In Netflix thriller, “Re/Member,” high school students Asuka, Takahiro, Rumiko, Rie, Shota, and Atsushi were stuck in a time loop where the fifth of July was repeating itself, but these six teenagers were not able to decipher why they were chosen to be a part of it, and, secondly, what the Red Person wanted. All six of them were transported to this parallel realm every single night, exactly at midnight, and then they were hunted by a small kid whose face was smeared with blood and who carried a stuffed toy at all times. Shota was the first one to actually get a breakthrough, and he told the others that they were stuck in a game called the “Blood Search,” in which the players had to find the hidden dismembered body parts of the victim.
Spoilers Ahead
The first research material that the group got their hands on was an article from Russia, and that is how we came to know that it was not a location-specific phenomenon but happening around the globe and also that until the body search is complete, the day would keep repeating itself. The next thing that the group got their hands on was information about a case that seemed to have some connection with the “Red Person.” Approximately 30 years ago, a girl studying in the second grade named Miko Onoyama was murdered near the school campus, and her face in the news tabloid looked exactly like that of the Red Person.
Asuka had noticed that the librarian of their school, Mr. Yashiro, used to hover around very mysteriously whenever they were researching the Red Person. When Asuka realized that they had reached a roadblock and nobody had any other theory as to what was happening exactly, she decided to go and meet Yashiro. She got the most vital piece of information from him when he told her that he had also played the body search game when he was in school.
Yashiro said that he had forgotten about it until he came across a book named “The comparative study of occult culture: deciphering body searches worldwide.” After reading the book, Yashiro started remembering that he, too, had played one such game a long time ago, though the details were still very fuzzy in his mind. He was able to tell Asuka that whoever played the game forgot that anything of that sort had ever happened to them as soon as they found the dismembered body parts. Asuka didn’t want that to happen to her, though the idea of being stuck in a time loop felt extremely scary. She had finally found people she could call friends, and for the first time, she felt a sense of belonging. She felt a spark with Takahiro, and more than anything, she didn’t want to miss out on it. But as Yashiro said, it was not in her hands to do anything, and they were being governed by rules that were non-negotiable in nature.
Who Was Miko Onoyama? How Was She Related To The Red Person?
At the beginning of the film “Re/Member,” we are shown snippets of what had actually happened 30 years earlier with Miko Onoyama. She was being chased by an anonymous man who finally killed her, though why he did so isn’t explicitly stated. Miko died, and her blood was splattered all over her stuffed toy, whom she called Ellie. Miko was not the only one who was killed in such a manner; throughout the 20th century, there were many such incidents that happened all around the world where small children were mutilated in a similar fashion. It could be possible that people around the globe were indulging in some kind of occult practices in which they had to sacrifice the lives of kids in order to awaken some kind of satanic entity that preyed upon a bunch of people and made them get stuck in a time loop. Because of the heinous nature of their deaths, it is likely that these small children were never saved and were forced to remain in the mortal realm, transforming into something extremely evil. Maybe that was the motive of the occult ritual—to transform the children into these demonic spirits who played the sinister game of body search and wreaked havoc in the lives of the people who were vulnerable, harbored self-conflicting thoughts, and felt a sense of abandonment in more than one way.
Why the Red Person transformed into a huge monster is not explicitly revealed through the narrative of the film “Re/Member.” It could have been possible that once Asuka, Shota and others found out the stuffed toy was hidden behind the wall, Miko, i.e., the Red Person, and Ellie joined forces and transformed into a gigantic and horrifying creature who made the situation even more difficult for the friends.
What Does Asuka Morisaki’s Picture In ‘Re/Member’ End Credit Scene Suggest? Can There Be A Sequel?
When Asuka and the others discovered that Miko Onoyama’s dismembered head was inside the monstrous Ellie, the time loop was broken, and Miko Onoyama’s severed head was discovered in the present timeline, too, inside the well on the school premises. Takahiro remembered Asuka as he had promised, when he got an epiphany of sorts when he saw his pin fall from her pocket. In the post-credit scene, we once again see the same well where Asuka had gotten one of her psychic visions earlier. There was a newspaper cutting lying in the abyss in which it was mentioned how an eight-year-old girl named Miko Onoyama had been brutally murdered, but then something unexplainable happened. The picture of Miko Onoyama seemed to dissolve, and a new image magically emerged in the newspaper article.
What seemed to be Asuka’s childhood picture became visible, and the headlines read how she was murdered by an unknown person when she was eight in an amusement park. It took us back to a conversation that Asuka was having with Takahiro earlier, where the latter was going to tell about an embarrassing moment he shared with her in their childhood. So it was most likely the same visit that was mentioned in the end credit scene. One possibility could be that Asuka has been dead all this time, but nothing can be said for sure as of now. Now, this changes the entire dynamic and makes us realize that things are not as linear as we thought they were.
It could have been possible that the evil entity, the demonic force, or probably the one who had conducted the satanic ritual for the first time, had kicked off a time loop in which it was possible to go into the victim’s past and murder him or her and then prey upon a group of people and find the next victim through them. The reason why we make this speculation is that Asuka was alive in the present timeline, and she was the only one who felt a connection with the Red Person, which in her case was Miko. She got all sorts of psychic visions, and though the others also had similar physical experiences, internally, they didn’t go through what she was feeling. Asuka was the one who had come up with the theory that the head of Miko could have been hidden inside Ellie. So, it is possible that the one who solved the mystery became the victim of the next time loop, i.e., we might see a young Asuka turning into the Red Person and haunting people and making them play the gruesome game of Body Search.
It is still unknown how this demonic time loop came to be and what its purpose was. We also don’t know what impact it would have on a person’s present life if somebody went back into their past and killed them in their childhood, as was going to happen with Asuka. It could be possible that Asuka would cease to exist in the current timeline if no group was able to successfully find her dismembered body parts, or maybe she would also get stuck in a demonic time-loop and would get her freedom from it only when her body parts were placed inside the coffin. Now, if we believe this theory to be true, then it could be possible that Miko Onoyama was also still alive, and she wouldn’t have died in her childhood, as we had thought. Maybe, just like Asuka, she would have found the final dismembered part in the Body Search game while feeling a strange sense of connection with the demonic spirit and then ultimately getting trapped in the time loop.
We believe that it was an infinite loop, and the demon or whatever sinister entity was orchestrating it didn’t want it to end because it existed only inside it. The demon wouldn’t exist if the time loop ended, and that is probably why, the moment a person solved the mystery, they were killed in their childhood and transformed into the Red Person, who eventually preyed upon another set of six people. It is still unknown how this demon came to be and whether it acted on its own or whether its strings were being pulled by someone else. The film “Re/Member” leaves a lot of things unanswered and doesn’t give us enough evidence for any concept or notion that it brings forth. In the second installment of “Re/member,” we might see Asuka breaking the time loop and learning who exactly started this entire phenomenon, what the motivation was, and if there is a way to break the evil spell and make the demon stop.
See More: ‘Re/Member’ Ending, Explained: Does Takahiro Remember Asuka? What Does The Post Credit Scene Mean?
