Revelations Plot Summary
A South Korean thriller movie set to debut on Netflix in 2025, Revelations explores the themes of obsession, mental trauma, and misguided justification. The film is another reflection of Yeon Sang-ho’s style and trademark philosophical themes, after already having found international acclaim with his previous works like Train to Busan, Parasyte, and Hellbound. Starring Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Hyun-been, and Shin Min-jae, the film is set to release in March 2025.
The film begins with Yang-rae being stalked by Kwon, who proceeds to follow him to a church where a girl appears to be worshiping. Pastor Sung Min-chan, a perky individual, tries his best to hug and persuade Yang-rae to join his church, but ends up being a bully and a monster of Min-chan’s narcissistic wish thinking. Trouble starts when he comes to know from a garrulous servant that his boy has absconded with Yang-rae, a sex offender with two convictions already to his name.
Yang-rae is further embroiled in a web of lies and missing persons. Serving as a foil to our Yang, a protagonist diabolique, Detective Lee Yeon-hui has her agenda. They have a shared history that’s marred. Together with the elements of a disturbed child, a vanished convict, and an obsessive police officer converging from different directions. with the former world blending perfectly into the realm of the unresolved crimes makes life is challenging for the police.
It’s accompanied by Regency’s hallmark twist in the tail move of a twist and a mix of emotions. Here is an ending explained piece on the movie, Revelations
What goes on between Min-chan and Kwon Yang-rae?
While following A-yeong, Yang-rae ended up at her church, which was run by Pastor Sung Min-chan. After mass, Min-chan sees Yang-rae and attempts to register him, offering him a cup of coffee and a hoodie. Yang-rae appears agitated and makes a quick exit when Min-chan receives a phone call from his P.I. about his wife having some affair.
Distracted Min-chan also forgets to pick his son Yeon-u from the daycare, and gets a call from his wife Si-yeong saying that usually quiet Yeon-u has in fact, been picked up by an unknown man.
He begins to panic, realising that his picture frame with Yeon-u is alarmingly out of place. Quickly, he checks online to find that Yang-rae, a time-convicted sex offender, is indeed registered with this address, and rushes to the spot while calling the cops. As he approaches, he spots Yang-rae wielding a shovel.
Min-chan chases Yang-rae to a more secluded area, where the ex-convict faces off with him. Turns out the man had indeed kidnapped A-yeong, trying to prevent Min-chan from calling the cops. When he does, a struggle begins until Yang-rae slips, striking his head on the ground. Just as Min-chan is set to shout for help, his wife casually tells him that Yeon-u is with a friend.
At this moment, there is also lightning in the form of a cross. It is thought that this is Min-chan’s will, so it covers his tracks. He takes the church’s jacket from Yang-rae and pushes him off the cliff. It is only later that Min-chan learns that Yang-rae survives and shows up at the old-age home. Seeing yet another sign in the form of clouds shaped like wings, he decides to kidnap and murder Yang-rae to protect his secret and punish the man.
Why does Ayeon begin to suspect Min-chan?
Detective Ayeon is one of the policemen who question the participant Min-chan on his conversation with Yang-rae, the first to call them in. She finds him weeping, which for him is reason enough to think he has sinned in killing Yang-rae. While not paying too much attention, she notices the remote control from the previous night with the mud smearing Yang-rae’s hoodie and Min-chan’s shoes.
Now that Yang-rae is missing from the old-age home, Yeon-hui follows a lead that takes her to Min-chan’s wife in the volunteer group. She follows Min-chan and checks his car’s mud-covered mulberry tires. A quick search leads her to an abandoned hotel adjacent to a mulberry farm. That is where the pastor is currently capturing Yang-rae.
Why doesn’t Min-chan contact the authorities regarding Yang-rae?
Min-chan is feeling his worst at the beginning of the movie as he believes he has killed Yang-rae. Just when he’s about to confess, his prayers are answered: his rival is out of the picture, and he gets to serve as the pastor of a new church! Vowing it is God’s will, Min-chan mentally repents for, in his view, ‘killing’ Yang-rae.
