MovieChat Forums > Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2002) Discussion > Bad ending, sorry kids *spoiler*

Bad ending, sorry kids spoiler

posted 17 years ago by SewerSider
26 replies | jump to latest

I'm sorry, but the ending is just completely unsatisfactory, and you can write it off as "Oh, it's foreign, us Americans are just stupid", but it doesn't excuse it. This is how I read it:

The ghost girl had parents that were totally neglectful of her, falls into the water tank and drowns. In revenge, she attaches herself to Yoshimi and wants to off her daughter so she can take the daughter's place. Great. So instead of MOVING OUT OF THE GODDAMN APARTMENT COMPLEX, Yoshimi abandons her daughter to live in a watery hell with the ghost girl. Whoopie. So I guess everyone got what was coming to them.

It's a load of garbage. No, it doesn't have to be completely satisfactory, but WHY can't she just leave? She has no reason to stick with the ghost girl, it doesn't benefit her, it doesn't benefit her daughter, it just makes her and her daughter miserable.

NOW, what WOULD make sense is if the ghost girl was Yoshimi's FIRST daughter, and due to her neglect, the daughter died AND this whole divorce thing got started. That would make sense. It would lead to a sad ending, not a Hollywood happy ending, but an ending that MADE SENSE. And all they would have to do is change a few minutes of film. If this is what is supposed to be the interpretation, there's no evidence of it. I've seen it twice and could see no hints that the ghost girl is Yoshimi's daughter. The ending is just terrible, Yoshimi abandons her daughter and goes to hell instead of leaving the apartment complex. I tell you, rent at that place must have been golden.

[–] vashuo8 16 years ago

I guess you didn't notice that they were about to move out, but her lawyer advised against it in fear of her losing her child. So to solve the problem the lawyer had management fix the problems she was having the with the room above her. Therefore they thought everything was better. Therefore they didn't move out.

Later that night is when everything went haywire. I also guess you didn't notice that the "ghost girl" was killing the mother by strangulation. So to save herself as well as her daughter, the mother sacrifices herself to live with the "ghost girl".

It was definitely a sad ending, but I don't think it's a bad ending at all.

[–] texmexmartin 16 years ago

Well, I think there wasn't any ghost. The ghost girl is only an imagination by the mother. perhaps there is a child who is missed, but all the other things are imagination by her fantasy. Imaging, The mother was a lector of strange stories so she mixed some of that stories with the missed girl and her appartement.

[–] JaneSchmo 16 years ago

The ghost would have killed them had they attempted to move. She placates the ghost by letting it kill her and agreeing to live with the ghost forever.

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[–] emerald_dark 15 years ago

The ghost behaves very threateningly to the mother in the lift. She was physically between mother and daughter, therefore she could have taken either of them. The mother knew this - she was already attacking her until she told it she was its mother.

Sacrifice onesself to an abandoned child (after being abandoned as a child herself, I think) so that her daughter might live. Bad ending? Pull your mind out of your arse.

[–] gengar843 15 years ago

I think the ending made sense, considering the self-sacrifice aspect. Yoshimi did not want to be like her mother, who abandoned her, so she gave up one daughter for another. That was a bit hard to swallow, but it was interesting from the water angle - that everyone is traumatized in the rain... notice that Yoshimi's real daughter, as a teenager, has a pang for a girl apparently left out in the rain also, before that mother comes to get her.

HOWEVER.. when Yoshimi goes to the elevator with who she THINKS is her daughter, and the elevator doesn't work, I don't get why she doesn't just use the stairs! At that point, Yoshimi was gone, so in that scene it wasn't so much self-sacrifice as paralysis, which I thought was stupid, and I yelled at the screen, "USE THE STAIRS!"

But, it was an eerie film, and I did hide my face for a second at one point.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] Haynerator 15 years ago

She can't leave, because then the film would be over in 20 minutes.

You've got to suspend your disbelief for these things for them to work, the most obvious solutions don't make for good viewing.

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[–] 15 years ago

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