Renowned Thai horror director Sophon Sakdaphisit is back with another big-budget horror movie, titled Home For Rent, and it stars some big names in Thai cinema. Starring Nittha Jirayungyurn, Penpak Sirikul, and Sukollawat Kanarot, among others, the movie is about a woman named Ning, whose life changes after two women move into her house as tenants. When Ning’s neighbor begins to suspect that the new tenants might practice black magic and weird things start happening at her own home, Ning is compelled to get to the bottom of whatever horror has come into her life. Here’s what happens in the 2023 Thai horror film Home For Rent.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Do The Tenants Arrive At Ning’s House?
A young woman named Ning walks into her house to find it trashed and vandalized. She’s been advised by her real estate agent, Tom, to rent out the home, and that way, vandals can be kept away from the property. Ning convinces her husband Kwin to take themselves and their 7-year-old daughter Ing to a smaller condo, and the new tenants, Ratree and her daughter Nuch, start living in their old house. Ning often walks by her old house to meet with her genial neighbor, Mrs. Phorn, who goes out on a stroll with her dog. Things go smoothly for a while, until certain weird events start.
How Does Kwin’s Behavior Change?
Phorn calls Ning one day to inform her of crow’s feathers being hung outside the house Ning had let to the two women, and the elderly woman suspects that there’s some black magic involved. Also, someone has murdered Phorn’s pet dog. Moreover, Ning’s husband, Kwin, starts acting strangely, refusing to sleep on the bed with her and Ing and keeping a lock on his rucksack. What’s more, he acts rather secretive about a weird tattoo on his chest. When Ning drops by her old house to gather some stuff from the storage, she catches a glimpse of someone looking at her from behind the curtains. However, Ning is the most shocked to find the same tattoo on Ratree’s neck that she’d seen on her husband.
At night, Phorn sends Ning a video of a murder of crows circling around Ning’s old house, and only one room is lit with a haunting red light. The video is cut short when Ratree stares directly at Phorn shooting the video, and soon, the message is unsent, and there’s no response from Ning’s neighbor. She is scared of her wits when she spots a ghoulish entity attempting to lay its rotting fingers on the sleeping Ing. Ning freaks out and tries calling her husband, but Kwin can’t be found, and there’s someone in the bathroom. Moments later, Kwin steps out with a red book in hand, and Ning spies on him to find her husband putting that book inside his locked backpack.
Why Does Ning Take Her Daughter To A Hotel?
Ning goes to look into what happened to Mrs. Phorn, only to be told by Ratree that the elderly woman has left town. Meanwhile, Kwin’s behavior grows increasingly erratic, and when his wife follows him up to the roof, she’s terrified to find him sitting in the corner, chanting something freaky, as hundreds of crows swarm over the apartment. Ning spots something in front of her, only to realize moments later that it’s the rotting corpse of a young girl. She scampers downstairs and lies down on her bed, and soon afterwards, Kwin walks in and calls her, but Ning doesn’t respond.
The next day, Ning sneaks Kwin’s red book out of his backpack and goes into the washroom to look at it, but is surprised to find its pages to be blank. However, opening the wash cabinet terrifies Ning because inside she finds totems, drawings, and amulets, all heavily linked to black magic. She also finds a doll that Ing is very attached to, and she says her father got her the doll. At Ing’s school, her mother watches in horror as Ratree whispers something in Ing’s ear. Determined to keep her daughter safe from these freaky tenants, Ning tries taking her daughter away, only for Kwin to stop his wife, and he ends up saying ‘Mother’ or Ratree won’t harm Ing. Despite being slapped by her husband, Ning takes her daughter away, keeps her in a hotel, and contacts her old friend, who’s a cop. He informs her that the tenants have faked both their names and contact numbers, but the cop’s girlfriend barges in and demands that Ning stay away from her fiancé because he still likes her.
What’s Kwin’s Story?
