Went to watch this movie tonight with CDMCC and Elizabeth. All this time, I was calling this movie “cash” as in memory cache, but apparently it’s a French word and pronounced something like ca-shay. Movie overall was thrilling and suspenseful as I expected. I also thought the movie was in English, but that didn’t change my feeling toward the movie much. There were some gory scenes, which you can read about in my spoilers.
Ultimately, this movie is about the conscience of the human mind.
The movie starts out with this family receiving video tape recordings spying on their house. The movie does a good job switching back and forth the modes, sometimes tricking the user if this is a recording or if it’s actually happening or not. It was always accompanied by a drawing of a kid coughing out blood.
Of course the family gets scared and after the 2nd tape, they went to the police, but the polic said there wasn’t anything they could do until “something” happens.
You then see a boy coughing out blood in one of the scenes. Turns out this was just a dream as you find out later in the movie.
Then everyone received a postcard. Let me backtrack a bit. This is a family of 3: father, mother, and son. Father’s a TV guy who does book reviews. Mom is a writer of some sort. The kid goes to school and is part of the swim team. When I say everyone received a postcard, I mean the father received it at work, the mother received it at home, and the kid received it at school. The postcard had the same funky drawing of a kid spitting out blood.
They receive another tape, this time showing the house of where the father grows up. He starts getting scared. He goes visits his mother who still lives there and asks her if she remembers Majid, apparently a boy they tried adopting a long time ago, but she has horrible memories of him and things didn’t exactly end well.
Then a next tape arrives, this time showing how to get to some random flat. The father decides to go and check it out. At this time, he spills he has a hunch on who it might be. The wife tries to find out who, but he wouldn’t say, and they have a major argument over this and about trust.
He goes to the flat and finds out some old guy lives there. Apparently the old guy knows him. The father is 100% certain that he was the one that has been harassing him and his family and threatens to do something if anything happens to them. Turns out this old guy is Majid. He denies ever making those drawings or recording his family. After he leaves, he calls his wife and tells her that no one answered the door and apparently no one lived on that flat according to the apartment manager.
That night, they received a tape showing the conversation between the father and Majid. The truth is out. The father tries to apologize for lying, but he said he kept it as a secret for her own good. She questions why he thought Majid would want revenge. He first doesn’t say anything and then said he made up some lies when he was a kid. She asks what lies. He goes, lies that 6 year old would make, child stuff. Basically not answering the question.
Story continues and one day, the kid doesn’t come home. The parents of course got very worried and even ended up going to the police and taking them to Majid’s place. Turns out Majid has a son. The police arrest the two on the suspicion of kidnapping, but there wasn’t any proof, and the police wouldn’t take the video tapes as evidence.
The parents of course were worried sick, but the next day, the son comes home. Apparently he stayed over at a friend’s place without calling home. The parents were overjoyed, but the kid seemed to have some animosity toward the mom, which he didn’t have before. He seems to believe that the mom is having an affair with her book publisher.
One day, the father gets a call from Majid asking him to come up. At first, he didn’t want to, but Majid offered to tell him the truth behind the video tapes and drawings. He goes up to his flat. Basically what happened in the next 30 seconds was: “I didn’t do it.” followed by taking out a switch blade (or one of those old shaving knives) from his pocket, and slitting his own throat for suicide. The father was shocked. He runs away and apparently goes to watch a movie for the next few hours.
He returns home, and the wife is talking with some people. He hides in another bedroom and calls his wife and tells her to come meet him in the bedroom, but don’t let the guests know. She excuses herself and finds him in the bedroom. At this point, I’m thinking it’s probably the police trying to ask questions about the husband. I mean he was stupid enough to just walk away from the scene. Anyone who saw him would make him the most suspicious if the cops didn’t believe it was a suicide. He tells her that Majid is dead and he needs her to get the guests out of the house. She’s shocked too and obliges. When she returns, he asks her what excuse she used, and she asks why does it matter? She told them that her husband just called and needed her to meet him somewhere. I’m thinking… is that okay to tell the police? Turns out the guests were just some family friends.
He tells her about the Majid incident. So, now the wife is curious about Majid, she forces the truth out of her husband. Turns out, Majid’s parents were killed in a protest, so the family that they were working for decided to adopt the kid. This same family was the family of this guy. Majid got his own room, was bigger and tougher, and had good disciplined. He was jealous and sick of him and wanted him out. So he began making lies about how Majid would cough out blood. Of course, there wasn’t any proof and the doctor didn’t find anything wrong with the boy. Later he told Majid that his father wanted him to kill the rooster. You actually see this scene earlier in a dream. When nothing was explained, it seemed that Majid was a aggressive kid and wanted to even hurt this guy. So you see Majid chop of the head of the rooster and let it wander around like a headless-chicken. The scene was pretty intense and gross. The boy runs to the parents and claims Majid was trying to scare him.
The parents had enough and decided to send Majid away to an orphanage or some sort.
Later on, the son of Majid comes and meets the father at his work place. The father tries to avoid him, but he starts to create a scene and he takes him to the restroom for some privacy. They start talking and the son knew his father’s death was a suicide. I actually thought the son was going to pull the same trick and kill himself right then and there. The son also claim the videos and drawings weren’t from him, but he did like to see what the conscience was doing to this poor fellow.
The movie ended with a scene of the son of Majid (I believe) talking to the son of this family at school. It seemed like an open ended way to end the movie, but I really think this was a recording of sometime before. In fact, right before the son disappeared. If the son of Majid had come and told the boy that his mom was having an affair, then everything begins to make sense. The son knew about his father and how he was given such a shitty life because of some lies and decides to play mind tricks on this family. Unfortunately, the mom and the son had to get involved. This move would ultimately end up with the kid sleeping over at a friend’s place that night and not bothering to call home, creating a series of events to follow.
