Offering a reprieve from all the saccharine romance in the ongoing Korean dramas is Twenty-Five Twenty-One star Kim Tae Ri’s latest horror thriller, Revenant.
The Disney+ Hotstar series opens the door to another world—where demons exist!
Kim Tae Ri’s character, Gu San Yeong, is possessed by one such demon—the loose-haired evil spirit. Fortunately for her, a professor of folklore, Yeom Hae Sang, played by It’s Okay to Not Be Okay star Oh Jung Se, can see these demons and ghosts. Involuntarily pulled into the mix is Lieutenant Lee Hong Sae, played by Hong Kyung, from the Seoul violent crimes investigation unit, whose only purpose is advancing his career.
The series comes with a disclaimer, and rightfully so. It revolves a lot around suicide, even though it is at the hands of an evil spirit. So people who are uncomfortable with such topics should refrain from watching.
Revenant Episode 5 Recap: What Happens At Baekchagol?
Hae Sang finds that Grandma Park burned the straw dolls meant for the ritual. The wandering ghosts at Baekchagol have started to run amok. The village head can feel the ghostly activities in the village and goes to Hae Sang.
Hae Sang goes through older videographic records to find clues as to which ritual Grandma Park used to summon the ghosts.
He deduces that she had used jangseungs. Jangseungs are wooden totem poles traditionally used to mark the boundaries of villages and are believed to ward off ghosts. They contained information about landmarks and were essentially antiquated navigation systems.
Grandma Park used these jangseungs to guide the ghosts to Baekchagol. While Hae Sang works out the ‘how’, a nearby window breaks. Hae Sang uses the village broadcasting system to play ritual music to buy some time.
Owing to the shamanic belief that ghosts and demons enter from the northeast, Hae Sang takes an axe and heads northward.
Elsewhere, San Yeong sees the wandering ghosts through a traffic mirror and makes a run for it. She trips near an abandoned establishment and sees the ghost of her father, Gu Gang Mo.
Hae Sang finds the totem in the north. In a ritual, Grandma Park changed the totem’s inscribed direction from the north to the south using her blood, blocking their path to the afterlife, and confining the ghosts. Hae Sang starts chopping down the jangseung, and a mist begins to cover the village, making the ghosts scream in agony.
Grandma Park attacks Hae Sang for trying to send her daughter away, but he doesn’t stop. She begs him to let her have one last day with her deceased daughter, but the smoke begins to consume her daughter’s ghost.
San Yeong gets emotional seeing her father and calls out to him. He says that it was not him and that he had no choice. He doesn’t elaborate further and just apologizes before the smoke consumes him too.
Finding him gone, San Yeong cries that she has a lot to ask him and then faints.
She wakes up at the emergency center with Hae Sang by her side. She relays her conversation with her father. Her mother, Yoon Gyeong Mun, barges in and demands that Hae Sang leave her daughter alone. She scolds San Yeong for not listening to her and for visiting the village in the first place. San Yeong asks to be discharged.
Gyeong Mun is still shouting as they are leaving the hospital. San Yeong finally confronts her mother about lying to her about her father’s death and lying about her hometown, but her mother just blocks her ears.
Remembering the calendar entry marked ‘estimated due date’, San Yeong asks her about the significance of the date.
Gyeong Mun reveals that it was the day her sibling should have been born.
We see a memory from 2002. A pregnant Gyeong Mun is wondering whether the baby will be a boy or a girl. Gang Mo rasps out that the second child will die at his hands. He snaps back at the sound of San Yeong crying and runs away, shocked.
Scared Gyeong Mun goes to her maternal home, intending to give birth there.
While she falls asleep, the shadow of the loose-haired evil spirit enters the house. The spirit, in Gang Mo’s form, keeps muttering that the second child must die. Gyeong Mun wakes up feeling uncomfortable and finds herself bleeding.
Her mother had seen Gang Mo that night, but by the time she came back to her senses after calling emergency services, he had disappeared. She tried calling him after her daughter was hospitalized, but he wasn’t home and had yet to visit his wife. Grandma Lee plans to go to Seoul and bring San Yeong back. The door to the ward closes creepily. Gang Mo heard everything.