Denied help at every corner, Ning comes back to the hotel room, only to find Ing missing. She’s told by the maid that the girl’s father has just taken her away. Ning asks Tom for help, and he promises to help her while driving her, but as it turns out, even he’s a part of that cult. Tom knocks Ning out, puts her inside a suitcase, and takes her body to be dumped, only to be stopped by an alarm on his phone. It’s time to offer prayer to the cursed lord their cult worships. This takes us to a flashback of 11 years in the past, and Kwin is the happiest with his daughter Jaa. It was just the two of them, but they were happy until an short-circuit electrocuted the little girl. Kwin had crawled inside a shell, looking at videos of himself and his daughter all day, until Ning came by his house to sell insurance. 11 years later, they were married and had a daughter together, but in his heart, he still missed his first daughter.
When Ratree came by to look at the house, she told Kwin that she could sense his daughter’s spirit in the house and that she could help him reunite with Jaa. This explains why Kwin readily rented the house out to the tenants, and soon the preparations began. Ratree told Kwin that Jaa could only inhabit the body of a living girl of her age to visit her father, and Ing was the first choice. Ratree assured Kwin that Jaa would just come to say goodbye and no harm would come to Ing, so he requested his daughter’s help, and she readily agreed to help her father. Ratree met Ing in her school, marked her for the ritual, and also showed her the other woman who lives inside Ratree’s body. Apparently, the old woman was Mrs. Napaporn, and she offered her body for Ratree to live inside. This is why Kwin was praying, chanting, and getting that strange tattoo, but what he didn’t know was that he had been duped.
What Was Ratree’s Actual Plan?
At the ritual, Kwin spotted a silhouette approaching him and was relieved to realize it was Mrs. Phorn, but it wasn’t her after all. Phorn had been possessed by some unholy spirit, and it stabbed Kwin in the stomach and held him down as Ratree’s real plan began. She’d never wanted to help Kwin but sought Ing’s body as a vessel to bring back the cursed spirit of her own daughter, who’d drowned to death. Everything that Kwin did unknowingly only helped that evil spirit get stronger, and now it had come to possess Ing’s body. While Jaa’s spirit stayed inside the beautiful doll, Ratree’s daughter lived inside a sinister-looking doll, and now Ratree would do the final ritual to make the transfer. Ratree told Ing that the old woman’s body she was inhabiting had been murdered so that Ratree could live there. Realizing this stank to high heavens, Ing tried fleeing, but Nuch captured her. Kwin tried to protect his daughter, but Nuch pressed on his wound until he bled to death.
What Happens To Ing After The Ritual?
The ritual was nearing completion when Ning rushed to Ing’s rescue. She’d stabbed Tom in the chest with a pair of garden shears and took his car to drive to the location, asking Nuch for the location from Tom’s phone. By the time Ning arrived, the evil spirit was slowly taking over Ning’s body. She tried smashing the doll, but the rotting ghoul she’d seen on the roof grabbed her throat from inside the sinister doll and began strangling her until she used the hammer to smash the main symbol made on its forehead. The doll vanished, and Ning tried fleeing with her daughter, only to be stopped by Ratree and Nuch. Ratree said that the girl in Ning’s arms wasn’t Ing anymore and chased after Ning as the entire roof collapsed on them. Ing was the first to wake, but there was something different about her. She fished out a pointed rod and punctured Nuch’s skull with it, and she proceeded to do the same to Ratree as the police arrived downstairs. When the cops came, they found Ing hugging her deceased father and sobbing uncontrollably.
How Does The Movie End?
So what happened during Home For Rent‘s ending? Did Ing save her mother, or was it the cursed spirit that was back? As it turns out, before dying, Kwin marked the doll he’d gifted Ing because that’s where Jaa’s spirit resided. He marked it with his blood and had completed the ritual, asking her to protect her sister. The girl who stabbed the two cultists was Jaa, after all. When Ning came to visit her daughter in the hospital after learning about Kwin’s first daughter, she was shocked to hear Ing call her “aunty.” The girl who used to be Ing said she woke up to find herself in Ing’s body and apologized for replacing Ning’s daughter, but the mother hugged her. Sometime later, Ing hopped on to her mother’s cycle but didn’t hold on to her waist for support until Ning herself took those little hands and put them around her waist. She also offered to take her daughter to the beach later. Ing was gone, only for Jaa to reside in her body, but she was accepted by a woman she never knew. Jaa had lost her father, but she’d gained a mother who’d love her as her own daughter, even if she wasn’t her Ing. Such is the power of a mother’s love.
