Spoilers ahead for Netflix film Revelations
Netflix's latest dark crime thriller Revelations is a compelling film from Hellbound creators Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok. It's a film about religion, challenging its characters and audiences to potentially change the way they think about the world and the reality behind why bad things happen.
It's almost never caused by one singular thing, something the main character, a pastor named Sung Min-chan, struggles with due to his obsessive belief that everything that happens to him is ordained by God, meaning he can justify even his worst actions by claiming they were God's will.
The film revolves around the disappearance of a young girl in a town home to a recently-released convict named Yang-rae and the desperate search to find her led by the pastor and a detective, who we later learn shares a sinister connection to Yang-rae that leads to a violent confrontation.
Min-chan vs. Yang-rae
The beginning of the film leads us to believe that Min-chan is the film's protagonist, but it soon becomes clear that he's driven by religious delusions. Min-chan meets convicted sex offender Kwon Yang-rae early on and invites them to become a member of his church, unaware of his background at the time.
Later, he learns the truth about Yang-rae after noticing his ankle monitor and quickly searching about him online. When Min-chan's wife calls him and claims their child has been kidnapped, Min-chan jumps to conclusions about Yang-rae being responsible. He tails the man and finds him acting suspiciously, carrying around a shovel as if to bury a body.
Following him to a dark road near a cliffside, the men get into a confrontation when Min-chan realizes that Yang-rae is no longer wearing his ankle monitor. The fight ends with Yang-rae falling and hitting his head on a rock, seemingly dying. Min-chan covers up the evidence the best he can, moving Yang-rae's body to the bottom of the valley. He sees a vision of God's face on a nearby mountain, leading him to believe he did the right thing.
Then his wife calls him back and says their kid didn't disappear and was just picked up early by a friend's parent. However, A-yeong is still missing, so Min-chan thinks he's on the right path.
Yeon-hui vs. Yang-rae
The first time we see Yeon-hui, she's following Yang-rae after spotting him acting suspiciously toward the middle schooler, whom we later learn is A-yeong. We find out that the reason Yang-rae was arrested in the first place is because he kidnapped and tortured Yeon-hui's sister, Yeon-ju. When she later escaped from Yang-rae, and he was taken to trial, a psychiatrist made it seem like the years of abuse Yang-rae suffered at the hands of his stepfather were partially an excuse for his behavior, or at least an explanation. Unable to deal with the press surrounding Yang-rae and people pitying him for his past, Yeon-ju committed suicide.
Yeon-hui is still haunted by what happened to her sister, especially because she was a detective and didn't rescue her. Yeon-ju had to save herself, and Yeon-hui had always felt guilty about that, so she takes saving A-yeong very seriously.
What happens to A-yeong?
In a surprising twist, it is revealed that Min-chan didn't finish Yang-rae off. The man survives and claws his way out to a nearby residential care center. They put him in a room and called an ambulance to collect him.
Min-chan happens to drop his wife off at the facility for volunteer work and learns about the bloody man who turned up on their doorstep. Realizing it could be Yang-rae, he goes inside and finds him on a bed, smuggling him out of the building in a wheelchair.
The climactic end of the movie shows Min-chan keeping Yang-rae in captivity and trying to learn where A-yeong is. Yeon-hui eventually pieces together Min-chan's involvement and follows him, leading to the pastor knocking her out and tying her up alongside Yang-rae.
Yeon-hui tries to convince Min-chan to release the convict since he is the only person who knows where A-yeong is, but Min-chan believes A-yeong is already dead and that they need to accept what God has told him. A fight between all three of them ensues, ending with Yang-rae plummeting off the side of a building to his death. The police arrive and arrest Min-chan.
So, what about A-yeong? Luckily, she is still alive, albeit tied up and being held somewhere. When Yeon-hui's father mentions something about a house, referring to the circular window as appearing like "one eye," she realizes what Yang-rae had been talking about when he claimed the "one-eye monster" had taken A-yeong.
She's being held in a house about to be demolished with a window similar to one that Yeon-ju had in her home. Once Yeon-hui realizes this, she arrives in time to save the girl.
The one-eyed monster
What's the meaning of the one-eyed monster that Yang-rae is obsessed with to the point of drawing it on his wall? When Yeon-hui visits his former psychiatrist for more insight, he says the monster might be a symbol for Yang-rae's abusive stepfather, or perhaps he sees himself becoming the monster whenever he does something terrible.
The window relates to this because Yang-rae had a similar one in his home where all of those horrific things happened to him as a child. So whenever he sees one, it triggers something inside him, which is what happened to Yeon-ju and later A-yeong.
In the film's final scenes, Yeon-hui visits Min-chan in prison to tell him they found A-yeong. This revelation confuses the pastor, who firmly believed the girl to be dead due to a vision he had, and learning she was alive the whole time shakes his faith. The last shot shows him in his cell violently trying to scrub a splotch on the wall that he saw as another sign of God, suggesting that he might be questioning his blind faith.