Repressed trauma and guilt have an inexplicable way of finding their victims, and no matter how desperate the effort to break the pattern is, escaping the inevitable is impossible. Netflix’s latest Thai horror, Don’t Come Home, which deftly disguises an intricate, somewhat confusing sci-fi plot to shape up a tragic story that involves themes of motherhood, loss, horrors of patriarchy, and second chances, presents this pattern in an interesting way. While the six-episode miniseries doesn’t aim for a big twist or surprise in the end, as the key reveal takes place midway through the series, its novelty lies in the poignant handling of dysfunctional family dynamics through the plot device of time travel.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Was Varee On The Run?
The primary focus of Don’t Come Home is on Varee, who is taking her five-year-old daughter, Min, along with her, as she is trying to escape her abusive husband, Colonel Yutthachai, after stealing a suitcase full of cash and a handgun from him. There are clear indications that Varee has gone through a lot, as she constantly keeps an eye on her back and seems anxious and panicked at times, anticipating her husband catching up to them. Varee takes Min to her ancestral house, a place where Varee had shared a lot of fond memories with her late mother, Panida, and the only place where she feels she can stay hidden from Yutthachai. Varee meets Uncle Natee, the caretaker of the house who used to work as Panida’s driver, and Natee helps Varee settle down at her childhood home, where she has returned for the first time after thirty long years. However, Min isn’t thrilled after having to move into this old, massive villa, as she often finds herself haunted by the presence of a terrifying apparition during frequent power cuts. Varee, on the other hand, often sees a girl around Min’s age running around inside the house wearing a mask, who disappears as suddenly as she arrives. One night, Min gets haunted by the apparition once again, and as the kid decides to hide inside her bedroom closet in fear, she inexplicably disappears. Varee, who had rushed to her daughter’s rescue, is crestfallen, perplexed after the sudden disappearance of Min, and as she calls the authorities, a six-month-pregnant Inspector Fah arrives at the house to assess the situation.
Panida’s Guilt
As the narrative focus shifts to Varee’s mother, Panida, a professor who worked as an engineer at a local hydroelectric dam, it is revealed that her workaholic tendencies and rift with her husband had created an emotional disconnect with her daughter, Varee. Panida couldn’t afford the bare minimum attention to her daughter, who desperately craved her mother’s affection. Following a heated argument with her husband while going on a family trip, Panida decides to abruptly stop the car and step outside—a decision that will haunt her forever as, moments later, a truck rams the car, which results in the death of Panida’s daughter and husband right in front of her eyes. Panida was never able to forgive herself for their demise, especially as the realization dawned upon her how much she had failed as a mother to Varee.
How Did Min End Up in the Past?
Unable to cope with the grief, Panida contemplated taking her own life, and at that moment she discovered a strange phenomenon. It is not explained exactly how electrical malfunctions at a hydroelectric power plant can create a singularity like a time-traveling gateway, but Panida was able to identify the nature of the occurrence quickly. Considering this to be a chance to bring back her daughter, Panida decided to replicate the phenomenon by making a secretive experimental chamber inside the basement of her house, with the intention of going back in time and start everything anew. However, even though her initial attempt failed, the gateway brought Min to the past.
Panida had no way to know that Min is her own granddaughter, and seeing the kid scared, alone—desperately trying to find her mother—Panida considered this to be her chance to become a better mother than she had ever been to her own daughter. The emotional void inside Panida left by Varee’s demise was soon filled by Min’s presence, and in no time, Panida started considering Min to be her daughter. Natee, who was concerned about the child’s background, quickly found himself shut down by Panida.