Unable to reach her mother on the phone, Gyeong Mun, in the middle of the night, rushes home.
She finds her with red marks on her hand, trying to kill herself. She tells her to take San Yeong and leave her married home before flinging herself into the well.
While San Yeong’s mother reveals all of it to her on their way back home, the village head is updating Hae Sang about the rebuilding of the jangseung in the north.
He also thanks Hae Sang for making the villagers realize that their efforts weren’t in vain and informs him that the ritual will be held on a different day.
Hae Sang is guided to Gang Mo’s mother-in-law’s house.
It was bought by some company after Grandma Lee committed suicide but had remained untouched.
Both San Yeong and Hae Sang reach the same conclusion: Gu Gang Mo was possessed by the same spirit that currently possesses San Yeong, but the intricacies of the event are not clear.
Hong Sae goes to find Seo Mun Chun, who is at the storage at Gwangcheon police station.
He has been going through old investigation records that weren’t discarded after digitization, choosing to begin with Jangjin-ri, in case he missed something regarding the bruised suicides.
Still from Episode 5 of RevenantHong Sae is appalled at the waste of time. So, Mun Chun tells him to just go on with his work.
Hong Sae presents case files that connect to their new lead, Gu Gang Mo.
One of the deceased was a colleague who disliked Gang Mo and had called him a cultist and fraud.
The other two cases are about his mother-in-law, Lee Ok Ja, and his student, Hwang Cha Hui, a civil servant from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, respectively.
The last case file is about suicide at Gangbok Apartment, but Hong Sae hasn’t been able to connect it to Gang Mo yet.
Mun Chun compliments Hong Sae for acting like the Police University topper, takes the new case files, and leaves Hong Sae in the storage to find leads about the bruised suicides.
On the other side, San Yeong approaches her mother, wanting to know more about her father and paternal family.
Initially, Gyeong Mun is reproachful but caves in later. She reveals how she fell in love with a guy who was a good listener but later realized that it was just a part of his work.
She is scared, but San Yeong coaxes her. She says that Gang Mo had said that the second child must die, just like the second child always died at Jangjin-ri.
Hae Sang is in his Gang Mo room, looking at all the data he has collected. Mun Chun visits with the case files Hong Sae had previously presented. The last case file was about a librarian who had met Gang Mo the day before she died.
Hae Sang finds Gang Mo’s will in his case file and feels unsettled. He wonders why he wrote both the will and the letter to him in red ink. San Yeong’s name was written in both. Writing a name in red is believed to bring misfortune, including death. It is something that common people do not practice, let alone folklorists who never break taboos.
He concludes that Gang Mo was forced to do so by the loose-haired evil spirit. San Gyeong goes to Hae Sang, so he sends Mun Chun away.
San Gyeong tells Hae Sang that Gang Mo told Gyeong Mun about Jangjin-ri the first time they met. A juvenile ghost was evoked whenever there was a big disaster, and the child that was sacrificed had to be the second child because Confucian customs called for the protection of the firstborn.
San Yeong relates it to the news article the two had found about Lee Mok Dan, the girl who was found dead in Jangjin-ri in 1958. She thinks that Mok Dan is the loose-haired evil spirit. She receives a text while she is about to leave, and the air around her changes.
Still from Episode 5 of RevenantHae Sang’s housemate, Woo Jin, remarks that she didn’t see him, to which Hae Sang replies that she didn’t have a mirror.
Woo Jin’s eyes turn red as flies gather at the window behind him. He is a hungry ghost who desires to possess things someone else has. He accuses Hae Sang of making him the way he is.
Baek Se Mi texts San Yeong that she passed the civil service written test.
She was at their high school classmate’s wedding, and the food and plans for the afterparty are not to be missed. She sent San Yeong multiple messages to attend the afterparty, if not the wedding.
In the same hotel, a social media influencer, cameo by Pyo Ye Jin, is enjoying a solo meal.
She goes to the washroom and is shocked to see the increasing number of flies at the window. She steps back and collides with someone.
