Aahana Swrup
‘Control Freak’ is an unnerving horror film that centers around an itch that simply can’t be scratched. It follows the narrative of Valerie “Val” Nguyen, a motivational speaker who helps people overcome their compulsions and work toward a better, healthier future. However, behind the screen, she harbors an intense compulsion of her own: she can’t stop scratching her head. As she and her team gear up for a tour, this habit of hers becomes even more intense to the point where she scratches a grotesque hole into the back of her head. As such, the woman sets out to find some answers about her by digging into her family’s past. Nonetheless, what she finds is much more menacing than she could have ever imagined. This Hulu film is ripe with cryptic metaphors and reality-bending terrors that come together for an enigmatic conclusion. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Control Freak Plot Synopsis
Valerie Nguyen has made a successful life as a motivational speaker, with several books to her name that all discuss ways to improve one’s life. Her talks tend to focus on mastering obsessive habits and allowing oneself the space for self-improvement. However, while she’s calm and collected on the stage, her personal life is a different story. She’s obsessed with getting every detail right. She also has an obsessive habit of scratching at her head—even to the point of drawing blood. For the same reason, she’s even lying to her partner, Robbie, about being on birth control while the couple tries to get pregnant. Even though she does want to have a kid, she’s worried about ensuring her upcoming tour goes smoothly. So much so that when a slight hiccup arrives due to the lack of access to her birth certificate, she reconnects with her Aunt Thuy to find her family’s old belongings.
Val has a taut relationship with her family and usually prefers to stay out of their lives. When she was young, a boating accident led to her mother’s death. This incident, paired with her father’s addiction problem, forever scarred her familial connections. Still, once she realizes her dad, Sang, has taken a box from her Aunt’s storage, she realizes she must confront him once again. As a result, she shows up at the Golden Groove Monastery, where her father now lives as a monk. The visit only severs the relationship between them further since the daughter remains reluctant to believe her father has turned over a new leaf. Still, she manages to find a key to a storage unit after snooping around in his quarters.
Although Val finds her birth certificate in the storage unit, she also unearths a photo album that reveals a photograph of her mother with marks all over her arms. This reminds her of the folk tale Sang told her about, centering around Sanshi, a spirit also known as the Hungry Ghost. It’s said to take over people’s spirit and feed on their insatiable desires until there’s nothing left of its host. As she goes further down this spiral, her own obsessive head-scratching gets worse to the point where even binding her hands doesn’t help. Additionally, she begins to see visions of a menacing figure taking over her from the shadows. Val’s relationship also spirals out of control when Robbie discovers the truth about her birth control pills.
Inevitably, things get so out of control that Val decides to break into her father’s locked cabinet in his storage unit to unearth the secrets about her family. As such, she comes across several newspaper clippings speculating about whether or not Sang killed his own wife. This also unlocks her own memories, and she remembers seeing her father choking her mother underwater. In the father-daughter confrontation that follows, Sang tells Val that, back during his and his wife’s time in the Vietnam War, he accidentally summoned Sanshi’s demonic presence in his family’s life. As it drove the married couple to their obsessions, the mother began to realize they had passed on its presence to their daughter as well. For the same reason, she tried to drown Val on that boating trip — which is why Sang had to kill her. Nonetheless, despite his claims, Val refuses to believe that she has also become Sanshi’s host.
Control Freak Ending: Is Valerie Pregnant? Does She Give Birth to a Baby?
Sang’s claims about Sanshi provide a possible explanation for Val’s head scratching and the ghostly figure haunting her from the shadows. It reveals that the demonic presence over her life is a hereditary curse passed down to her from her parents. This seems particularly intriguing since one manifestation of Val’s compulsion was her consistent consumption of birth control pills despite her and Robbie’s plans to have a baby. The detail gets put on hold as the woman decides to confront the Sanshi in dangerous ways. However, at the end of the brutal altercation between her and the ghostly spirit, Val reveals something that brings this concept of generational cycles back to the forefront.