Inspector Fah Connects With Varee
At present, as someone who had witnessed her abusive father’s treatment of her mother, Inspector Fah quickly recognizes Varee as a victim of domestic abuse and is able to empathize with her. However, due to what seems to be purely weird coincidences, Varee has a hard time convincing Fah and the rest of the police unit that she had indeed brought Min along with her and has long kept her in the vicinity of the house. Fah decides to dig deeper as she questions Natee and learns about a terrible incident that took place in the house thirty years ago, which prompted Varee and her mother, Panida, to leave the house and shift to Bangkok. According to Natee, back then, a lunatic woman stabbed him in the eye, tried to harm Panida and her family, and ultimately lost her life by falling off the balcony.
Fah is pregnant with the child of her department chief, Superintendent Danai, and well aware of the fact that social stigmas, constructed by men in power, are adversely stacked up against women. Which is why, despite finding certain discrepancies with Varee’s statements, she decides to pursue the case further and realizes that Varee wasn’t lying. An extensive search begins in and around the Varee’s ancestral house; as a result, the forbidden basement room is opened as well, although none are able to decipher the functionality of it or how it is related to the case. Fah and Varee eventually connect over the bond of motherhood; from their personal experiences, both of them know that they cannot depend on anyone else with the responsibility of their child. Even though Min’s search comes to an unfortunate end after the authorities fail to come up with any substantial clues, Fah gives her number to Varee to call her if she ever needs her assistance. Later, suspecting an intruder inside the house, Varee arms herself with Yutthachai’s gun and calls Fah to seek help—only to get herself transported to the past through the gateway appearing in the cabinet of Min’s bedroom. By the time Fah arrives with the force, Varee is nowhere to be seen.
Why Didn’t Panida Believe Her Daughter?
Varee arrives in the past in 1992, when Panida tried to activate the device in her basement for a second time, and gets dumbfounded seeing her mother in front of her. However, Varee fails to convince Panida that she is her daughter, as Panida, who still hasn’t gotten over the trauma of losing Varee even a year after the fateful incident, considers grown-up Varee to be a raging lunatic or a scheming prankster trying to emotionally blackmail her. Her bewilderment grows into a feeling of resentment when she realizes the woman is Min’s biological mother, who is desperately searching for her daughter. By now, Panida has formed a strong emotional bond with Min, and has started considering the kid as her chance to redeem herself, and by no means is Panida going to allow someone to take away Min—even the kid’s own mother. Panida forcibly keeps Varee captive inside the basement, and eventually Varee realizes that both she and Min have traveled to the past. But there is absolutely no way for her to prove it to her mother. Panida entrusts Natee to take care of the situation, who decides to take Varee to the cops for identification, and at this point Varee attempts to escape for the first time but fails. Natee abducts her inside the basement chamber once again, and Varee’s continuous pleas go unheeded by both Natee and Panida.
What Is Varee’s Real Identity?
One day, finally at the brink of her sanity, Varee manages to break her glass chamber of confinement in the house’s basement and, while escaping, stabs Natee in the eye—and it becomes pretty clear at this point that this was the fateful incident Natee was telling Fah about in the present timeline. Taking Yutthachai’s gun with her, Varee goes to confront her mother, Panida, as she is done talking reason with her. If she needs to take her daughter back by forcing her mother to give her up, then that might as well happen at this point. A struggle ensues between Varee and Panida outside Min’s bedroom, and as Panida strangles her own daughter, Varee still makes futile attempts to convince her. Their struggle ends as Panida shoves Varee from the balcony, who falls to her death, and the chandelier in the ceiling comes crashing on her—burning her face, making it impossible for the authorities to identify her. Her only possession, the gun, and Fah’s number are taken as evidence, and Panida, guilt-stricken by the incident, decides to leave her ancestral home for good.
