I'll throw in my interpretation as well.
I got it all as a haunted grave area story.
They come across that drained out lake, where the chinese buried alot of vietnamese people, then drained the lake.
That, to me, means disrespect of the dead and restless spirits. A haunted place.
In a sense, the various characters all have flaws that, narratively, makes them sinners and as such, eligible to die. The youngster went in with noble intentions, tried to get money to help out his mother and was a genuinely couragous and decent guy (he was the only one willing to originally be on Choi's recon team, when they are 8 left and have to split into two groups). This is probably why he, narratively, is the only one left alive.
Storywise, I think the point is that there always seems to be one, injured and insane person left.
The curse that haunts the area pulls people in with the radio calls, basically because the restless spirits of the dead want to get rescued and go home. This, unfortunately pulls in new victims. It's happened to the french soldiers, to the first korean platoon (called Mad Dog 3 in the version I watched, but apparently called Donkey in other versions), it happened to the American soldiers and it happened to Mole 3.
Those with blood on their hands do indeed get punished, but it's more of a punishment of sin, rather than actual killing. For example, Sgt. Oh, who had been given the task of getting the camera to Jung Sook from her boyfriend, who later died at R-Point, kept the camera for himself, i.e. he was a thief and a liar, something which he was punished for.
The cook had obviously been with prostitutes (which is why he had syfilis) despite having a wife and kid at home, a sin he was punished for by the restless spirits.
Hell, the only person who didn't have syfilis, as shown in the examination scene, was sgt. Jang (blind kid), thus he was the only "clean" one, so to speak.
The significance of them finding Lt. Choi's lighter in the field, was of course to show that the french graveyard was another ghostly vision and had disappeared. And this was followed by Sgt. Jin's planting of the missing soldier's dogtag, showing that HQ knew that something was wrong and just wanted a PR mission, sending out a team to come back with proof that the soldiers were dead and thus closing the case.
Far as the american soldiers and their mysterious stuff on the second story were concerned, I think it was just to hammer home the fact that they were ghosts as well. They were warned to not go up there, because then they would be exposed to the truth, something that could drive them mad, if they weren't ready for it.
That the americans even showed up and gave them beer was basically their way of trying to warn off the living, but couldn't directly as they were trapped by the curse.
While I didn't think of it as I watched the movie, I do think another poster made a lot of sense with the theory that the ghost doesn't seem to be able to kill anyone directly. They possess and coerce the soldiers into killing each other, probably partly to keep the ghosts ethereal and to reflect on the toll war takes on a person.
That makes the ending mean this to me:
Choi tries to fight the ghost as best he can, but he seems unable to swing the machete, probably struggling for control of his mind with the ghost. When he feels himself losing, he gets Jang to kill him, maybe with the slim hope he can take the ghost with him. But probably more just to avoid killing Jang, especially after he made a promise that Jang would go back home.
Jang is then left all alone and goes crazy because of the stress, uncertainty and inability to do anything, being blind and not aware of what's going on.
Hell, under the circumstances any of us probably would lose their mind.
The reason the room is empty, though, is because the others now belong to R-Point, as cursed souls haunting the area. If their bodies were recovered and laid to rest, their souls could find peace and move on to the next world, but, alas, they are doomed to walk R-Point as the damned, calling to the outside world for rescue.
The girl being the girl from the hole and the pic was just to have a face to put on the ghosts of the area, to show that the restless spirits that were the base of the curse, were the wronged vietnamese. She was just the face of the wronged, both as a vietnamese soldier fighting for freedom and as the ghost of a vietnamese slaughtered by occupational forces, first chinese, then french and now american and korean. She respresented the innocent and their vengance in the story, rather than have a whole bunch of ghost running around, it was far scarier with just one lone, out of place, girl.
That's just my take on it, of course.
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Night488
19 years ago
I think dandenholt's perspective makes the most sense. Well, makes the most sense to me anyways. The nly thing that is really, really confusing me is the bleeding radio in cobwebs. WTF was that all about?
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