Netflix’s New Psychological Thriller Gets Away With Some Absurd Twists, Especially In The Ending
Revelations is a new South Korean thriller recently released on Netflix. The film is about two characters, a pastor and a police inspector, who are both driven to deal with a suspected kidnapper in their own way. It’s an intriguing movie with some wonderfully compelling psychological drama, but it is also littered with coincidences that get more absurd as they pile up.
In most movies, twists and coincidences like the ones seen in Revelations would be considered contrived at best, and unbelievably plot-breaking at worst. But here, they work. They’re actually necessary for the story.
To explain what I mean, I will have to talk about a few MAJOR SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen Revelations yet, go ahead and watch it now. It’s good, and it’s definitely worth experiencing without knowing anything about the plot. If you have already seen it (or you don’t care about spoilers), my breakdown of why the twists work continues below the trailer.
Right Place, Right Time
Most of the focus of the first three-quarters of the movie is on pastor Sung Min-chan. Sung goes through a transformation. He starts out as a mild-mannered man who internalizes life’s hardships. But after a fateful encounter with Kwon Yang-rae—a man he suspects kidnapped his daughter—Sung comes to believe he has been chosen by God to punish the wicked. He repeatedly interprets coincidences as providence.
Up to a certain point, the coincidences that lead Sung to a violent confrontation with Kwon on a forest road at night are plausible. The series of events has to happen in a certain way, which might seem improbable, but it’s entirely possible. But then there’s the big one. The huge coincidences that lead Sung back to Kwon and convince the beleaguered pastor that God’s hand is orchestrating everything.
Here is what has to line up for this to happen:
- Sung’s wife has to be at a specific care facility at that exact day and time.
- Sung has to drive her there.
- Kwon has to be alive after being thrown off a cliff.
- Kwon has to make it to that exact facility.
- The ambulance coming to pick up Kwon has to be delayed.
Sung isn’t blind to the fact that this scenario is incredibly unlikely. It’s actually a main factor in what pushes him to believe that God has chosen him to deal with Kwon himself (well, that and Sung sees an “angel” in the clouds).
A Last Minute Rescue
On the other side of the story, Inspector Lee Yeon-hui had been following Kwon up until his disappearance. She also has a strange feeling about Sung and his possible involvement with Kwon and a missing girl (Sung’s daughter wasn’t kidnapped, but a girl from Sung’s church is now missing). Lee’s pursuit of the truth is built around good police work, intuition, and a bit of luck. All very plausible. That is, until the finale.
Lee tracks Sung to an unfinished hotel where he took Kwon after removing him from the care facility. Lee has her own tragic connection to Kwon, but as a police officer she tries to do the right thing despite wanting to see him pay for what he’s done. After Lee, Kwon, and Sung come together, Kwon is dead and Sung is sent to jail. The problem is, there’s still a girl who is missing, and only Kwon knew where she is.
Much like Sung’s series of absurd coincidences, here’s what has to happen for Lee to save the girl:
- Kwon must have been abused in a room with a very specific style of window.
- Lee’s sister must have moved into a room with the same window style.
- Kwon had to work on a site where an abandoned house had the same style of window.
- Lee’s father had to call and remind her of the window.
- Lee had to put it all together to realize Kwon’s trigger for violence.
- Lee had to understand everything and drive across town with only seconds to spare before the house where the girl is hidden is demolished.
Lee saves the day, but was it fine police work, coincidence, or providence?
Why It All Works
As described above, two of the biggest plot points in the movie are based on wildly improbable sets of coincidences. If you watch the movie and these ridiculous scenarios pull you out of the story, I get it. A lot of modern film commentary revolves around strict, logical cause-and-effect being good, while scenarios involving too much luck or happenstance are usually bad. I can’t say I always agree with that, and Revelations is a good example of why.
For Pastor Sung, the coincidences drive his character to believe that God is leading him towards a righteous path. It is vital to Sung’s character that he sees divine intervention in the mundane. He interprets everything as having meaning and purpose, and it drives him to do some terrible things (like when he attempts to shoot Lee). Without the coincidences in Sung’s life, there would be no story.
For Inspector Lee, the pileup of coincidences at the end of her story plays directly into the themes of the movie. Up until that point, her story is logical. In contrast to Sung who appears to be delusional, Lee seems to understand her psychological issues, and she approaches her investigation in an analytical way. But when she experiences a series of highly unlikely coincidental events, we are left with many questions.
Is there truly some divine force at work whether we want to believe it or not? Or is that just what our minds make up to rationalize the pain of the world we live in? Revelations doesn’t explicitly give us an answer (despite the explanations from the psychiatrist in the film), and that’s why the ending of the movie is so effective. It is left up to each individual viewer to interpret the events of the movie in their own way.
I tend to lean heavily towards the side of interesting coincidences rather than divine intervention, but that’s what’s so great about the art of film. It allows us to consider options we would never believe in real life. Could there be something to Sung’s nearly-unshakable faith? Maybe. Could he simply be a broken man who believes his own lies? Maybe. That’s up to you to decide for yourself.