As confirmed by a sonograph image, Val is pregnant with Robbie’s kid. Furthermore, she wants to have the baby and start a family with her partner. This comes as an obvious surprise considering the woman’s habit of secretly popping pregnancy pills when the couple was actually trying to get pregnant. The exact distance between this habit and the sonography remains ambiguous. Still, the persisting tension between Val and Robbie suggests that the latter hasn’t had enough time to truly process the reality of everything that has happened in the past few weeks. Therefore, it is possible that Val got pregnant sometime before her medical collapse after she experienced a Sanshi haunting while on stage.
Nonetheless, even if the timeline fits and allows for the possibility of Val getting pregnant, another glaring detail feeds into the unreality of the entire thing. Following the discovery of her pregnancy, Val is seen by a lakeside, cradling a toddler in her arms—with both her hands attached to her wrists. She has a prominent scar on one of her wrists—a reminder of when she intentionally chopped off her hand in her duel against Sanshi. Even so, the concept of a complete replantation remains dubious, considering the injury’s brutality, followed by cauterization of the wrist and prolonged exposure of the limb to the elements. The fact that this scene of the mother with her child is interspersed with flashbacks to her family’s doomed boat trip also adds a certain dream-like quality to the entire sequence.
Therefore, it is possible that Val isn’t actually pregnant—or even if she is, the final scene of her and her baby is an illusion to some extent. If so, it adds a menacing layer of tragedy to the woman’s life, accentuating the numerous ways that Sanshi has ruined her family. Yet, the scene is ambiguous for a reason. It affords the audience space to pick their own interpretation of the events. As such, an alternative interpretation of Val’s pregnancy remains in which, despite the odds, the final sequence of her and her baby is a reality. Nonetheless, even if that’s true, an air of danger remains blanketed over her new family, highlighting how she could possibly only be furthering Sanshi’s motives by propelling the wheels of generational cycles.
Does Valerie Get Her Hand Back? How?
In order to believe the final scene of Val and her baby is actually real and not a delusion, the matter of the chopped hand must be addressed. Initially, after Val has an episode with Sanshi while on stage, she prods the hole in the back of her head, which leads to severe brain damage. The hole on its own is medically concerning since it isn’t caused by an injury but rather by consistent compulsive scratching. On the other hand, it also has various ill effects on her life since it ruins her motor abilities. As a result, Val has to remain under Robbie’s care while she undergoes therapy to gain her movement back. Furthermore, her partner also tries to prevent her from continuing her self-harm/coping mechanism tactics.
While all of this is happening, Val is simultaneously being haunted by Sanshi, who is the root of her self-destructive compulsions. He feeds on these habits and wants her to give into them so that he can consume her whole. For the same reason, she eventually decides to coup against Robbie to solve the ghostly problem on her own. Her solution to the issue is more gruesome than expected. Val decides to craft a machine that she can use to saw through her hands before immediately cauterizing the open wound. In theory, if she has no hands, she can’t give into her head-scratching compulsion—thus stopping Sanshi from feeding on her life.
Val goes through with the plan for one of her hands, chopping it clean off. However, before she can sacrifice her other limb, the spirit interrupts, insisting that he would be able to feed off of the woman no matter what she tries. The Sanshi is an embodiment of urges so persistent and indomitable that they take over one’s life. As such, even though the scratching was the manifestation of Val’s compulsion—it wasn’t the real reason behind it. Instead, the Sanshi was likely feeding on his incessant need for control. Therefore, in a way, chopping off her own limb to gain control over a situation was an ideal outcome for the spirit.
For the same reason, Sanshi helps Val go through with the second amputation, which the latter uses to trick the spirit into trapping his own hand in her machine. Yet, at the end of the day, Val loses a hand in the process of standing up against the spirit. However, if the first amputation had been a part of a different, less self-destructive plan, then it is possible that the woman had a plan to get her hand back through replantation. If so, she would have taken precautions to ensure there is a future possibility for her to get her hand back. Although this is unlikely, it remains one of the only sound explanations in favor of the final scene’s reality.
Did Val Really Defeat Sanshi? Why is There a Bug on Her Baby’s Face?