The harrowing series of events has resulted in Min suffering memory loss, and Panida decides to give her a new identity as she names her Varee. The entire picture becomes clear at this point: the original Varee died back in 1991, and the girl who was raised by loving care of Panida, whom viewers believed to be Varee so far, was none other than Min herself. In that sense, Min is her own biological mother, and Panida killed a grown-up version of Min, her own granddaughter. It becomes a bit confusing, and questions might be raised as to how time travel rules allow this paradox to happen, but the makers don’t really want you to focus on the technicalities. The tragedy of the situation is much more profound than the complexities of the time travel, as later in her life, an old Panida recognizes a grown-up Min to be the same person who arrived at her basement through the temporal gateway back in 1992. She is horrified by the gravity of her actions, but it is too late to undo whatever happened earlier. The only advice she can impart to Min is to not return to their home. Unfortunately, without context or proper clarification, Min is doomed to become the victim of the vicious cycle forever. In a montage in the final moments of the series, it is shown that a grown-up Min falls in love with Yutthachai, gets abused at his hands, leaves with their daughter, and ends up at her ancestral house once again.
Did Inspector Fah Crack the Case?
After Varee’s (Min’s) sudden disappearance, Fah decides to take a closer look at the 1992 incident of Varee’s ancestral house, probes deeper into the complex family dynamics of Varee’s family, and finds the gun as one of the pieces of evidence. After learning that the gun actually belongs to Yutthachai and didn’t even belong to the same era where it was found, Fah decides to question her father, who was in charge of the investigation at that time, about details regarding the incident. Fah learns that the deceased woman had a piece of paper with numbers written on it, and as she finds her own phone number written on it, the crushing, tragic truth of the incident dawns upon her. She figures out Varee, who is really a grown-up version of Min, was killed during the incident in her efforts to bring her daughter back. The most infuriating part of the entire scenario is that Fah cannot convince anyone else about the truth—aside from her trusted accomplice, Captain Tae, that is—and Yutthachai’s involvement was a major reason for Varee’s tragic demise. Varee never would have returned to her ancestral place otherwise and could have lived a better life. Yutthachai is shameless enough to even shame Varee by stating Min is not her daughter—obviously an attempt to distract Fah, who is well aware of his true nature. Despite that, Fah is not able to do anything as Superintendent Danai is subservient to Yutthachai. In the 1991 flashback scenes, the military coup against the democratic government of Thailand was mentioned a number of times to highlight how the military’s accumulation of political power allowed devious men like Yutthachai to take control of the administrative power as well.
It should be mentioned that, while investigating the case, Fah suffers a terrible personal crisis as she learns about Danai’s lecherous tendencies, and her own father slutshames her. Given the nature of the ongoing investigation, Fah becomes livid with how pathetically men around her have abused their power, and unable to control herself, lands a few much-needed punches on Yutthachai’s face. As a result, she is fired from her job, for better or worse, as she decides to settle elsewhere by getting away from all this mess and raising her child alone.
The Apparition and the Masked Girl
Although it is not explained, through visual cues it seems the temporally unstable nature of the house resulted in the past and present collapsing at times, especially the moment grown up Min died in the past. This probably created a paradox, as the apparition that haunted a young Min is revealed to be a temporal remnant of grown-up Min, disfigured and burned by temporal afflictions—she is totally unrecognizable, and in her effort to search for a young Min, she remained stuck inside the house forever. The masked girl is none other than a young Min herself, who was present in 1992, and once again, due to temporal instability, she occasionally trespassed into the present. The game of hide and seek, a favorite of Min, really gains a new meaning in this context.
Alice in Wonderland And Dead Pigeon Connection With Min
The original Varee, who met her horrid end in the accident, had received a copy of “Alice in Wonderland” from her mother, which came into Min’s possession on two occasions—once in 1992 and once in 2024. The themes of loss of innocence, unbelievable nature of Alice’s journey, and transformation are addressed through the narrative by the fate of Min, whose journey might be fantastical but is ultimately a tragic one. On one occasion, Min and Panida see a pigeon get stuck inside the house, and even though Min tries to help it get out, the pigeon unfortunately slams itself against the window and dies. This once again emphasizes Min’s own fate, as the inescapable situation she has found herself in will only result in her doom.
