michael Douglas is her handler; John Malkovich is the hawkish spy chief at Langley; and Collette is his testy opposite number at MI5. Alice is curtly called in to interrogate a jihadi intermediary suspected of being about to give the “go” instruction on a bio-warfare attack somewhere in the US. She’s about to break him – when something strange happens.

Like so many thrillers of this sort, the movie blandly assumes that Middle Eastern terrorists aren’t smart enough to fool US authorities: it takes American converts and American spies. But this covert cliche aside, Unlocked is an entertaining genre thriller, punched home with vigour and attack.

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Unlocked (2023): Movie Ending, Explained – Who is the Creepy Killer?

Since its inception, technology has been a helping hand in our lives. Through its subsequent development, it has opened up several possibilities that are not always pleasant. One of these unpleasant aspects is the invasion of cyber safety. Written and directed by Kim Tae-joon, ‘Unlocked’ is a Korean crime mystery thriller that revolves around the same aspect. It is based on a Japanese novel of the same name written by Akira Teshigawara.

The film tells the story of a young girl whose life turns upside down when she suddenly loses her phone. A man takes it and makes her life a living hell. This one accidental loss creates a severe impact on her personal and professional life.

If you happen to find this premise intriguing and want to learn what happens in the film, please keep reading. But do remember that there are spoilers ahead!

Unlocked (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

Who steals na mi’s phone.

Na Mi (Woo-hee Chun) has a flourishing social life on her social media handles. She works as a photographer and enjoys her life in both the real and the virtual world. One night, while going back home on a bus, she mistakenly drops her phone. Soon after, a guy picks it up and takes it with him. She is, however, so inebriated that she has no recollection of the incident.

The next morning, her friend finds her in the same drunken state. Before meeting her, a girl had already notified her about finding Na Mi’s phone the night before. Once Na Mi gets sober, she calls this girl to retrieve it. She asks her to bring her to the café, where she helps out her father. Little did she know that the girl who has her phone is, in fact, a guy playing voice recordings to trick her into believing it.

Later in the café, Na Mi gets a call from this girl saying that Na Mi’s phone is damaged, and she has given it for repair. Based on the address she receives, Na Mi reaches a ramshackle building to enter a mobile repair store. She meets this guy wearing a face mask and a cap so that his identity won’t be revealed. He gives Na Mi a form to fill up to get back her phone. It also includes her mobile security password.

During the repair work, this guy, who we get to know as Jun Yeong (Si-wan Yim), adds spyware to Na Mi’s phone. Once she takes it back, he can see her through it all the time. So, he traces her every single move while she is oblivious to being spied on. Through her phone’s camera, he surveils her daily routine – where she goes, who she meets, and the place she works. He also gets access to all her conversations and her texts. Later at night, when she goes to sleep, he notes down several additional details from her life that are incredibly personal.

Later, Na Mi learns about a sudden update on an account that she keeps anonymous. During the night, she posted a photo with a colleague in which she verbally abuses her coworkers. While it destroys her professional life, it also reveals Na Mi as the person who controls it. Right after getting a big promotion, she gets fired because of this incident.

Meanwhile, Jun Yeong’s father, police detective Ji Man (Kim Hee-won), stumbles upon a gruesome murder case. Victims’ bodies are left without any way to find the culprit’s fingerprints and identity. But Ji Man notices that these bodies are buried near the plum tree that he had planted with his son, which he was fond of. Sensing his son’s possible connection to the murder, he traces down his location through his text interactions with his wife.

Upon reaching that place, Ji-Man finds enough evidence to implicate his son in the murders. So, he stays in the vicinity to gather video evidence of Jun Yeong’s involvement in the crime. However, he senses his father’s presence and decides to tease and scare him away. Jun Yeong leaves his apartment and keeps sending Ji Man photos of him clicked from a distance. While those photos creep out the detective, Jun Yeong uses that time of evading to destroy the evidence from his apartment.

Meanwhile, he keeps appearing in Na Mi’s life in one way or other. He arrives at her café and charms her by asking for a plum juice that her father had kept out of the menu. Later, he meets again with an excuse to buy a music CD from her and shares his visiting card with her during that transaction. Through these interactions, he familiarizes himself so that she won’t suspect him as the creepy stalker.