Working under the same assumption that Val’s baby is actually real confronts the audience with yet another complication. Over the course of the story, Sanshi’s haunting has been accompanied by an increase in bugs around Val’s surroundings. From an ant-infested hole in her house to numerous hallucinations that include bugs in some capacity, the spirit evidently has a connection to the creepy crawlies. In fact, after the brain-podding accident, Val even doubts the sanity of her mind after spotting a bug at the doctor’s office. Therefore, the narrative builds a strong connection between bugs and Sanshi. Where one is, the other usually follows.
Therefore, the presence of a bug on the face of Val’s baby during their lakeside outing raises concerns about the situation. Previously, Val defeats the spirit by finally confronting him for what he truly is. After cutting its hand off, she drags it into the pool with her, mirroring her mother’s attempts to kill her when she was a kid. During this time, she grapples against the spirit until she realizes that she has been a part of it all along. Sanshi is a ghostly manifestation of her own urges. Yet, these urges—like her father’s addiction—stem from within herself. Once she realizes this, she discovers that Sanshi has always had parts of her parents and her own childhood self within him.
In order to overcome the spirit, Val has to confront her and her family’s past. Initially, she tries to do this by saving her own childhood self from the pool. Nonetheless, her urges are self-destructive and try to drag her down with her. Therefore, it’s only once she has Robbie’s outside help that she’s able to surface again. In the aftermath, the Sanshi devolves into a fetal state and dissolves into the water. This symbolizes Val’s victory over the worst of her urges. Instead of killing the Sanshi to gain control over the situation, she tried to save him and save parts of herself. Thus, it contributes toward his end. Nevertheless, in the epilogue, where Val is now a mother, the bugs return, circling over her child. This can be interpreted to mean that the Sanshi can’t truly be killed and is bound to rear its ugly head again. Worse yet, now that Val has given birth to a child, the spirit can sink its claws into them as well, just as he had done to the mother.
Did Robbie Leave Valerie?
Even though Robbie remains an intrinsic part of Val’s life, his relationship with the woman remains tumultuous. Her constant need for control and self-destructive tendencies have driven a wedge between the couple. While she struggles with the reality of Sanshi and its hold on her family, he remains oblivious to her problems. Instead, he only feels distanced from her and fails to become a source of comfort and support. Despite his best attempts, their relationship seems doomed. Yet, in the end, even after Val ties him to the bed while she confronts Sanshi, the man remains desperate to help her.
When Robbie overhears Val’s screams of pain, he fights off his bindings and rushes to help her. As such, he’s able to save her from drowning and even catches a glimpse of the spirit’s corporeal form, albeit in a less intimidating state. Still, it’s enough to solidify the truth of the source behind his partner’s turmoil. Even so, finding out the truth about Sanshi isn’t going to solve the couple’s problems. In fact, knowing that the spirit has such a presence in Val’s life will likely scare Robbie off. A hint of this can be seen when she reveals her pregnancy to the man, who seems less than enthusiastic about the news. The fact that he’s not a part of the epilogue, leaving Val to be the only one beside her baby, seems to be a pretty firm confirmation that Robbie chose not to stick around with his partner and their baby.
Is the Sanshi Real? Is it Just in Valerie’s Head?
Due to the nature of Sanshi in the story, the reality of the monster’s existence naturally comes under questioning. The spirit is meant to be a manifestation of irresistible urges in people. That alone casts him as a boogeyman who can possibly be only a metaphor for mental illness and trauma. He never directly causes any harm to any humans, which means there’s no firm evidence for his corporeal existence. Even when Sang dies—assumed to be a result of the spirit’s parasitic possession over him—it can still be chalked up to an overdose.
The one exception to this remains the aftermath of Val’s confrontation, in which Robbie seems to also be able to see the creature. Still, either possibility about the monster’s reality remains likely. However, all of these intricacies around Sanshi’s existence are intentional. He’s meant to be an ambiguous figure that can be used as a stand-in for a number of complications—from generational trauma to anxiety or controlling issues. This universality of the monster allows it to be that much more menacing both on and off-screen. As such, the interpretation of Sanshi as a physical/spiritual monster or a simple metaphor remains up to the audience.
Read More: Where Was Hulu’s Control Freak Filmed?