Things don’t go according to plan after the plot twist of Yang-rae being alive. In a cruel twist of fate, he is given another chance to redeem himself when Yang-rae informs him that A-yeong is indeed alive. After witnessing multiple “signals” from God, Min-chan denies seeing Yang. Clinging to the idea that A-yeong is dead, he insists God commanded him to punish Yangra.
He goes far enough to knock out Yeon-hui when she comes to the hotel. He intends to kill Yeon-hui, set up Yang-rae as the fall guy, and then kill Yang-rae, disguised as an accidental death. His argument becomes stronger when he discovers how Yang-rae so viciously and inexplicably Yeon-hui’s sister, Yeon-ju, abducted and sexually assaulted her for days.
Mature enough not to go down easily, Yeon-hui squarely comes up against him in attempts to safeguard Yang-rae. The twist of fate has the ex-convict falling off the building, causing his untimely death. The rest of the story has Min-chan completely unbothered, believing all of it is the divine will.
Later, psychiatrist Lee Nak-seong tells Yeon-hui sitting in front of her, “Min-chan has apophenia.” The phenomenon where one attributes excessive significance to chance events such as cross lightning and winged-shaped clouds is classifiable as apophenia.
“Swear to god” that A-yeong is alive, and thus he is left dumbfounded by Yeon-hui’s prison words. Asking ’what was this supposed to mean’ shakes his previously ironclad belief and changes everything, which interprets his signs to kill Yang-rae once again.
As Min-chan walks back to his cell, he notices a particular marking on the wall that resembles Jesus. While trying to scrub it off, the face transforms into a more diabolical rendition, and he struggles with his conflicting emotions. He sobs and smiles at the same time, but ultimately, he cannot stop himself from wiping it off.
What happens to A-yeong?
In almost no time, A-yeong is almost killed as both Min-chan and Yeon-hui want to eliminate Yang-rae. On one end, it is Min-chan for the sake of concealing his tracks and on the other, Yeon-hui to seek revenge for her sister. Just before Yang-rae is taken out, he shouts out to Yeon-hui that ‘the monster with one eye has already eaten A-yeong.’
Nak-seong, Yang-rae’s former psychiatrist, knows why almost all ex-convicts were mercilessly tormented and has insight into the man’s brutal stepfather, who abused him in a room with a peculiar circular window.
The last hint is from a construction worker’s son, Yeon-hui’s father, who texts her a picture of the building he is working on and… wait for it… There’s a circular window! She suddenly remembers that Yeon-ju used to have a circular window, which is quite possibly Yang-rae’s trigger.
Yeon-hui updates her unit and discovers a building with a circular window in the vicinity of Yang-rae’s workplace. Unfortunately, the house is about to be demolished and flooded with explosives! But she makes it just in time to save A-yeong from the blast.
Does Yeon-hui get closure?
During the film, Yeon-hui hallucinates seeing her sister. Meanwhile, while Yeon-ju hanged herself, she was trying to escape from Yang-rae, who did not help her. There is a relationship dynamic in which Yeon-hui also assumes some guilt and later takes the blame for A-yeong’s kidnapping as well, because it fits the circumstantial reasoning.
Yeon-ju’s illusions also prompt Yeon-hui to execute Yang-rae, whom she finds bound in an old deserted hotel. She struggles and ultimately resolves to kill Yang-rae as she needs to search for A-yeong, but Yang-rae dies due to a freak accident, and she never gets to tell her where.
In the end these events take a toll on the cop so she completely loses it in front of Nak-seong. As a psychiatrist, she tries explaining how everyone needs a reason that makes the situation justifiable and naps this way in his accident, but it is not true. Then she aims to get constructive and have focus on what is real and definitive, something she can actually see.
Something tells me that when Yeon-hui receives the photo from her father, this is a way for her to join the dots. Finally rescuing A-yeong for the first time, the girl comments how “I knew someone would rescue me,” something Yeon-hui wished she could have done for her sister.
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