MovieChat Forums > Chello hongmijoo ilga salinsagan (2005) Discussion > Are we supposed to understand what's goi...

Are we supposed to understand what's going on in this?

posted 13 years ago by Beady-El
1 reply | jump to latest

I get that the housekeeper is supposed to be the ghost of the friend/rival who died in the car accident and that she is directly responsible for many of the deaths that occur.

Or do deaths occur at all? The weird ending implies that it was all some kind of weird vision, while our heroine was narrowly avoiding another car accident.

(More spoilers to follow, not all censored. Read on at your own risk.)

But then there's the ominous text messages - that seem to originate from the husband's phone? (I may have misunderstood that part, but it seemed to me that the cop was telling her the only texts she'd received were from her husband.)

And the sister who gets a fake phone call from her fiancee?

And the whole time-warp ending?

And the mute girl causing the younger one to fall?

I'm guessing at least some of this might make more sense if I were familiar with Korean traditions about what ghosts are capable of. Apparently they can't speak (?) yet they ARE capable of creating a nonexistent voice on a phone? Can they warp time and space?

[–] lewiskendell 13 years ago

Here's what happened (in my opinion).

Think of Mi-ju's fate as a private, continuous, repeating hell. Being tormented by the deaths of her loved ones as punishment for what she did to Tae-yeon (the friend she killed out of jealousy), only to have them restored to her and then killed again, over and over. I think she actually died in the near-accident we see at the beginning of the movie, and we're seeing the first cycle (and beginning of the second) of what she will be trapped in forever. Remember the message written on the album she gets as a present at the end of the movie, when the same events are starting to play out once again and right before the ghostly hands grasp her face? This is only the beginning.

As for the text message she keeps getting, "Are you happy? ...You should be.", I see it as a taunting message from the dead Tae-yeon whose spirit/ghost/whatever is responsible for the curse on Mi-ju. Mi-ju killed her because she was so jealous of her and couldn't stand to live in her shadow any more, but that action clearly won't bring her any happiness as now she's about to suffer eternally for what she did to her friend.

Or maybe there's no vengeful ghost or spirit at all, and the prison she's now trapped in is entirely the making of her own guilt.

Movies I've seen in 2011: http://www.flixster.com/movie-list/2011-movies-5