Chapter 44 Karma We will live kindly and earnestly...
Cheng Sijie rummaged through the locker and pulled out a few bags of potato chips and jelly, then took out her phone and waved it, "Xiaomi, want some milk tea? It's on me. Meng, do you want some?"
Hearing that the two girls wanted to order milk tea, Gu Meng peeked out from behind the bed curtains and said, "Me too! I want some too! Yi Dian Dian recently released a new banana milk tea. Do you want to try it?"
"Really?" Cheng Sijie raised an eyebrow. "This isn't just banana milk with a different name, is it?"
"No, it's super delicious with taro balls, no sugar, and less ice!"
Cheng Sijie was skeptical.
Cheng Sijie also ordered one.
In the end, everyone ordered four servings of banana milk tea with less ice and no extra sugar. Indeed, the essence of humanity is—
Copy and paste.
Two female college students squeezed together to watch a horror movie. Since they were both engineering students, their computers were gaming laptops with high-end graphics cards, resulting in clear picture quality and an immersive, thrilling experience.
The movie started.
The camera slowly pans across a framed photo on the fireplace, revealing a family portrait: a tall, handsome father in overalls, a gentle and serene mother in a floral dress, and a little girl in the center, holding a doll and smiling innocently. The warm yellow tones fill the entire scene with an atmosphere of happiness.
A typical Southern American home layout.
Shimi said, "Is this background information? A family of three, could it be that one of them is mentally ill, like that... oh right, 'The Shining'! Wasn't the father in that movie mentally ill, having auditory hallucinations?"
Cheng Sijie stroked his chin thoughtfully: "Perhaps."
After all, such a name, with its connotations of "karma" and "retribution," coupled with the typical family element of "a family of three," clearly suggests a certain intergenerational transmission, such as hereditary diseases, domestic violence, ancestral curses, and other terrifying elements that can be exploited.
But wouldn't that be too cliché?
It may be a splatter movie, and although it's cheesy, the audio and visuals are excellent, making it a low-budget gem.
Cheng Sijie shared his guess.
My roommate, Xiaomi, shook her head. "No, no, no. The reviews say there are a lot of plot twists in this movie, it's definitely not that simple."
While Cheng Sijie and Xiaomi were talking, the camera panned to a cute little girl playing with a doll next to them. She looked like a doll, with bright blue eyes, and was quiet and well-behaved.
It is clearly the cute little girl in the photo.
"Lily!"
"Lily!" A gentle female voice came from off-screen.
The little girl immediately looked up, a sweet smile spreading across her face, and ran towards her mother off-camera. She nestled into her mother's arms and asked in a childish voice, "Mommy, what gift do you think Daddy will bring me home today?"
The mother pretended to think, gently stroking her daughter's hair: "Sweetie, this surprise will have to wait until Daddy comes home..."
The scene shifts, and the father enters, holding the teddy bear that Lily wanted most. Next, a warm dinner scene unfolds: candlelight flickers, silver cutlery gleams, and the family of three chats and laughs at the table. Soft piano music flows in the background, and every shot is bathed in a warm golden light.
A heartwarming family of three.
Warm background music and color scheme.
Although film is a dual-narrative medium with many narrative tricks to play with on the musical and visual levels, it is clear that the director did not use the characteristics of this narrative medium from the beginning to create contrast and atmosphere, such as the horror behind the warmth.
But... this is, after all, a horror movie.
"Damn, they seem so robotic. This is supposed to be a horror movie, but it's so heartwarming. It actually feels more like 'My Sister Carries a Doll' in a scary way," Xiaomi complained, rubbing her arm.
The image then abruptly zooms out, then rapidly contracts, finally settling on the pupils of a young woman. "My name is Lily..."
Oh my god! Isn't that the voice of that actress? The one who was arguing loudly with a male actor on set.
Cheng Sijie was taken aback.
Even more dramatically, the boyfriend character who appeared next was none other than the actor she had been arguing with back then.
It really is them!
Cheng Sijie almost thought she had misremembered, and she couldn't help but sigh: These two actors are really good at acting.
It's hard to imagine that these two young lovers, who are so deeply in love in a horror movie, would send each other's grandparents to heaven on set and curse each other to have no children.
At first, Cheng Sijie was in the mood to complain, but later she and her roommate got caught up in the plot.
The film employs a dual narrative structure: in addition to the heartwarming childhood memories, the main storyline is the love story between Lily and her boyfriend Andy as adults.
The female protagonist, Lily, and the male protagonist, Andy, are a couple. Lily was raised by her single mother.
In fact, the female protagonist had a very happy family life in her childhood. Her mother was gentle and tolerant, a housewife, and her father was an electrician with a good income. He loved to drink and was cheerful, honest, and reliable. Until one day, her father died in a car accident.
The mother often became hysterical, praising the protagonist's father on one hand and saying he was a scoundrel, an alcoholic, and heartlessly abandoned her and her daughter on the other!
Subsequently, this verbal violence evolved into physical abuse and emotional bullying.
Young Lily was filled with fear and anxiety, yet she longed for someone to appear and bring her hysterical mother back to normal. As she grew up, Andy entered her world.
If things continued like this all afternoon, Lily's life would be completely ruined by her mother. With no other option, she ran away.
Lily knew that her love with Andy was not blessed by her mother. Even though she was determined to be with Andy, she left her crazy and weak mother behind in their old hometown.
