After watching this movie, I wanted to say something. Because everyone thinks there is a little ghost in this movie, but I don't think there is a ghost in the story that the movie tells. There was no body in the water tank on the roof, and my mother committed suicide by having a nervous breakdown.
(multi-picture warning)
I'm here to show you all. What the hell is going on with this weird and sweet story. Let’s start with the red bag.
What's with the red bag that can't be thrown away?
Question: How many times do you think the red bag appeared in total?
In the order of the movies, there are five times in total. In fact, however, the bag is likely to appear only three times. Listen to me.
For the first time, Yuzi and her mother came to see the house and found a red schoolbag on the rooftop.
The second time, my mother took out the trash and found that the schoolbag had been thrown into the trash can.
The third time, my mother got a job and took her daughter to the rooftop to set off fireworks to celebrate. First, she saw the figure of a girl and was shocked. After opening the door, I saw the red bag.
Next is the fourth time.
The fourth time, the little girl had a fever, and her mother dozed off beside the bed. When I opened my eyes, my daughter was gone. My mother found it on the rooftop and saw a girl next to the water tank poking her head. So I climbed the stairs of the water tank and glanced at the red schoolbag. Right?
But the next day, the lawyer, the rental agency and the old administrator followed the mother, and a group of four came to the roof of the building, but the red schoolbag disappeared. So, this time, only my mother saw this schoolbag.
The fifth appearance of the red schoolbag was on the mother's last night. The mother told her daughter to go to the kindergarten tomorrow and help her daughter organize the schoolbag. When she opened it, she saw the red schoolbag inside. Right?
The schoolbag appeared in his daughter's schoolbag, and it could only be put in by her daughter. If the daughter didn't do it, it would only be hell. So the mother questioned the daughter, the daughter said no! I have not taken this bag! So the audience fell into the preset logic, along with their mothers, they were shocked: there is a ghost! ——This method is actually the usual routine of ghost films.
However, after watching domestic ghost films for many years, we should have thought of another possibility - the schoolbag here is simply an illusion of mother.
Could this assumption be true? I think that's what makes this movie better than other old-fashioned ghost movies.
Before moving on to this assumption, let me state a point: the director of this film is clearly someone who is extremely particular about the details of the camera. We can see it in some corners of the film.
For example, shortly after the film started, the mother and daughter came to see the room. The director gave this shot. Have you ever thought about why you want to shoot from this perspective? If you count the gaps between the floors on the wall on the right, you can see that this shot was taken from the walkway window on the 4th floor. After watching this movie, tell me, who lives on the 4th floor?
Another example is the many shots in this movie. I wonder if everyone realizes that the director can arrange the angles and obstructions of the shots, giving people a feeling of "someone is watching the mother and daughter in the corner". For example the following shot. The mother and daughter are eating, but the upper left corner and lower right corner of the camera are given a dark corner and a black shield respectively. Do you think the director made this arrangement unintentionally? It's just too hearty!
And this kind of footage can be seen everywhere, it is better to drag the progress bar back and watch your mother call. At that time, my daughter was in the same room as her, by the dining table behind her, but the camera was placed next to the bathroom. What angle do you think this is?
We look back now, the fifth appearance of the bag. Maybe I overinterpreted the following scenes a bit, but after reading my analysis, you might as well go back and look at this episode to see if you feel the same as me.
The mother asked her daughter if she had taken the red schoolbag, but the daughter firmly denied it. "I don't know", "I didn't take it". Apparently the daughter didn't lie. In addition to this, there is another detail - the daughter's eyes have been looking at her mother, and she has not looked into the schoolbag at all.
Well, if someone takes a wallet and asks you if you took it, you will at least see what kind of wallet it is, right? Is your daughter's sight a little weird?
Look further, and Mom goes to call a lawyer. Did not get through, upset. When he turned around, he found that his daughter was trying to unzip the red schoolbag with a strange expression. Mom turned pale in shock and grabbed the schoolbag, as if a picture of the schoolbag falling into the water appeared in front of her eyes. The red bag slipped to the ground. Well, now remember where the bag fell - at Mom's feet, next to the cabinet where the phone was.
Then my mother went to the rooftop to check the water tank. Everything in the camera, we see my daughter sitting in a daze in the room overwhelmed.
What about the bag just now? gone!
We put together this passage of her daughter's resolute tone when answering her mother's questions, her daughter's gaze, her disappearing schoolbag, and her overwhelmed daughter sitting alone in the dining room. . . What did you think of? At least I think of a possibility: this time the bag did not appear at all. The mother holds her daughter's schoolbag and points to the air to ask her if this is from you. The daughter said she did not understand what her mother was saying. As soon as the mother turned around and went straight out the door, the daughter sat there with a confused look on her face.
A hypothesis is always just a hypothesis if it is not proven. Is there any evidence to support this hypothesis? kinda, and. . . It's actually hinted at many times in the movie.
Is there something wrong with the mother's spirit?
One of the tricks of horror movies is: only the protagonist feels that someone is going to harm her, and everyone will not believe it, and everyone often comforts her, you should have a good rest. So the protagonist fell into a situation of isolation and helplessness, which made the plot more terrifying.
However, this movie is not so simple, because the mother's spirit does have problems.