Hae San is back in his Gang Mo room. He thinks about Gang Mo’s extensive knowledge of spirits and infers that he must have known how to vanquish an evil spirit. One of the highlighted texts reads, “Only the energy of a person who was killed may suppress the object containing a loose-haired evil spirit’s energy.”
Hae Sang thinks back to Grandma Lee’s house. She was killed by the loose-haired evil spirit. So the house she killed herself in was the location where her energy was saturated. The village chief was tripped by a straw rope that was twisted to the left. Straw ropes are usually twisted to the right. Twisted to the left, it indicates the Line of Prohibition.
Just as he is driving off to stop the evil spirit, he receives a text message about a bank transfer of more than five million won.
Revenant Episode 5 Ending Explained: Why Does Evil Spirit Possess Gu San Yeong?
At the afterparty, San Yeong arrives in a dazzling look that does not look cheap and seats herself near the center.
At the end of the table is a limited edition, hard-to-get bag with the initials LJR. It is the bag that belonged to the social media influencer. Hong Sae stares at her thoughtfully.
San Yeong downs glass after glass of wine, and both Se Mi and Hong Sae look worried. Hong Sae asks her what is wrong with her. Under the watchful eyes of her best friend, an intoxicated San Yeong leans in to whisper in his ears. She whispers to Hong Sae that she killed all those people before she bursts out laughing.
Se Mi spills a glass of wine on herself. Seo Yoon Jung, the bride and their high school classmate, approaches her.
While she is cutting down Se Mi for bragging about passing the initial test for a low-ranking civil officer, San Gyeong throws a glass of wine at her.
She throws her purse at Yoon Jung to compensate for the dress.
San Yeong then proceeds to ask Se Mi, in front of everyone, whether she really wants to be in a place where Yoon Jung flaunts her money or if she just wants to brag that she passed the test.
San Yeong suddenly snaps back into herself. She tries to approach Se Mi, but the latter backs away. She runs away from the room, and Hong Sae follows.
Out of the hotel, she sees her surroundings and the way she looks, and she is afraid.
She makes her way on foot to the Han River Bridge. A voice in her head, the evil spirit, says that she was the one who desired it. San Yeong covers her ears and screams for the voice to be quiet.
Hae Sang reaches Grandma Lee’s house, where the village head dug the straw rope out as asked. Hae Sang finds the object his mother had hidden. The thin slab falls off the rope bindings. San Yeong once again possessed, says, “Found it.”
Revenant Episode 5 Review
From San Yeong receiving the baetssi daenggi, the traditional hair accessory, to Hae Sang finding the stone slab, the loose-haired evil spirit really played a long game to find the people who perfectly fit her plan.
She used Gang Mo for his knowledge of spirits and his access to various people.
It would not be inappropriate to say that Kim Tae Ri slayed in this episode.
The way her eyes and smile changed as she switched from San Yeong to possessed San Yeong was remarkable.
Though the genre does not have any mention of romance, an intoxicated possessed San Yeong flirting with Hong Sae was heart-fluttering.
When Woo Jin’s eyes turned red, the flies started sticking to the window behind him.
Pyo Ye Jin’s character was also startled by the sudden onslaught of flies on the washroom window.
So was it really the loose-haired evil spirit who possessed San Gyeong, or was it Kim Jin Woo, a hungry ghost who covets someone else’s things?
Another interesting detail to note is that the influencer’s bag was in the room before San Yeong, carrying a black bag, entered, and it was near the seat where Se Mi was sitting.
Also, her expression did not sit right when one of their friends touched the bag.
But she did seem normal in the later scenes. So was it a trick of the lighting? Holding on to that thought, Pyo Ye Jin’s character had passed by Se Mi when she was going to the washroom.
Also, what roles do our detectives play? Hong Sae seems to notice San Yeong whenever she is in the vicinity, be it in the present or when they are in high school. The character is also listed among the lead characters of the series.
Would there be the development of a new arc? And Mun Chun seems way too obsessed with solving the bruised suicides. Does he have any unknown personal agenda?