Control Freak’s ending was all about confirming whether the demon that had seemingly latched on to Val was real or just a figment of her imagination. Val was a motivational speaker who was about to embark on a tour to spread her wisdom all across the world, especially Asia. But she faced some pushback from the Chinese organizers who wanted to see her birth certificate. While obtaining the keys to the locker from her estranged father, Sang, who had taken up monkhood, Val came across a painting of a demon from Vietnamese folklore called Sanshi or the hungry ghost. Coming to the core conflict, Val suffered from a chronic itch on her head, which was likely a result of the childhood trauma of watching her father drown her mother to death. But, as per her father, it was the hungry ghost’s poison that was coursing through her blood, and she was bound to be consumed by it if she wasn’t careful. Did Val win or the hungry ghost? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Why Was The Hungry Ghost Haunting Val?
The hungry ghost had entered Val’s life way before she was born. Staying true to the Vietnamese culture’s tradition of associating ghosts with the Vietnam war, Control Freak revealed that the aforementioned supernatural parasite was “summoned” by Sang when he shot down a Vietnamese soldier who was about to hurl a grenade at him. As he mourned the act of killing his own countrymen, his sorrow and the devastation around him attracted the hungry ghost, and it latched on to Sang. When he returned from the war, the reach of the entity extended to Val’s mother. Although Sang and his wife tried their best to fight off the demon’s effects, it continued to torment them. When Val was born, her mother had sensed that the hungry ghost had latched on to her too and was about to torture her until she succumbed.
So, to save Val from her suffering, while going on a boating excursion, Val’s mother tried to drown and kill her. Sang had to step in, and while struggling to keep the mother from killing her daughter, he ended up killing his own wife. Of course, that didn’t work, and the hungry ghost latched on to Val, with the only indicator of its existence being that persistent itch on her head. When Val was on the precipice of motherhood and professional success, the creature reared its ugly head and did everything in its power to get Val to kill herself. Now, there are a few ways to look at this.
Firstly, the hungry ghost obviously represents the everlasting effects of war and how it’s best to avoid such human conflicts if we don’t want negativity to thrive. Countries and their people can recover from such moments of man-made horror on the surface, but the reverberations of such events can be felt by generations who are as far removed from that era as humanly possible. That’s represented by Val’s association with the hungry ghost, which was first “summoned” by Sang on the battlefield. Secondly, the entity symbolizes the apprehensions of parenthood. Val was well-aware of the circumstances in which she had been brought up. So, when she was planning to have a child with her partner, Robbie, she was probably afraid that she’d pass on her trauma to her child. But instead of dealing with these feelings in a healthy way, she kept scratching that itch, thereby leading to her breakdown. Thirdly, the monster is an embodiment of impostor syndrome. Val knew that, no matter what she said to the public about how they should deal with their insecurities, she was the most insecure person in the room. And the harder she tried to run away from that fact, the stronger the hungry ghost grew as it fed on Val’s hypocrisy.
Did Val Defeat The Hungry Ghost?
After learning about why her mother tried to kill her, and how Sang had to kill Val’s mother to save Val, the motivational speaker had a pretty public breakdown during one of her sessions. When she reunited with Sang, she found out that he had passed away, probably after overdosing on the drugs that he was taking to muffle the effects of the hungry ghost. Soon after that, she realized that she had itched all the way to the inside of her skull, which had damaged her brain quite significantly. As she recovered physically, she began to realize that, due to her erratic and self-destructive behavior, Robbie was planning to send her to a mental asylum. To avoid being locked up with that entity for the rest of her life, Val drugged Robbie and confined him to the bedroom so that she could have a one-to-one with the hungry ghost.
