The Whole Truth, a Thai horror/thriller directed by Wisit Sasanatieng and written by Abishek Bajaj, promises a great deal of things, but somehow the execution never feels impacting enough. The tonality of the narrative reminded me of Andres Muschietti’s 2013 film, Mama. It spoke volumes with its impressionable screenplay and unique shot division that was efficiently binded by tight editing. The Whole Truth had a similar intent but nowhere comes close to delivering it.
The narrative talks about the two-faced reality of life. How it is always important to know the situation in its entirety and then only react to it. We have a habit of passing judgment even before we understand the situation completely. Sometimes, our actions are not retractable, and the damage caused is permanent in nature.
‘The Whole Truth’ Plot Summary
Pim and Putt are visited by an older adult one day. It was late in the night, and both the kids didn’t know who the man was. He told them that he was their grandfather. He broke the news to them that their mother, Mai, had met with an accident on the road and was in a coma. Mr. Somphong takes the kids home. They met their grandmother too for the first time. She had had dementia, as told by Mr. Somphong. Her behavior was quite weird, and the kids sense that.
There was something that their grandfather was not telling them. They notice a small hole in one of the walls of the house. When Putt peeped through it, he saw the house of the family who was living next door. He tries to tell Pim about it, but she ignores it.
Was the Hole Real or Just The Imagination of Kids?
The next day Pim told her grandfather that the wall in the living room needed repair as there was a hole in it. He goes to the wall but cannot see the hole. He calls Wan too, but even she cannot see it. Pim and Putt are not able to fathom what exactly was happening. The grandparents take it to be another mischief on their part and a new way to trouble their old grandparents.
The next day Pim also looked through the hole and saw a small girl. It was dark and gloomy in the room on the other side of the hole. Every time Pim and Putt peeped inside, they saw different events happening. Once they saw the girl spitting blood, once they saw her crawling and once looking right through them. One thing they knew for sure was that the hole was actually present. Putt comes up with a wormhole theory, and he believes that the hole links two parallel realities.
But what they didn’t understand was why their grandparents couldn’t see it.
Why did Wan Panic Looking at Putt’s drawing?
While giving breakfast to Putt, his grandmother, Wan notices his sketchbook one day. She gets aghast to see a drawing of a girl with a hole in her head. Putt tells her that he didn’t draw it and had no clue how it came there. Strangely the drawing disappears once Wan leaves the room.
Wan reveals that she could also see the hole, but Mr. Somphong thought that she was delusional and never believed her. He started giving her medications because he felt she had dementia. Wan tells her grandchildren that she had been seeing the little girl for the past 15 years.
Who was Pinya and Krit?
Mai wakes up from the coma and runs away from the hospital when she comes to know that her kids were staying at her parents’ house. She reaches her parents, and that is when the beans from the past are spilled.
Mai was married to Krit, and their firstborn was named Pinya. The little girl that Pim and Putt saw was Pinya. She had died years back due to negligence on Krit’s part, or that’s what Mai believed until then. Pinya had accidentally locked herself inside the cupboard while playing hide and seek with her father. Krit, after telling his daughter to hide, had passed out on the couch due to overdrinking. When everybody came home, they found Pinya dead in the cupboard and blamed Krit for it. But obviously, it wasn’t the whole truth!
How did Pinya Die?
Every morning, we saw Wan giving a glass of milk to Putt. When one day the milk spilled, Latter, Putt’s, and Pim’s cat licked it from the ground. She was found dead in the yard the next morning. Putt also started spitting out blood, and he realized that her grandmother was poisoning him. That’s when the whole truth is revealed.
Pinya didn’t die because of Krit. It was Wan behind the killing. She had poisoned Pinya just like she was poisoning Putt by giving her milk. On the day of the accident, she had locked the cupboard from outside, and when Pinya was taken out, she had coughed blood, and everybody believed that Krit was at fault.
Why did Wan Kill Pinya?
We see that Wan never gave that poisoned milk to Pim. It was only Putt who was made to drink that. Wan had a problem with deformities running in their family. Pinya was born with some physical deformities, and it led to her grandmother hating her to the core. Wan never took Pinya to be a part of her family. She saw Putt also in the same light.
Pim was picture-perfect for her. She had wanted her grandkids to be precisely like Pim. That is why she never laid a finger on her but started serving the poisoned milk to Putt every day.
Was Chaiyut Driving his Car When he Crashed into Mai?
Chaiyut was actually not driving the car, a revelation that is made to Mr. Somphong in the latter stages. Chaiyut was the son of a big shot, and Mr. Somphong was sure that he would escape the clutches of law even after being responsible for her daughter’s deplorable physical state. He decides to take law into his own hands and kills Chaiyut.
Later it is revealed that Chaiyut was telling the truth, and he was not driving his car when it had hit Mai. It comes as a big shock to Mr. Somphong, who had acted before knowing the whole truth.
‘The Whole Truth’ Ending Explained – Who Killed Krit?
It was established that Krit had committed suicide, but it was not so. Mai had killed her husband as she got agitated by what he had done. According to Mai, Pinya had died due to negligence on Krit’s part. The whole on the wall was actually the bullet that Mai fired at Krit.
Mr. Somphong, at that time, held a high position in the Police Department. Using His influence, he had made it look like a suicide. After knowing the whole truth, Mai realizes that it was not Krit’s negligence, but the reason behind her daughter dying was her own mother, who had poisoned her merely as she couldn’t accept a deformed child as a part of her own family.
In the end, we see that Mr. Somphong starts hallucinating. He sees Chaiyut in front of his eyes, alive and walking towards him. Terrified by sight, he takes out his gun and shoots him. As soon as he hits, he realizes that his wife, Wan, had been shot and not Chaiyut.
In Conclusion
This Netflix film propels many theories and subplots but never surprises you or creates the kind of influence that makes you surrender entirely to the narrative and get invested in it. But is is indeed, a one time watch.
The Whole Truth is a 2021 Thai Horror Thriller film directed by Wisit Sasanatieng. It is streaming on Netflix.
