Could someone explain "A Tale of Two Sisters"?

Question

I watched it last night and it was pretty good and scary. But I don't understand the last part.....

When the sister sees her mom dead in the closet bound and gagged.... then she goes to pull her out and the cabinet falls on her, was it a ghost or real body?

When the stepmom saw the sister pinned by the cabinet, why didn't she help? Was it because she hated her?

Did the stepmom kill their mother and stuff her in the closet if it was really her body?

When the stepmom said to the other daughter, "you're gonna regret this moment..." what did she mean?

I'm glad the stepmom was killed at the end by the ghost!

Answer 1

"When the sister sees her mom dead in the closet bound and gagged.... then she goes to pull her out and the cabinet falls on her, was it a ghost or real body?"

A real body. Their mother had killed herself.

"When the stepmom saw the sister pinned by the cabinet, why didn't she help? Was it because she hated her?"

The relationship between the (future) stepmother and the sisters was, obviously, very rocky. But my impression was that she was on the fence, and was actually going to go for help, though, given their rocky relationship, she was in no big hurry or panic.

"Did the stepmom kill their mother and stuff her in the closet if it was really her body?"

No. The mother had killed herself.

"When the stepmom said to the other daughter, "you're gonna regret this moment..." what did she mean?"

As I mentioned, the future stepmom seemed to be "on the fence" about going for help (after all, that's a significant moral line to cross, letting someone die). But because the other sister was rude to her right at that moment, she makes the decision not to mention the sister's plight, and notes that the girl is going to regret that moment--because had she not been rude to her (the future stepmom), there would've been a chance to save the sister.

"I'm glad the stepmom was killed at the end by the ghost!"

One thing to note about this movie is that the accepted interpretation is that most of the movie is happening inside the living sister's head; there is no "ghost" for that stretch of the movie. Where one's personal interpretation might differ is at the end--is the scene with the ghost and the stepmother real, or are we back inside the sister's delusions? The way the scene is cut, with us flashing back to the sister, leads one to think that even the ghost scene at the end is illusory. A Tale of Two Sisters was the first in a sub-trend of Asian horror--"the ghost story that isn't," in which the supernatural element can be interpreted as not being supernatural at all, but the product of something more psychological in nature--"Spider Forest" and "Acacia" are a couple of more examples in that subgenre.

Answer 2

themikejonas wrote:

One thing to note about this movie is that the accepted interpretation is that most of the movie is happening inside the living sister's head; there is no "ghost" for that stretch of the movie. Where one's personal interpretation might differ is at the end--is the scene with the ghost and the stepmother real, or are we back inside the sister's delusions? The way the scene is cut, with us flashing back to the sister, leads one to think that even the ghost scene at the end is illusory. A Tale of Two Sisters was the first in a sub-trend of Asian horror--"the ghost story that isn't," in which the supernatural element can be interpreted as not being supernatural at all, but the product of something more psychological in nature--"Spider Forest" and "Acacia" are a couple of more examples in that subgenre.


The stepmother and the sister was all imagined by Su-Mi.
The real stepmother doesn't come into the picture until the father brings her back near the end of the film.
There's one thing I disagree with here though.
Ghosts in asian horrors are real. They just are.
It's also conformed that the ghost is Su-Yeon. The uncle's wife that had a seizure saw her herself under the kitchen sink. So no the part where the ghost gets/kills (we don't know) the real stepmother is very real.

Answer 3

This movie was very confusing to me too!
So I get that you have so many questions.

Answer 4

The film opens in a psychiatric hospital, where a doctor is interviewing a young girl whose dark hair hangs over her face. He shows her photos of her family in an attempt to coax her into talking about "that day".

In an apparent flashback, we see a family arrive at their house in the country. Two girls, Su-mi and the younger Su-yeon, step out of the car and go off to play while their father walks into the house. Later, when they go inside, they are met by their new step-mother, Eun-joo. We learn that the girls' mother has died. Eun-joo tries to be conciliatory to them at first, but their clear resentment of and indifference to her drives her to become shrill and hectoring and she storms off.