Later, Jun Yeong comes across to help Na Mi to know who hacked her phone. He elaborates on how the spyware would have worked, and gullible Na Mi believes him without a doubt. He also makes her suspect her close friend as the only possible culprit. While she is under his spell, her father finds his behavior odd and warns her about it. However, she does not pay much attention to his concern.

Meanwhile, Ji-Man and his associate detective go to Jun Yeong’s mobile repair store to investigate. They find the store in terrible condition, with papers and devices thrown all over the room. That’s when Na Mi arrives there to repair her phone since she smashed it out of anger. They share the details about the case and join hands to find Jun Yeong.

After Na Mi gets in touch with Jun Yeong, he comes to her apartment. Ji-Man and his associate stay outside the building to get hold of him. Ji-Man only assumes this killer to be his son, aka Jun Yeong. But after catching him and seeing him in person, Ji-Man starts doubting whether that is his son or not. They also hadn’t been in touch with each other for years, which makes him unsure about Jun Yeong’s appearance (Ji-Man’s doubt is cleared in the end). After the killer evades an arrest, the detectives meet Na Mi and decide on a further plan to trace Ji Man’s location. She goes back to her father’s bungalow upon their advice for her safety.

Na Mi sees her father deep asleep and decides not to disturb him. But soon after, she finds that her father’s not in bed and starts looking for him around the house. That’s when she finds Jun Yeong waiting for her in their hall, who is angry at her for ruining his plans. So, he takes her to the bathroom and ties her up. Her father is tied to the bathtub, which is nearly full of water. But he doesn’t let her breathe a sigh of relief. He beats her unconscious and leaves her on the floor.

Unlocked (2023) ‘Netflix’ Movie Ending Explained:

Who is the creepy killer what connection does he have to the past murders.

After keeping Na Mi locked with her father, Jun Yeong comes back to the hall and finds a note saying, ‘No texts, only calls.’ He suspects the police being onto him and looks outside to affirm his suspicion. Ji-Man soon enters the house with his associate and starts beating the creepy culprit. However, he still cannot recognize this person as his son. But the culprit keeps saying that he is Jun Yeong.

So, Ji-Man goes through the scattered notes around him, where this psychopath had jolted down details related to the murders he committed. He goes to number zero, which says Jun Yeong’s name. That’s when Ji-Man realizes that this person is not his son but the one who killed him. Jun Yeong was his first victim, and he kept elaborate details related to him so that he could pose as Jun Yeong.

That realization emotionally shatters Ji-Man, who points his gun at this now-nameless psychopath. By that time, Na Mi gains consciousness, retrieves another detective’s gun, and goes out to the hall. Due to the boiling anger inside her, she goes on to shoot him to death.

Because of his death, she is relieved that she can live her life without worry. However, while enjoying her free time with her father, she notices someone pointing a camera at her. After all the investigation to trace down the culprit, the writers chose to end the script on this ambiguous note. More than anything, it hints at the omnipresent danger that keeps following her. Going back to its central theme of cyber security, it doubles down on how the risk of privacy invasion never ends.

Related to Unlocked (2023): 6 Movies To Watch If You Like Unlocked on Netflix

Unlocked (2023) ‘netflix’ movie links: imdb, wikipedia unlocked (2023) ‘netflix’ movie cast: chun woo-hee, im si-wan, kim hee-won, park ho-san, where to watch unlocked, trending right now.

Obsessed, fascinated, and always nerding out about cinema! You can find me in the corner of a room ruminating over the last TV series I watched.

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Unlocked: A Jail Experiment

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Watch Unlocked: A Jail Experiment with a subscription on Netflix.

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Professor Jeffrey Gonzalez publishes review essay in “Public Books”

Posted in: English Department , Homepage News and Events

English professor Jeffrey Gonzalez recently published a review essay discussing Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore’s memoir, Sonic Life , in the online magazine Public Books . Professor Gonzalez’s review, which appeared on May 16, was included in Lithub’s “ LitHub Daily, ” whose editors describe their selections as “the best of the literary internet,” on May 20.

Journal of Materials Chemistry A

Prospects of polymer coatings for all solid-state and emerging li-ion batteries †.

