“Re/member” is what happens when The Grudge meets Squid Game, only less scary and with less gameplay. Netflix’s “Re/member” isn’t really about horror as much as it is about the thrill that comes with watching a horror film. We have a past incident; we have a group of people that get involved in it in the present and have to figure out a way out of it while trying to stay alive for as long as possible. For those who find it confusing, it’s only normal. So, let’s break it down with an axe.
Spoiler Alert
‘Re/member’ Plot Synopsis: What Happens In The Film?
8-year-old Miko Onoyama is brutally dismembered by a man. Thirty years later, five students of the Acacia Academy, namely Asuka, Rie, Rumiko, Takahiro, Shota, and Atsushi, find themselves trapped in a time loop of a single day. In these 24 hours, they have to carry out a “body search,” find the dismembered body parts and assemble them. If they fail, the day repeats. As simple as it sounds, their game is bound to get extended as they are being stalked by a “Red Person,” a little girl drenched in blood who doesn’t waste a single moment before brutally killing them. Will the students be able to find the body parts? For that, they need to “remember.”
The Red Person And Body Search
The Red Person seems to be Miko, but then why is she trying to prevent the students from putting her body parts together (seemingly so that she can move on to the other plane)? Is it then the devil that has captured Miko’s soul and doesn’t want to leave her? Then why bring a handful of people together to gather the body parts in the first place? Is this some kind of heavenly design to get Miko’s soul the peace she deserved but never got, considering that they had to keep all the parts inside a coffin that was, in turn, inside a chapel? Also, we must remember that Miko (her soul) did ask Asuka for help finding her body parts too. While it sounds absurd, the devil seemed to have trapped Miko inside himself [Miko’s head was inside Emily, the doll, which the devil used as a conduit of sorts] and hid her other body parts. So, the students had to behead Emily, get hold of Miko’s head and put it in the coffin with the rest of the body parts to set Miko’s soul free and break the spell/time loop.
We know that the game of “body search” has been going on for a long time, as the librarian, Mr. Ashiro, tells Asuka that he, along with his friends, had been a part of the same search as students. Naturally, they couldn’t have been searching for the body parts of Miko Onoyama but for some other kid who had been killed in the same brutal manner. So, this Body Search and Time Loop does seem like some form of cycle that repeats itself at intervals of years. How many years, we do not know. Ashiro also tells Asuka that after they broke the loop, they forgot about each other. This brings us to the next topic.
Loneliness Come to Life
Asuka is someone who is completely ignored by her classmates. After her, in the same category, comes Rie, who also feels left out. Rumiko is being cheated on by her so-called biker boyfriend. Shota is always picked on and made fun of by others. Atsushi keeps to himself and unless attendance calls for it, spends his days in his room. He was removed from the basketball team after hurting his knee. Takahiro suffers from a fear of failure, which is why he backed out of the basketball team as well. In all these students, there is either a sense of being left out or the fear of being left out. More than 30 years ago, little Miko too was sick and was being treated at her home, so she couldn’t go to school till the day she was killed. As far as friends were concerned, all that she had was her doll, Emily. So, if we consider Asuka’s statement that all five of them were chosen due to their loneliness to be true, the reason might be either because Emily needed someone like her to help her or that it was the devil’s play because Miko didn’t want to let go.
Asuka’s Fear
Asuka didn’t have any friends at school, frankly speaking. After she got stuck in the time loop with the five other classmates, she found friendship and perhaps even love. In this way, the film shows how a sinister situation brought some people together in such a way that they became the best of friends. Their loneliness was gone, and they fought the Red Person together as a team. When they weren’t looking for body parts, they were enjoying themselves, including eating together and going to the beach. Asuka was having the time of her life. She found love in Takahiro as well. So when she finds out from Mr. Ashiro that once they find all the body parts, the time loop will break, and she won’t be able to remember her new friends, and neither will they remember her, she finds herself in a dilemma.
‘Re/member’ Ending Explained: Do The Students Find Miko’s Head?
Yes, they do, but for that, they had to fight the large monster that the Red Person and the Emily Doll have merged and turned into. In the endeavor, only Asuka survives till the end after Takahiro sacrifices himself after being successfully able to behead the monster; the other students have been killed already while trying to capture the monster. The monster’s head falls off Miko’s head. However, the monster is still alive and tries to kill Asuka. This is when Asuka realizes that she has to own the truth that she isn’t going to let herself be alone again, and she isn’t going to give up on hope, something that she started believing in after she made her new friends, thanks to the time loop. This gives her strength, and she is ultimately able to beat the monster, already weak, with a metal rod until it gets entangled in chains and ends up with a huge cross falling on it and piercing it through and through, pinning it to the ground dead [Yet another example to symbolize the presence of the heavenly design]. Asuka then takes Miko’s head and places it in the coffin along with the other body parts and puts the lid on. Miko is now free.
Towards the end of “Re/member,” we see that Asuko, Rie, Rumiko, Takahiro, Shota, and Atsushi are yet again chosen as the committee members in their class. Although none of them remembers the other, when Takahiro finds his badge on the ground, which Asuko seems to have dropped [Takahiro had given it to her as a token of remembrance and promised her he would find her after the time loop breaks], it brings everything back to him, and he reminds her of her promise. The film ends with Asuka smiling back at Takahiro, making it clear that she, too, remembers. After all, what would life be like if we didn’t remember?
What Does The Post Credits Scene In ‘Re/member’ Suggest?
There is a post-credits scene as well that shows the well from which Asuka had seen, or thought she had seen, numerous bloodied hands coming out. The camera travels to the bottom of the well, where we see a torn newspaper with the news of Miko Onoyama’s death on it. Then slowly, blood starts appearing on the newspaper, and Miko’s face changes into that of another girl of her age, i.e., eight. The name also changes to “Asuka Morisaki.” So, it seems that Asuka Morisaki has been killed as well, and the devil has found its next soul to get hold of and return as the Red Person. The loop is about to reoccur, and again a handful of people will be chosen who will have to find the dismembered body parts of Asuka in 24 hours while being chased by the new Red Person (the devil posing as Asuka’s bloodied self). So, we were right to think that the loop occurs at intervals, but we didn’t know that the intervals were this short. Thus, Body Search is about to resume. The only question that lingers is whether the killer behind these murders, which led to the body search, is one and the same. If yes, then is the murderer somehow connected to the devil? Or is a body search a random event that picks on random killings by random murderers?
What’s more bizarre is that if this new little girl Asuka Morisaki is the Asuka we all have come to know in the film, then it seems that there’s more to her than meets the eye. We know she had a sixth sense of sorts and even had visions. This, along with the fact that when Takahiro was about to tell the others about an incident at the amusement park, Asuka shushed him. Something must have happened there that only she knows and doesn’t want anyone else to know and it connects to her visions and her name in the newspaper at the bottom of the well. Considering she is already dead, and has been so all this while, it can be that the time loop has been altered somehow. Hence Asuka, if we are right about this, is about to become the next Red Person. Although the post credits scene can be a cliffhanger for the viewers to break their heads and form theories, a potential sequel will probably clear Asuka’s past and by extension, the concept of time loop as shown in this film.
