Film Review: ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’
Exploring the reasons behind the unsettling horror of one of South Korea’s scariest movies
“There was a girl under the kitchen sink.”
Elements of supernatural, psychological, thriller, and a dash of the mystery genre creates a perfect combination for a frightening and chilling horror film. The Korean movie, ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’, has all of those traits, and is based on a Joseon Dynasty folktale called ‘Janghwa Hongryeon Jeon’.
As a child, I would sometimes get scared of horror films due to my active imagination, adding my own elements and scaring myself further. But as I got older, those fears went away and became easier to deal with. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with A Tale of Two Sisters…
Story
The film starts with a family going home to their secluded manor in the province after fetching Su-Mi, the oldest daughter, from a mental institution. Su-Mi and her younger sister, Su-Yeon are greeted coldly by Eun-Joo, their stepmother, upon arrival. Eun-joo also has a strained relationship with her husband, the children’s father.
The following morning, Su-Yeon wakes up and sees her mother’s ghost creepily walking towards her, but this is revealed to be a nightmare. On the other hand, Su-Mi finds her family photos with Eun-Joo on them and discovers that she was the in-home nurse of her sick mother. She also finds out that there are bruises on Su-Yeon’s arms and blames Eun-Joo for it. However, Eun-Joo denies those allegations.
Later that night, the girls’ aunt and uncle arrive for dinner. Things take a weird turn when Eun-Joo starts telling bizarre stories much to the discomfort of the guests. Suddenly, the aunt has a violent seizure and starts to choke. Once the seizures stop, they go home but not before telling her husband that she saw a ghost of a dead girl under the kitchen sink when she was having her seizure. Out of curiosity, Eun-Joo bends down and takes a peek beneath the sink when the ghost violently reaches out to grab her arm.
As the days go by, Eun-Joo’s relationship with the girls worsens after discovering that her pet bird was killed and her pictures destroyed. She immediately locks up Su-Yeon but was quickly freed by Su-Mi who tells her father about the abuse Su-Yeon gets from their stepmother. Unfortunately, the father has enough of Su-Mi’s behaviour and informs her that Su-Yeon is dead which Su-Mi refuses to believe as she can see her sister crying beside her. At this point, one of the plot twists has been revealed — is Su-Yeon an actual ghost all this time or just a figment of Su-Mi’s hallucinations?
The next day, Su-Mi discovers Eun-Joo dragging a bloody sack and thinks Su-Yeon is in it. They both get into a violent fight and an unconscious Su-Mi is found when her father arrives home. Another revelation occurs which is that the only people living in the house all this time were Su-Mi and her father. Eun-Joo was an identity that Su-Mi created because she suffers from dissociative identity disorder and the contents of the bloody sack that Su-Mi was dragging was just a porcelain doll. This confirms that Su-Yeon is just part of Su-Mi’s hallucinations.
Su-Mi is then sent back to the mental institution by her father and the real Eun-Joo, who is much kinder than the one Su-Mi made up. Still, Su-Mi rejects Eun-Joo’s kind gestures towards her. Later that night, Eun-Joo goes to the house and hears noises coming from Su-Yeon’s bedroom. As she investigates the source of the noise in the bedroom, Su-Yeon’s ghost bursts out of the wardrobe and kills her. Sensing what happened back home, Su-Mi smiles.
The backstory of Su-Yeon and her mother’s death at the end of the film tied everything together nicely. While still alive, their father cheated on their mother with Eun-Joo and this caused her to hang herself in Su-Yeon’s wardrobe. Su-Yeon eventually saw her and tried to revive her but the wardrobe toppled on top of her. Eun-Joo saw what happened and tried to rescue her but before that, she was criticized by Su-Mi which made her abandon Su-Yeon as she dies.
The creepiness of Asia’s ghosts
There is something inherently creepy about the way ghosts are portrayed in Asia (especially countries like Japan, South Korea, and Thailand). Simple, repeated characteristics like long, flowing black hair, and tattered white/black dresses while moving in a horrifying way is enough to send shivers up the spine. Su-Yeon’s nightmare about her mother’s ghost was the scariest moment for me, one that I had to look away from and just stare at the speaker on the bottom of the television. It made me feel disturbed due to the grotesque portrayal of the ghost and as someone who grew up in South-East Asia, those kind of ghosts are very popular around here.
Additionally, films like ‘Shutter’, ‘The Ring’, and ‘The Grudge’ all have similar effects as they all have that similarly styled, deeply creepy ghost in them.
South Korea’s love and successful execution of plot twists
One of the reasons I love watching this kind of genre in Korean movies is that there will always be a mind-blowing plot twist. Some of the movies with amazing plot twists include ‘Memories of Murder’, ‘Forgotten’, and ‘The Call’.
In ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’, the first one appears when the father reveals that Su-Yeon has been dead this entire time and after rewatching, one can notice that the father never acknowledges Su-Yeon’s presence at all which indicates that she was just Su-Mi’s hallucination. The second was that Eun-Joo was also made up and she is Su-Mi’s other personality which explains the seemingly loveless marriage between Eun-Joo and the father. The last twist is that there was an actual ghost all along, which was Su-Yeon. This means that Su-Mi wasn’t just imagining her and that she was the one who grabbed her violently from under the kitchen sink.
The plot twists of this movie are really well executed, and it’ll be fun to rewatch it again and start seeing all of the various hints and nods to these twists.
Production design
As for the location, the secluded estate and antique setting helped to make the atmosphere more sinister. It visually shows that there’s a history to the house which usually involves ghostly hauntings. The cinematography effectively uses the surrounding setting to create eeriness and dread from the colour palette to the production design as well as the lighting.
Despite being scared while watching this, I will definitely still rewatch ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’. The film is regarded as one of the best mind-bending horror films with well timed jump scares and family drama. Plus, it’s fun looking for those hints to its various twists.