* Corresponding authors

a Electrification and Energy Infrastructures Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected]

b Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), Helmholtzstraße 8, 89081 Ulm, Germany

Polymers possess processing flexibility as they can be coated on cathode particles before/after electrode fabrication and on the solid-state electrolyte surface in all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs). Their narrow electrochemical stability window limits the use of polymers directly as an electrolyte against high voltage cathodes. However, when a polymer is coated directly on battery cathodes and cycled with conventional liquid electrolytes, they exhibit superior battery performance in comparison to uncoated ones. A deeper insight was not sought in the literature. There might be a great possibility of in situ formation of an ultra-thin protective layer in-between the polymer and cathode interface at the coating development stage or in the formation cycle of the electrochemical cell. The current ASSBs demand flexible, easily scalable coating materials, which can accommodate the volume expansion–contraction during cycling and can minimize the lattice stress. However, a much better fundamental understanding is needed on polymer/ceramic interfaces. This focused review is concentrated on flexible polymers with high ionic and electronic conductivities that can be used for coating cathode particles and Li anodes. Overall, this article has analyzed and validated the application of various types of polymers in lithium-ion batteries and ASSBs comprehensively with an emphasis on the effect of coating morphologies and thickness on performance. Finally, this review gives a brief discussion on the prospects and suitability of polymers as coating layers.

• This article is part of the themed collections: Journal of Materials Chemistry A HOT Papers and Journal of Materials Chemistry A Recent Review Articles

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Prospects of polymer coatings for all solid-state and emerging Li-ion batteries

R. Amin, U. Nisar, M. M. Rahman, M. Dixit, A. Abouimrane and I. Belharouak, J. Mater. Chem. A , 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D4TA01061B

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Jan. 22, age 90 | Physicist, who fled Nazi Germany in childhood, settled in the United States and in 1978 shared the Nobel Prize in physics for helping find vital early evidence supporting the big-bang theory of the creation of the universe. (Pictured, right) | Read more

Charles Osgood

Jan. 23, age 91 | Newsman who spent 22 years anchoring the CBS-TV staple “Sunday Morning” and decades as a radio commentator, and who carved a distinct place for himself in broadcasting by occasionally presenting the news in wry doggerel. | Read more

Jan. 23, age 93 | Journalist and historian who unlocked the hidden world of cryptology in his best-selling 1967 book “The Codebreakers” and became a preeminent scholar of signals intelligence, revered even among the keepers of the secrets he revealed. | Read more

N. Scott Momaday

Jan. 24, age 89 | Author, literature professor and member of the Kiowa Indian tribe, who became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize — for his 1968 debut novel, “House Made of Dawn” — and helped inspire a flowering of contemporary Native American literature. | Read more

Chita Rivera

Jan. 30, age 91 | Vivacious Broadway musical star, who originated roles in “West Side Story,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Chicago” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” won two competitive Tony Awards and became one of the most honored Latina entertainers of her generation. (Pictured, left) | Read more

Jean Carnahan

Jan. 30, age 90 | Former U.S. senator, who became the first female senator to represent Missouri after she was appointed to replace her husband following his death in a plane crash. | Read more

Hinton Battle

Jan. 30, age 67 | Dancer, singer, actor and choreographer, who urged audiences to “Ease on Down the Road” as the Scarecrow in Broadway’s “The Wiz” and who later won three Tony Awards while performing acrobatic leaps, percussive taps and 190-degree kicks across the stage and screen. (Pictured, right) | Read more

Ellen Gilchrist

Jan. 30, age 88 | National Book Award-winning author, who channeled the people and places of the American South in wry and poignant prose, populating her novels and stories with independent-minded women who — like the author herself — resisted being forced into traditional roles as demure debutantes, wives and mothers. | Read more

Carl Weathers

Feb. 1, age 76 | Former NFL linebacker turned muscle-flexing actor in action fare, memorably as nemesis-turned-ally Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” franchise. (Pictured, right) | Read more

Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez

Feb. 2, age 75 | American soprano, who had recently established herself as an opera singer in real life when she was cast by a French director to play one on-screen in the 1981 movie “Diva,” a cult film that lodged her in the memory of generations of art house audiences. | Read more

Brooke Ellison

Feb. 4, age 45 | Disability rights activist, who was paralyzed from the neck down in an accident at age 11, graduated from Harvard University and became a professor and advocate for people with disabilities. | Read more

