Directed by Shal Ngo, Control Freak is an important film that needs to be understood and felt. Over the years, there have been many films that have talked about mental health issues, either by personifying them into an evil entity and giving them physical form or addressing them through various symbolic figures. However, what Shal Ngo does differently is that he executes the narrative in a subtle manner that is worthy of appreciation. He does not make things obvious; he does not make the storyline mundane, and then the best part is that he keeps the audience guessing till the very last moment. So, let’s find out what happened in the film and if the monster that haunted our protagonist existed in real life or not.
Spoiler Alert
What was happening with Val?
Val aka Valerie was a famous motivational speaker who taught people how to be in better control of their minds. Val always said that an individual’s mind could be the biggest reason behind their success, or it could become their worst enemy. Val taught people how to get rid of their addiction, how to switch to healthier habits, and why it was important to treat one’s body as a temple. Little did Val know that there would come a time in her life when she wouldn’t be able to control her impulses and would surrender to the demons of her past. Val, for an unspecified period of time, felt a constant itch at the back of her head, but the condition became a bit more serious over a period of time. She had these irritating sensations where she felt like scratching her entire head off. Val was on certain medications, and she asked her doctor to increase her dosage. The doctor told Val that unless he saw her in person, he couldn’t prescribe her any medication. Val just didn’t want to go to the hospital, almost as if she knew that they wouldn’t be able to understand what she was truly going through. Val didn’t even tell Robbie, her partner, about it, but after a point in time, it became impossible for her to act normally in front of others and pretend that everything was fine. Val had a feeling that her chronic itch cycle was related to certain psychological problems, like anxiety and depression. Val surely had PTSD, as she had been through a lot in her childhood.
Her mother had apparently taken her own life, and her father, Sang, was never emotionally available for her. Sang had renounced the material world and became a monk, though Val never really believed that he was a changed man. She knew that her father was an escapist, and he just wanted to shrink away from taking responsibility for ruining her life. Val got these blurry visions where she saw her mother drowning in the water. Something about it indicated that she didn’t die a natural death. Val had to try to get her birth certificate at one point, and that’s why she went to meet her aunt, as she wanted to check on certain documents kept in one of the boxes she had. But Aunty Thuy told her that the box had been taken by her father sometime back. That’s when Val went to talk to her father, and the man made some revelations that seemed too bizarre to be true.
How Did Val’s Mother And Father Die?
Val got hold of the box that was supposed to be at Aunty Thuy’s salon, which her father had taken and kept in a locker facility. She saw some newspaper clippings from where she found out that her mother’s demise wasn’t considered to be suicide at first. The police investigated the case but failed to find any evidence against her father. Val saw marks on the hands of her mother, and in an investigation report, it was stated that her mother could possibly have been a victim of domestic abuse. Val went to confront her father but was shocked by what he told her.
Sang told her that a demonic entity had gotten inside her mother, which is why he had to kill her to save his daughter. He said that during the Vietnam War, he saw his own people getting killed, and he, too, didn’t spare anybody who came in his way. Sang believed that all that suffering summoned a demonic entity, which, somehow, infected his wife too. Val’s father said that the demon was likely a parasite that ate the host from within. Sang’s conviction, the plight in his eyes, just drove Val towards insanity. She figured out that her father was still taking drugs, but still, she couldn’t ignore what he had told her about the demon. Val was in a vulnerable position, a state where she didn’t have control over her mind. But I don’t think that Val’s mother was infected by that “parasite”, and I also don’t think that she died while trying to get rid of that evil entity. I believe that it was Val’s father who had killed her, and he was never able to accept the truth for what it was. I believe that after the Vietnam War, the man suffered from PTSD, and he abused his wife and kid. I believe that he pushed his wife from that boat, maybe in a fit of rage, or maybe because he couldn’t comprehend the consequences of his actions. He developed a story inside his mind just to save his conscience from the guilt. At the end of Control Freak, Val found her father dead in his quarters. Val thought that some evil entity had killed him because, by that point, she, too, had lost her cognitive abilities, but I believe, in reality, he had died of a drug overdose.
Was Val able to get rid of the demon?
Val’s partner Robbie saw that her condition was deteriorating every passing day. One day, while sharing an intimate moment, Robbie saw that blood was oozing out of Val’s head, and he was extremely shocked to find out that she had literally created a hole in her skull by continuously scratching her head. Robbie got her admitted, and he asked the doctors how somebody could create a hole through the skull just by scratching. The doctors told Robbie that Val had been doing it for a very long period of time which further underlines her trauma whose weight she had been carrying since childhood. Robbie wanted to make Val understand that whatever she was feeling was all in her mind, and though she pretended to believe him, in reality, she was convinced that she was being haunted by that evil entity called Sanshi.
At the end of Control Freak, Val decided to cut her hand off so that she could no longer scratch her head and injure herself. Val writhed in pain the moment she amputated her hand, but still, the demon didn’t leave her. That’s when Val realized that what her father had told her was probably right. She realized that her nightmare would end only if she ended her own life, or removed the part of herself that linked her to her past trauma. Val decapitated the demon, held it and jumped into the swimming pool. Before cutting her hand off, she had tied Robbie up to his bed so that he didn’t interfere in her plans. Luckily, the man was able to free himself, and he came just in time to save Val. Robbie also saw a black entity in the pool, and he didn’t know if what he was seeing was real or a figment of his imagination. Val told him that it was her childhood self that she had managed to detach from herself. So finally, Val was able to get rid of the demon, and probably through reconstructive surgery, she got her hand back, too. But there came a twist at the end; she saw the same bug/parasite crawling on her kid’s skin, and the screen turned black. It could either mean that, as her father had told her, the demonic possession could be passed down through generations, and somehow her kid had inherited it too, just like she had from her mother. Another possibility was that maybe her depressive episodes had returned after a period of remission. Whatever it was, Val still had to overcome a lot of internal conflicts, and this time, she had to find a way to keep her son safe, too.
Was the monster real?
Now, the million-dollar question is if the creature was real or not. Well, I am inclined to believe that it was all in Val’s mind, just like it was in her father’s. I believe that Val’s father, Sang, as stated above, suffered from PTSD, and he had killed his wife, though I do give him the benefit of the doubt that he probably wouldn’t have done so if he was of sane mind. Now, Val had a lot of unresolved generational trauma, and that, I believe, was symbolized by the parasite, the demon that ate her from within. One can argue that Robbie did see something at the end of the film, but then it could all have been Val’s imagination or just the director’s way of showing that she had let go of her past. I mean, that is what she did; she detached her childhood trauma from her inner core and freed herself. We can keep on the debate about the monster being real or imaginary, but I believe it is important to understand what the director wanted to show us through either of the possibilities. There was a moment in the film where Val felt paralyzed; she couldn’t focus; she couldn’t stop her brain from overthinking; she could think only about all the negative things that had happened in her life, and in short, it could be said that she was in a terrible state of mind. I mean, her internal battles were given a physical form, but I believe that is how depression, anxiety, etc., would look if they were personified into a demon. It eats you from within and leaves you devoid of any motivation, and if you do not treat it in time, then recovery becomes almost impossible, no matter who comes to your rescue. The film told us how trauma could be inherited and how, even after doing everything right and treating it, it can come back knocking at your door.