I suppose Val tried to trap the creature in a contraption made of mirrors, but that didn’t work out. So, she decided to cut off her hands because she was probably thinking that if she didn’t give in to her “insatiable urge” to itch the hell out of her head, the monster would have no hold over her. While she did saw off one of her hands, she lured in the hungry ghost with the promise of cutting off the other one, and then subverted its expectations by using the saw to sever one of the monster’s hands. As the creature realized how it had been duped, Val carved up its head too. That didn’t stop the hungry monster though, and it continued to follow Val as she dragged herself all the way from the basement to the pool in her palatial home. Given how her most traumatic memory was the moment her mother tried to drown her and her father drowned her mother, it was fitting that she attempted to kill the monster that represented that horrible chapter of her life in a body of water (because water usually symbolizes rebirth and cleansing). When she emerged from the depths of the pool, she had washed away the emotional baggage put upon her by her parents and saved her inner child, thereby seemingly exorcizing the hungry ghost from her life.
While all this was going on, Robbie had freed himself and he rushed to help out Val. Even he apparently saw what was left of the demon as it dissolved into the water. So, yes, on paper, Val did defeat the hungry ghost. She didn’t allow herself to succumb to her darkest thoughts. She banished the evil that had emerged from the soil of Vietnam and followed her all the way to the United States of America. And she even decided to have a child with Robbie, something that she’d been avoiding with the help of birth control pills. At the end of Control Freak, we saw that Val had had her hand reattached and she was holding on to her child, who looked at least 1-2 years old, and standing near a lake; probably the same lake where Val’s mother had died. Right before the film cut to the credits, a small bug appeared on the kid’s face. Those bugs have been used throughout the film to signify the hungry ghost’s presence. Of course, the bug on Val’s child’s face could be just an actual bug, or it could be a hint that Val hadn’t defeated the creature but had instead passed on the evil to her son.
Was The Hungry Ghost Real?
Well, yes and no. The hungry ghost was real to Val and her family. Sure, nobody else could see it, but that didn’t make it entirely fictional. Saying that it was simply a “figment of their imagination” would undermine the trauma, depression, anxiety, fears, and suicidal thoughts that Val and her parents experienced. So, yeah, I’d say that the hungry ghost was as real as the hurdles that Val, her mother, and her father had to overcome just to survive in this complex world. Now, when it comes to the final moments of Control Freak, some of it might be true and some of it might be a visual depiction of Val’s wishful thinking. There’s a distinct possibility that Robbie did break out of his confines and save Val from drowning. Did he see the last remains of the hungry ghost? I don’t think so. Maybe Val imagined that part of that moment because she desperately wanted him to believe her and everything that she was experiencing. As for the bathtub scene, we got a hint that Robbie was a little scared of Val. She revealed that she was pregnant with his child, and she wanted to start a family with him, but he didn’t seem all that enthusiastic.
Sure, it’s possible that Robbie was still traumatized due to all the stuff that had gone down during the exorcism scene. But it’s also possible that he had seen Val’s true face, and he wanted to get out of that relationship. Now, Val and Robbie’s relationship wasn’t strictly personal. Robbie was the director of Val’s talk shows. Usually, the director has more power than the star, but in this case, the star had more power than the director. Without Val, Robbie would probably not have a job in that industry. And after going through that ordeal, maybe Robbie was unsure about staying with Val in any capacity. Hence, he reacted in that inconclusive fashion when Val revealed that she was with child. However, based on the scene near the lake, I think Robbie did divorce Val, since he was nowhere to be seen. I feel that Robbie didn’t instantly say “no” to Val. He likely waited until he was sure that Val could handle herself on her own and then went for the exit door.
Val’s repaired hand in Control Freak’s ending scene could also hint that maybe she was imagining being a mother, whereas in reality, she was single and alone. That said, there are multiple examples of reconstructive surgery where people with severed hands have gotten their limbs back without resorting to prosthetic ones. If that’s the case, maybe Val ended up being a single mother to her child, whilst parting ways with Robbie in an amicable manner. If you’re wondering whether or not Robbie was put at the bottom of that lake by Val after he refused to stay with her, and the child was crying because he had seen that unfold before his eyes, much like Val had when she was a kid, well, maybe you’re onto something. Maybe the reemergence of the bug meant that Val had passed on the trauma that was inflicted upon her by her parents, thereby resurrecting the hungry ghost from the darkest recesses of her mind. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the ending of Control Freak. Do you have any opinions on the film that you want to share with us? Then, please, write them down in the comments section below.