Feb. 5, age 62 | Toby Keith, a former rodeo hand, oil rigger and semipro football player who became a rowdy king of country music, singing patriotic anthems, wry drinking songs and propulsive odes to cowboy culture that collectively sold more than 40 million records. | Read more | See more photos

Seiji Ozawa

Feb. 6, age 88 | Shaggy-haired, high-voltage Japanese maestro, who served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for almost 30 years and was among the first Asian conductors to win world renown leading a classical orchestra. | Read more

Anthony Epstein

Feb. 6, age 102 | British pathologist, whose chance attendance at a lecture on childhood tumors in Africa began years of scientific sleuthing that led to the discovery of the ultra-common Epstein-Barr virus and opened expansive research into its viral links to cancers and other chronic ailments. | Read more

Feb. 10, age 96 | He helped create the on-the-go breakfast as an inventor of Pop-Tarts, leading the Michigan baking team that developed an unpretentious, toaster-friendly pastry with a fruity filling and ineffable space-age sweetness. | Read more

Alexei Navalny

Feb. 16, age 47 | Steely Russian lawyer, who exposed corruption, self-dealing and abuse of power by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies, sustaining a popular challenge to Putin for more than a decade despite constant pressure from the authorities and a near-fatal poisoning. | Read more | See more photos

Lefty Driesell

Feb. 17, age 92 | Head coach, who, in 17 seasons, built the University of Maryland into a college basketball power with ACC and NIT titles. | Read more

Princess Ira von Fürstenberg

Feb. 18, age 83 | Doe-eyed bon vivant, who first dazzled paparazzi as a teen bride of a playboy prince and who became an epitome of jet-set glamour and intrigue as a model in Paris, a movie temptress and a globe-trotting socialite who mingled with royalty, rogues and celebrities. | Read more

Hydeia Broadbent

Feb. 20, age 39 | She was born with HIV and spent nearly her entire life — ever since she was a young girl — as an advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. | Read more

Roger Guillemin

Feb. 21, age 100 | Nobel Prize-winning physician, whose work on hormones produced by the brain helped lead to the development of the birth control pill and treatments for prostate and other cancers, and who engaged for decades in a famously scathing but productive scientific rivalry. | Read more

Roni Stoneman

Feb. 22, age 85 | The “first lady of the banjo,” who picked her way into bluegrass and country music history as a member of the Stoneman Family band and found wider fame as an irascible performer on “Hee Haw,” the down-home variety show. | Read more

Irene Camber

Feb. 23, age 98 | Italian fencer whose elegant wielding of the foil earned her a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki and an enduring reputation as a grande dame of her sport. | Read more

Richard Lewis

Feb. 27, age 76 | Black-clad stand-up comic, who mined guilt, anxiety and neurosis for laughs — naming some of his cable specials “I’m in Pain,” “I’m Exhausted” and “I’m Doomed” — and played a semi-fictionalized version of himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” | Read more

Feb. 28, age 102 | Holocaust survivor, who endured years in Nazi concentration camps and two death marches before settling in Skokie, Ill., where he helped rally opposition to a planned neo-Nazi demonstration in the late 1970s that produced one of the most explosive cases in First Amendment law. | Read more

March 1, age 102 | New York textile designer, socialite and self-described “geriatric starlet,” who became an unlikely fashion celebrity in her 80s for her outré style. | Read more | See more photos

Juli Lynne Charlot

March 3, age 101 | Creator of ’50s “poodle skirt’” fad, a simple idea for the Christmas party outfit that turned into one of the defining looks of an era. | Read more

David E. Harris

March 8, age 89 | Former Air Force flier, who in the 1960s became the first Black pilot for a major U.S. passenger airline after battles by others to enter the industry, including a landmark anti-discrimination claim backed by the Supreme Court. | Read more

Dorie Ladner

March 11, age 81 | Dorie Ladner, who joined the civil rights movement as a teenager in Mississippi, braving gunfire, tear gas, police dogs and Ku Klux Klansmen in an undaunted campaign for racial equality. | Read more

Paul Alexander

March 11, age 78 | He was stricken with polio at age 6, earned a law degree and wrote a 2020 memoir about his life using the iron lung chamber to help him breathe. | Read more