Going upstairs into their rooms, the girls find them already filled with exact replicas of the clothing and things they have brought with them. The dinner conversation that night is brief and strained; the girls don't speak, and the father leaves early, handing Eun-joo two pills to take. She swallows them and scolds the children, who leave.

That night Su-yeon is frightened by creaking floorboards and her door opening by itself; she flees into her older sister's bed, telling her that someone went into her room. Su-mi gets up to investigate, finding her father asleep on the couch instead of with Eun-joo. She fixes his blanket and goes into the kitchen for a snack, where she is interrupted by her stepmother. The two argue and Su-mi goes back to bed, where she tells Su-yeon that it was their stepmother who frightened her.

Su-mi has a nightmare about a girl with long, stringy hair and bloody legs who steps into her bed. When she awakes she finds blood on the sheets and realizes that Su-yeon must be having her first menstruation. She goes to the master bedroom for towels and menstrual pads; on the way back Eun-joo stops her. She laughs upon learning of Su-yeon's first period, saying how funny it is because her own just started as well.

Later, Su-mi argues with her father, telling him to get rid of the wardrobe in her sister's room, but he refuses, insisting that she had promised not to bring it up.

That afternoon, Su-mi goes to an old conservatory, where she finds a trunk full of her late mother's things. She takes them back to her room and looks through the photographs. She finds that Eun-joo appears in them all, even family portraits from years past, as if she had been in their lives all along. She hides this discovery when Su-yeon walks in. Su-mi notices marks on her sister's arm, and Su-yeon admits they were caused by their stepmother.

Su-mi marches downstairs and confronts her stepmother, who calmly admits hurting Su-yeon to punish her. They fight loudly and her father comes downstairs, where he finds Su-mi alone and in tears, though she refuses to tell him what the commotion was about.

That night the girl's paternal uncle and his wife come to visit. At dinner and with the girls upstairs, Eun-joo launches into a bizarre story that supposedly occurred in her brother-in-law's youth; he quietly but angrily denies that it happened. Suddenly the uncle's wife has a seizure and sees a girl under the kitchen sink.

Matters in the house go from bad to worse, as Eun-joo takes to locking Su-yeon in her wardrobe and becomes increasingly nasty while the girls' father remains oblivious, pleading with Su-mi to be rational so that she doesn't become sick again. Finally, when Eun-joo discovers her pet bird killed in Su-yeon's bed, she snaps, and locks Su-yeon in the wardrobe as punishment even though she knows the girl is afraid of it. Su-mi discovers her sister later and promises that something like that will never happen again. Su-mi confronts her father about Eun-joo's behavior with Su-yeon. Her father yells, telling her that Su-yeon is dead and to get a hold of herself. Su-yeon screams and backs into a corner of the room while Su-mi denies her sister's death.

Later, Su-mi is locked in her room yelling for her sister, while Eun-joo paces and plots in her own room. Su-mi escapes from her room and begins to look for Su-yeon only to find a large bloodied bag that has been dragged through the hall. Su-mi tries to open it and leaves for a knife to cut it with, but when she returns it is gone. While searching for the bag she encounters Eun-joo who is now trying to kill her. The two fight and Su-mi is knocked out. She awakens and Eun-joo prepares to crush her with a heavy statue, but is interrupted when the father returns home. The father comes upon Su-mi and sets her down on a couch, telling her to wait while he steps out of the room.

Into the room walks Eun-joo, and we realize that Su-mi has been imagining that she is her stepmother and that she has been hallucinating the presence of her sister, who is in fact dead: In a flashback we see their mother commit suicide in the wardrobe, which fell and crushed Su-yeon when she discovered the body while Eun-joo and Su-mi argued. Though Eun-joo discovered Su-yeon before she died, she did nothing to help her. We also see Su-mi, hallucinating that she is her stepmother attacking her sister, "kill" a doll, stuff it in a sack and put it in the wardrobe. Su-mi is returned to the psychiatric hospital, where her father and stepmother visit to try and comfort her.

The film ends in the house with Eun-joo discovering a ghostly presence; it apparently kills her though we cannot be sure. We also see Su-mi grieving over her sister's death; the movie makes it clear that Su-yeon was not present when the father took Su-mi back home.