Whenever I think of this, my mother's face appears in my mind, contorted with rage and tears, as she fiercely says, "You will get your comeuppance."
Lily would scream, apologize, think of her father, and wonder: Why has life brought all this to me?
Father, why did you do this to us?
She finally understood the resentment her mother felt towards her father that she had never understood before.
However, understanding does not mean that it can be resolved; the dead cannot be brought back to life.
As time passed, Lily and Andy lived happily ever after and had a daughter, whom she named Susan, the same name as her mother. Susan looked very much like Lily when she was a child.
Whenever the protagonist thinks of her mother, she is awakened by nightmares. Her daughter will come close to her, and the little girl, who cannot speak, makes her feel warm and comforted from the bottom of her heart.
Lily thought: When Susan turns one year old, she can take her back to see her mother and bring her over so that the family can live happily together.
But when she had this thought, she would think of her mother, and the way her mother cried, screamed, and hit her during her childhood.
"No!!" Lily was drenched in cold sweat. Even her daughter couldn't calm her down, but Andy couldn't understand it.
Lily's condition is getting worse and worse.
For some reason, she often saw her mother's shadow in her own home—
When she cooks according to her own taste, when she teaches her daughter, when she is intimate with her husband...
Lily was in a daze, and she had a vague intuition that she might suffer the same misfortune as her mother.
The director vividly portrays this panic and horror. The film's constantly distorted shots and sound effects, interspersed with various terrifying fantasies, finally cause her psychological problems. She begins to constantly "care" about her husband and children, including but not limited to checking on her daughter's health and safety 24 hours a day and constantly disrupting her husband's work to check on his condition.
She knew where her fear came from, and well, Lily thought: I have to face it.
But the most terrifying thing was that when she returned to her hometown to visit her mother, she found that her mother was no longer alive.
This matter became a knot in her heart.
"You will get your comeuppance."
In her dream, the phantom of her mother kept haunting her.
She became increasingly mentally sensitive, arguing with Andy while he was driving. After Andy died in a car accident, the grief of losing her husband and the pressure of life overwhelmed her, and she began to turn into a hysterical madwoman.
In the end, Lily's daughter becomes rebellious, hangs out with a group of teenagers, joins the local gang, and runs away from home.
One scene in the film is heartbreaking: Susan secretly drags her suitcase away from home and celebrates her escape with a group of shady friends on the street. But while celebrating, Susan can't help but worry and turns to look back at the window of her mother's room.
Lily woke up with a start, calling out, "Susan! Susan!"
She sat alone in the dimly lit bedroom, with three overlapping shadows cast on the wall behind her—her mother, herself, and Susan.
The movie abruptly ended.
"That's it?!"
Xiaomi yelled, "Holy crap!!! Wake up, girl! You and your mother just have psychological trauma, there aren't even any ghosts here!"
Three generations, due to an unexpected accident, the first generation was left with psychological trauma and shadows, which in turn affected the second generation, and then the third generation...
Cheng Sijie said, "It was indeed very well shot..."
This plot, which could easily fall into clichés, has been focused on as a kind of curse and mysticism, with the so-called "ghosts" essentially being psychological "shadows."
The character in the show keeps repeating "ghost, it's her ghost..."
That's the most brilliant double entendre ever.
ghost
n. ghost, phantom; (especially) memory, recollection of something frightening.
—It is both a ghost and a demon in one's heart. The tragedy of three generations is like an unsolvable curse, but the root cause is not supernatural forces, but the psychological trauma passed down from generation to generation.
It is indeed a thought-provoking film.
Since Triangle, the concept of terrifying thought, simultaneous cause and effect, and infinite reincarnation has been used in many horror films. However, this film takes a unique approach and expands this "infinite loop" to the discussion of cause and effect within a family.
Simply saying, "The parents that children hate become the kind of parents they hate when they grow up," is too dry and uninteresting.
Rather, sometimes, the unexpected death of a loved one is a devastating blow, like a continuous rain that can soak the lives of several generations.
Cheng Sijie murmured, "I really don't know what to say."
Xiaomi lamented, "Cherish the present, cherish what you have, but..."
Inexperienced teenagers can enjoy the surface-level horror and the thrilling cinematic language, but college students with some life experience, and even adults, can reflect on many things, such as trauma from their family of origin, psychological damage, and the trauma of war...
They were filled with emotion.
For some reason, Gu Meng, sitting on her bed watching them hug each other, scream, and express their opinions, suddenly sighed, "How am I supposed to watch you scream like this after we graduate?"
Well, that one sentence successfully ignited the sadness in the four of them.
Almost instantly, Cheng Sijie felt her eyes sting. She looked at her roommate Xiaomi, who was hugging her, and suddenly said, "I wish time could stand still here."
Xiaomi immediately burst into tears.
But everyone knows it's not possible. Although life is peaceful and stable now, and their parents are still in their prime, they don't yet have to step into the bitter cold of adult society, but...
But refusing to move forward and eliminating the possibility of continuing life is tantamount to preventing future happiness from entering one's life.
Whether it's a storm or a sunny day.
Cheng Sijie suddenly thought:
Whether it's a rainbow or a storm.
I don't want these girls in front of me, including myself, to experience the so-called "karma" depicted in this movie. Please, world, be kind to us. We will live kindly and earnestly. Please believe us!
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