David Mixner

March 11, age 77 | Political strategist, who helped move gay rights to the center of American politics and put his long friendship with Bill Clinton on the line over the president’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay people from serving openly in the military. | Read more

Helma Goldmark

March 15, age 98 | Holocaust refugee, who joined resistance, fled her native Austria and made her way to Italy, where as a teen she helped secure supplies for an operation that produced false documents for Jewish refugees. | Read more

Betty Cole Dukert

March 16, age 96 | Producer, who spent four decades as a behind-the-scenes power of the NBC weekly public affairs show “Meet the Press,” rising to executive producer of the program and helping secure guests spanning the ideological spectrum from Fidel Castro to Ross Perot. | Read more

Rose Dugdale

March 18, age 82 | English heiress, and debutante at a 1958 Buckingham Palace ball, who in 1974 was masterminding plots for the Irish Republican Army. | Read more

Martin Greenfield

March 20, age 95 | Tailor to presidents and stars, who, unbeknownst to many of his celebrity clients, learned his craft at Auschwitz and who came to America as his family’s sole survivor of the Holocaust. | Read more

Peter G. Angelos

March 23, age 94 | Baltimore lawyer, who won hundreds of millions of dollars for workers injured by exposure to asbestos, then became wider known to the public as the combative chief owner of the Baltimore Orioles for three decades. | Read more

Joseph Lieberman

March 27, age 82 | A doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party. (Pictured, right) | Read more | See more photos

Louis Gossett Jr.

March 29, age 87 | Actor, who brought authority to hundreds of screen roles, winning an Oscar as a Marine drill instructor in “An Officer and a Gentleman” and an Emmy Award as a wise, older guide to the enslaved Kunta Kinte in the groundbreaking miniseries “Roots.” (Pictured, left) | Read more | See more photos

April 1, age 102 | Navy lieutenant commander and the last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship, which exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. | Read more

O.J. Simpson

April 10, age 76 | Football superstar, who became a symbol of domestic violence and racial division after he was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife and her friend in a trial that riveted the nation and had legal and cultural repercussions for years afterward. | Read more | See more photos

Notable deaths of 2023

Photo editing by Stephen Cook, Jennifer Beeson Gregory and Dee Swann. Copy editing by Shibani Shah.

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Guest Essay

It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes

By Andrew W. Kahrl

Dr. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

Property taxes, the lifeblood of local governments and school districts, are among the most powerful and stealthy engines of racism and wealth inequality our nation has ever produced. And while the Biden administration has offered many solutions for making the tax code fairer, it has yet to effectively tackle a problem that has resulted not only in the extraordinary overtaxation of Black and Latino homeowners but also in the worsening of disparities between wealthy and poorer communities. Fixing these problems requires nothing short of a fundamental re-examination of how taxes are distributed.

In theory, the property tax would seem to be an eminently fair one: The higher the value of your property, the more you pay. The problem with this system is that the tax is administered by local officials who enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy and that tax rates are typically based on the collective wealth of a given community. This results in wealthy communities enjoying lower effective tax rates while generating more tax revenues; at the same time, poorer ones are forced to tax property at higher effective rates while generating less in return. As such, property assessments have been manipulated throughout our nation’s history to ensure that valuable property is taxed the least relative to its worth and that the wealthiest places will always have more resources than poorer ones.

Black people have paid the heaviest cost. Since they began acquiring property after emancipation, African Americans have been overtaxed by local governments. By the early 1900s, an acre of Black-owned land was valued, for tax purposes, higher than an acre of white-owned land in most of Virginia’s counties, according to my calculations, despite being worth about half as much. And for all the taxes Black people paid, they got little to nothing in return. Where Black neighborhoods began, paved streets, sidewalks and water and sewer lines often ended. Black taxpayers helped to pay for the better-resourced schools white children attended. Even as white supremacists treated “colored” schools as another of the white man’s burdens, the truth was that throughout the Jim Crow era, Black taxpayers subsidized white education.

Freedom from these kleptocratic regimes drove millions of African Americans to move to Northern and Midwestern states in the Great Migration from 1915 to 1970, but they were unable to escape racist assessments, which encompassed both the undervaluation of their property for sales purposes and the overvaluation of their property for taxation purposes. During those years, the nation’s real estate industry made white-owned property in white neighborhoods worth more because it was white. Since local tax revenue was tied to local real estate markets, newly formed suburbs had a fiscal incentive to exclude Black people, and cities had even more reason to keep Black people confined to urban ghettos.

