Bunshinsaba 2 2013

A decade after earning their bachelor’s degrees, six friends drift into separate paths, each chasing a different dream: Song Qian pursues a master’s degree, Nana heads to the United States, You Feng climbs the corporate ladder as a business executive, Yufei finds work in front of the camera as an actress, Yang Zheng opens an art gallery while waiting for a chance to direct, and Hongrui keeps juggling odd jobs while crashing at Yang Zheng’s place. The film widens its focus to memory and fear as Nana returns home, asking Song Qian and Yang Zheng whether the house still echoes with the presence of the dead Xiao Ai. Xiao Ai Mei Ting sits at the center of the past that refuses to stay buried, a past that will pull the living into a web of guilt, blame, and long-simmering resentments.

Ten years earlier, Xiao Ai had been woven into the group’s tight circle, and Hongrui — who once played tennis before a leg injury left him with a cast and a stubborn pride — falls for her, igniting jealousy in Nana, who loves Hongrui in return. A heaping of superstition and fear begins with a chance Ouija-board reading, which points a finger at Xiao Ai as a source of their misfortunes. The narrative makes clear that Xiao Ai’s tragedy is not a single act of despair but a culmination of fear, betrayal, and the pressure of a circle that had once welcomed her. Xiao Ai’s death is depicted not as a simple suicide, but as the final consequence of a chain of choices and accusations that had already pushed her toward the edge, a truth that starts the film’s long, slow burn toward revelation.

The present tense of the story erupts with brutal jolts: Yang Zheng, having sex with a sex worker, is killed when a machine crushes him; Hongrui, desperate to keep his secrets and his hold on money, extorts You Feng with a secret video that could ruin him and Yufei, who is secretly involved with You Feng despite his marriage to his boss’s daughter. Hongrui then dies by multiple, savage cuts at the hands of an unseen killer. In the chaos that follows, You Feng and Yufei break into Yang Zheng’s residence to grab a flash drive containing the video, only to find Nana already on the scene, having taken possession of it.

Yufei becomes the next victim, stabbed in her own home, as the tension among the survivors grows more explosive. Song Qian discovers from You Feng that Nana’s return to the United States was not for study but to seek help in a mental facility, a revelation that deepens the rift between the friends and amplifies the sense that the past is catching up with them all. Nana, unsettled by Xiao Ai’s haunting, keeps visiting Song Qian in fits of restlessness, while Song Qian, in a moment of desperation, grabs Hongrui’s flash drive from Nana’s grasp and watches the disturbing video herself. What she sees is the truth Xiao Ai died not by suicide but through a tragic accident that occurred as she attempted to strangle Nana for causing Song Qian to reject her, a realization that rewrites the group’s history.

With this new truth, the five remaining friends decide to stage Xiao Ai’s death as a suicide to sever the painful ties to their past. Yet the past will not stay buried. You Feng chases Nana to the building where Xiao Ai’s body was disposed of years before, and in a confrontation that reveals a chilling admission, You Feng confesses that he is the one who murdered their friends, driven by the dread of exposure that the video could unleash. Nana, driven by fear and resolve, kills You Feng by impaling him with a metal rod, ending one chapter of the haunting.

Months pass, and Song Qian encounters Nana once more, telling her that everything is over. But the camera lingers on Nana in the frame, and the audience is drawn to the edge of the mirror—the past is not done with them. The scene turns to reveal Xiao Ai clutching Nana, its silhouette poised to strike, whispering a line that chills the spine: > once Nana is killed, they (Xiao Ai and Song Qian) can be together. The implication is stark: the past has become a malignant force that binds the living to the dead, and even a moment of supposed closure is just another doorway into fear.

What follows is a deliberately paced, suspenseful descent into memory and consequence. After the credits roll, a brief, somber flashback replays each character’s arc, offering a final, mournful look at who they were, what they believed, and how the choices they made in youth echoed into their adult years. The film uses this structure to explore friendship, envy, guilt, and the inescapable pull of a transformed past, where truth can be more terrifying than any ghost and where the desire for forgiveness can become a weapon that dismantles the fragile ties that hold people together.

In the end, the mood lingers as a slow, eerie meditation on how a single haunted decision can ripple through a group, threatening to erase the line between memory and reality. The story remains tightly focused on the human dynamics at its core — the longing for connection, the weight of consequences, and the unsettling truth that sometimes the past refuses to die, returning to shape the lives of the living in the most intimate ways.