Go back to the beginning of the video. Mother Shumei stared out the window blankly, recalling a rainy day when she was a child, when she was young in kindergarten. When the camera turned, a man appeared. Mother enters the room. Oh, it turned out to be divorce proceedings. In just a few minutes of the plot, the director explained the background of the story, that is, Shumei is fighting with her ex-husband for custody of her daughter. At this stage, her daughter is being raised by her mother, and her mother is looking for a house.
that's it? how is this possible. A good director's story will never be one-liners like an elementary school composition. Here, in addition to "finding a house", the director also buried two very important foreshadowings:
1. When mother Shumei was in kindergarten when she was a child, her parents also divorced. At that time, Shumei was not picked up after school, which left an indelible impression on her.
2. The mother suffered from mental illness before marriage. And the reason is that due to the requirements of the job, I have to read a very scary novel. So, this is probably a kind of induced psychosis.
These two points are extremely important to the arguments I made earlier.
I don't know if you still remember the scene below. About halfway through the film, Shumei and her ex-husband meet again at the lawyer's office. The ex-husband (Kohi Xiang Wenshi) got up and went into the room, and wrung out the cigarette butt in his hand. But this action, which the director filmed from a very weird angle, shows us a lot of black shadows, faceless men, distorted proportions (it seems to have been shot with a fisheye lens), and, This cigarette butt is twisted and twisted again and again, and it is not creepy for a long time.
Then Shumei went wild: "Why did you do this? Ahhhh"
Of course Shumi was referring to the case where the button on the first floor of the elevator in the apartment was burnt by a cigarette.
The ex-husband is confused and doesn't understand what you are talking about?
The question is, why did the director make such a scene? What is the impression of this passage to our audience? Do you think that the button in the elevator was really burnt by the ex-husband with a cigarette butt?
I don't think so. His own daughter lives there, and, judging from the rest of the movie, the father loves his daughter. Definitely not going to the mother and daughter's residence to burn an elevator button to intimidate the mother and daughter.
So obviously the weird scene here is the mother's delusion of persecution - who normal person would screw a cigarette butt for so long?
Let's look at this scene again, the day when the mother took her daughter into kindergarten. The teacher and the principal are scolding a child. This scene is also very long. At first glance, you would think that the kindergarten teacher might abuse children, right? However, there is no mention of teacher abuse of children throughout the film. How can a great director arrange a scene without echoing the whole story?
The actual echo is here.
My daughter has a fever. As soon as the mother arrived at the kindergarten, she immediately questioned the teacher if she had abused her child.
Now let's jump out of the movie and think about it. It's really normal for a child in kindergarten to have a fever. Is the mother overreacting? Besides, in the movie, is the daughter's fever because of the teacher's abuse? Obviously not.
good. I said my mother was in a bad state of mind, why is that so? The director has already hinted:
1. Mother has a history of induced psychosis
2. Divorce lawsuits are gradually detrimental to mothers, and mothers are under great pressure
In this state of mind, people are easily paranoid.
Therefore, after seeing the red schoolbag three times, the mother was implanted with a concept that this red schoolbag has a ghost and has been haunting her. She was convinced of her suspicions even if there was a possibility of what the administrator called "a mischief by a nearby child." Later, in the case of greater mental pressure, I will see the hallucination of the schoolbag.
And this kind of movie is actually far more than this one. Everyone's favorite "Mulholland Drive", "Shutter Island", and the famous "Fight Club" all use this method of telling stories from the perspective of the mentally abnormal side.
Did Mitsuko die in the tank?
On the last night, my mother ran to the water tank on the rooftop and saw that the last cleaning date of the water tank was "July 14, 2011", she immediately remembered the revelation that she had to find someone before, and said that the date of Kawai Mitsuko's last sighting was also July 14, Heisei eleven years. So the audience came to a conclusion with her: damn, that daughter is still in the water tank!
Let's not complain about the water tank that hasn't been washed for two years, or whether the body will block the water pipe.
The missing person was posted on the telephone pole. The mother only saw it once, and she saw it when she was eager to find her daughter, but she was so impressed by the date of disappearance. Do you think it's reasonable?
Yes, even Mitsuko's death was a mother's hallucination. Let's sort it out in chronological order:
1. The mother saw the red bag
2. There is a water leak upstairs, but no one lives there.
3. The mother interviewed for a job. It was too late. She went to pick up her daughter, but she didn’t receive it. She saw the revelation about finding someone two years ago.
4. Mother saw the red bag for the third time
5. My daughter Ikuko has a fever. My mother went to school and saw the pictures drawn by former students. A girl named Mitsuko also studied in the kindergarten. The self-portrait is a yellow dress and a red schoolbag.
6. The mother took her daughter back and fell asleep at the head of her daughter's bed. During this period, I had a dream. I dreamed that a girl in a yellow raincoat was carrying a red schoolbag. No one picked it up after school, so I walked all the way home. And her home is the apartment where Shumei lives.
7. The mother climbed the water tank on the rooftop and saw the cleaning date of the water tank——
Omg, Mitsuko's ghost!
At this time, the "bang bang bang", which is very suitable for the movie, stretched out a palm print from the water tank.
I just want to say: The yellow raincoat and the red schoolbag only dreamed of my mother after she saw the self-portrait of Rimitsuko in kindergarten. So there is no such thing as a mother "dreaming about things she shouldn't have known".
And the dream of her mother, Shumei, is also explained twice in the movie: when Shumei was a child, her parents divorced, and she was alone in kindergarten with no one to pick up.
Therefore, all the associations and speculations of the mother are essentially derived from her own experience. As for Mitsuko's whereabouts, there is no direct evidence to prove that she fell into the water tank and drowned, except for the tracing revelation and the principal's mention of "missing, whereabouts unknown".
Everything was imagined by my mother by linking innumerable suspicions and her own experiences.
Maybe Mitsuko is still alive and well.
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