As the postwar metropolis became a patchwork of local governments, each with its own tax base, the fiscal rationale for segregation intensified. Cities were fiscally incentivized to cater to the interests of white homeowners and provide better services for white neighborhoods, especially as middle-class white people began streaming into the suburbs, taking their tax dollars with them.

One way to cater to wealthy and white homeowners’ interests is to intentionally conduct property assessments less often. The city of Boston did not conduct a citywide property reassessment between 1946 and 1977. Over that time, the values of properties in Black neighborhoods increased slowly when compared with the values in white neighborhoods or even fell, which led to property owners’ paying relatively more in taxes than their homes were worth. At the same time, owners of properties in white neighborhoods got an increasingly good tax deal as their neighborhoods increased in value.

As was the case in other American cities, Boston’s decision most likely derived from the fear that any updates would hasten the exodus of white homeowners and businesses to the suburbs. By the 1960s, assessments on residential properties in Boston’s poor neighborhoods were up to one and a half times as great as their actual values, while assessments in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods were, on average, 40 percent of market value.

Jersey City, N.J., did not conduct a citywide real estate reassessment between 1988 and 2018 as part of a larger strategy for promoting high-end real estate development. During that time, real estate prices along the city’s waterfront soared but their owners’ tax bills remained relatively steady. By 2015, a home in one of the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods worth $175,000 received the same tax bill as a home in the city’s downtown worth $530,000.

These are hardly exceptions. Numerous studies conducted during those years found that assessments in predominantly Black neighborhoods of U.S. cities were grossly higher relative to value than those in white areas.

These problems persist. A recent report by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy found that property assessments were regressive (meaning lower-valued properties were assessed higher relative to value than higher-valued ones) in 97.7 percent of U.S. counties. Black-owned homes and properties in Black neighborhoods continue to be devalued on the open market, making this regressive tax, in effect, a racist tax.

The overtaxation of Black homes and neighborhoods is also a symptom of a much larger problem in America’s federated fiscal structure. By design, this system produces winners and losers: localities with ample resources to provide the goods and services that we as a nation have entrusted to local governments and others that struggle to keep the lights on, the streets paved, the schools open and drinking water safe . Worse yet, it compels any fiscally disadvantaged locality seeking to improve its fortunes to do so by showering businesses and corporations with tax breaks and subsidies while cutting services and shifting tax burdens onto the poor and disadvantaged. A local tax on local real estate places Black people and cities with large Black populations at a permanent disadvantage. More than that, it gives middle-class white people strong incentives to preserve their relative advantages, fueling the zero-sum politics that keep Americans divided, accelerates the upward redistribution of wealth and impoverishes us all.

There are technical solutions. One, which requires local governments to adopt more accurate assessment models and regularly update assessment rolls, can help make property taxes fairer. But none of the proposed reforms being discussed can be applied nationally because local tax policies are the prerogative of the states and, often, local governments themselves. Given the variety and complexity of state and local property tax laws and procedures and how much local governments continue to rely on tax reductions and tax shifting to attract and retain certain people and businesses, we cannot expect them to fix these problems on their own.

The best way to make local property taxes fairer and more equitable is to make them less important. The federal government can do this by reinvesting in our cities, counties and school districts through a federal fiscal equity program, like those found in other advanced federated nations. Canada, Germany and Australia, among others, direct federal funds to lower units of government with lower capacities to raise revenue.

And what better way to pay for the program than to tap our wealthiest, who have benefited from our unjust taxation scheme for so long? President Biden is calling for a 25 percent tax on the incomes and annual increases in the values of the holdings of people claiming more than $100 million in assets, but we could accomplish far more by enacting a wealth tax on the 1 percent. Even a modest 4 percent wealth tax on people whose total assets exceed $50 million could generate upward of $400 billion in additional annual revenue, which should be more than enough to ensure that the needs of every city, county and public school system in America are met. By ensuring that localities have the resources they need, we can counteract the unequal outcomes and rank injustices that our current system generates.

Andrew W. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “ The Black Tax : 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

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