Ending (spoilers!)

It didn't seem to fit, did it? I, too, was confused by its addition, so I read the reviews that others made here on imdb. My understanding from a couple of them was that Kim took a conventional movie storyline for its time, the domestic melodrama, and stood it on its ear. The ending scene was added to calm the viewers, I think. Otherwise, that would have been one very heavy ending to the movie, maybe too shocking for the sensibilities of the time. That seems plausible to me. How about you?

I'm not sure about Korea, but before the 70s in the U.S. if you wanted to have a lurid, adult, B movie it usually had to have a moral or lesson to it. You could show people doing the worst stuff, but it was still "socially redeeming" if they wrapped it in a lesson. That's how I saw this. They introduce the husband and wife talking about a cautionary tale, then we see it, then we see the husband and wife summarizing the lesson that should be learned.


"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."

On the dvd commentary (with English subtitles!) its mentioned that it was the director himself who felt uncomfortable with the movie being too dark, so he went to reshoot the before and after scenes. I think it adds to the lewdness of the movie, making it even more fun and sleazy to watch.

Yeah, the ending reminded me of the "curtain call" at the end of THE BAD SEED (1956.)

Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!

I think they were trying to lighten the mood, after all that twisted darkness... but, it didn't work, because it made a nightmarish movie even more absurd. After all that weirdness you get a guy talking to you and trying to make nice-nice, it just seemed chilling. Kinda like the "comical" song while the killers are driving along in Last House On The Left - it was so out-of-place it made everything else seem all the more twisted.

To me it felt like the ending was trying to say that - even if we realize what went wrong in the movie - many of us are doomed to go down that road anyways.

I almost expected to see the whole movie play out again with a different family with different details but same depressing ending

I just watched it... so what does this last scene mean? Was it just a story the father was reading on the newspaper? I didn't really like the ending, but I guess leaving the story as it was could have been too much in those years.

The ending was ill-conceived and almost cringe-worthy, but thankfully brief, and therefore doesn't detract (much) from the greatness of the rest of the film.