A Tale of Two Sisters

hand grab

Me and my sister were actually talking about this and how the western versions of these films are kinda simplified. I think its because people aren't so famliar with ghost lore. I mean there's a bunch of things they don't say in the film that are kinda just common knowledge for asians.

So i'll try and fill you in on the general gist. Essentially a ghost is not good or bad it can just be. In this case we have a confused ghost who most likely doesn't even understand its dead. It was looking for its mother, who was essentially the same person as the ikuko's mother and grandmother. We were debating if this was some kind of curse the family was under, because it was only ikuko's mother who makes the sacrifice to appease the ghost. The ghost was essentially a child who thought she was playing with another girl and hence just wanted to play with ikuko. Thing was the ghost seemed to get jealous of the mother daughter bond, notice how she never actually tries to kill ikuko just harms her, she possibly didn't even know what she was doing.

Ghosts are also intrinsically linked to places they spent lots of time and the element that kills them, Mitsuko was killed by water so that was her element. This is possibly the reason she was able to manifest in the school during the rainy day or it was possibly the bond with the building.

You probably think i've made a ridiculous leap of judgement here but think about it there's no reason for the similar flashbacks, the fact the mother behaved as ikuko and all the simlarities between the mother and daughter. Honestly if you can connect all the dots this is possibly one of the best written horror films ever.