Aahana Swrup
The Thai mystery thriller series ‘Delusion’ revolves around a strange string of killings in which people seem to have already decided the culprit is an otherworldly spirit. In the village of Nasao, Narong’s dementia worsens, landing him in strange circumstances. His increasingly concerning behavior invites the backlash of his neighbors, who begin to accuse the old man of being possessed by the spirit of Phii Pong. This adds a new set of complications to his daughter, Wan’s already crowded plate. The latter is currently in the middle of tense divorce proceedings, which threaten to take her son, Aim, away from her. However, once her father’s condition puts her own future and her son’s life in danger, she has no choice but to team up with the new superintendent, Pete, to solve the case and hopefully clear Narong’s name. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Delusion Recap
For years now, the legend of the Phii Pong has been spreading across Nasao Village and its nearby locales. As per the myth, the ghostly spirit possesses older people and then slays younger victims, robbing their remains of organs, including teeth. The dead bodies are usually found in the village’s forest, which is deemed to be haunted. Naturally, when a young boy named Meud goes missing, his family and his neighbors begin to believe the spirit has taken him. Nonetheless, the new superintendent in town, Pete, refuses to buy into these ghost stories. As such, he takes his men out one night on a search, where instead of Meud, they find Narong, who is smeared in blood. His wife, Panee, quickly arrives to his rescue, insisting that he was only helping her out with a self-inflicted accidental cut. Despite her defense, Pete remains suspicious.
The same night, the elder couple’s daughter, Wan, returns with her own son, Aim, and learns that the doctors have diagnosed her father with dementia. However, the villagers and even Panee herself have internalized the belief that Narong is Phii Pong’s latest host. On his first night back from the hospital, the older man leaves the house in the middle of the night and wanders off into the woods. Upon noticing the same, Aim, who is curious about the reality of the spirit, follows after him. Yet, when the kid catches up to him, he realizes that his grandpa is in some sort of trance as he insists on taking his grandson to the waterfall nearby. When Wan and Wat awake, they’re both anxious about the situation, and the mother even reaches out to Pete for help. After hours of searching, they finally find Narong at the river with Aim drowning in the water nearby. Simultaneously, the search had led to the discovery of Meud’s dead body, marked with the M.O. of the spirit.
In the aftermath, Narong is arrested as a suspect in Meud’s murder, and Panee remains angry at her daughter for involving the police in family matters. Meanwhile, Shaman Sak peddles forward the idea that Phii Pong has returned to the village. On the other hand, Wan’s husband, Yote, uses the incident as another reason to convince his soon-to-be ex-wife to give up custody of their child. Pete’s investigation leads him to an old case, believed to be Phii Pong’s first tour in the village. Naturally, this takes him to Sak, who was the first person to identify the spirit. Interestingly enough, the shaman is also Panee’s brother and the current owner of Narong’s land. All of this makes him a person of interest. Yet, Pete’s superior bars him from furthering this line of investigation for fear of the villagers’ reaction. Still, the officer recruits Wan’s help and breaks into the shaman’s house to search for a DNA sample.
The same night, while walking through the forest, Sak meets his demise in a violent death that makes him seem like another victim of Phii Pong. The following morning, the police discovered that the same night, Sarong, who is supposed to be on house arrest, was outside past midnight. In light of these events, Wan gets fired from work because of her family’s scandal. Her life falls further apart as Yote grows more aggressive in the divorce proceedings. To make matters worse, she also learns that on the day at the waterfall, her father had actually pushed Aim into the water. As the police continue to circle the family, Panee takes an extreme step and sets fire to a cabin in the woods. Upon witnessing the same, Wan begins to suspect her mother of murdering Sak. Therefore, she takes Narong and flees to Yote’s lake house. There, after a strange turn of events, she finally finds herself face-to-face with the killer behind the Phii Pong murders.
Delusion Ending: Is Phii Pong Real? Who is Behind the Murders?
The legend of Phii Pong is so prevalent in Nisao village that people are willing to accept it as a substitute for justice. When the first round of killings happened, Shaman Sak spread the word about the spirit’s presence in the village, and it took such a hold on the population’s superstition that they have continued to believe it ever since. Nonetheless, the entire thing is a fiction crafted by the Shaman to hide a damning family secret. Years ago, when Wan and her brother, Wat, were still young, the latter received relentless bullying. One time, a neighborhood kid accused him of being Phii Pong and locked him in his family’s cabin with a bucketful of frogs. When he finally let him out, Wat pushed the boy off the cabin’s balcony.
The kid landed on a rake and died. When his parents and his Uncle Sak learned of the incident, they covered it up by getting rid of the evidence and burying the body. However, once Wat got the taste of taking a life, he became addicted to it. He started killing other bullies, usually kids his own age, leaving a trail of bodies around the village. He would also steal his victims’ teeth as trophies. This pushed his family into a corner as the trio of adults continued covering up after the child. Sak became a Shaman and convinced the village that the spirit of Phii Pong is to blame for the murders. He also tinkered with the superstition,
casting adults as potential hosts for the spirit to keep suspicion away from his nephew.
Eventually, Panee and Sarong sent their son off to Bangkok to study, hoping this would resolve his psychopathic tendencies. Around the same time, Sak grew greedy and started blackmailing his sister and his brother-in-law, extorting money and land deeds from them in exchange for his silence. Meanwhile, Wat’s serial killer tendencies continued to grow even in Bangkok. As a result, the superstition of the Phii Pong spread beyond the village as well. Once he became a doctor, it became even easier for him to commit these murders. Back in Nasao, Sak’s greed grew. For the same reason, he tried to exhume the remains of Wat’s very first victim to prove the validity of his threat. Meud caught him in the act. Thus, the shaman killed him and blamed Phii Pong, restarting the cycle.
Does Wat Get Away With the Murders? Why Does Wan Cover For Him?
Once Sak becomes a tangible threat to the family, Panee makes a difficult decision. She realizes that killing him would finally free her family from the burden of his blackmail. When she was unable to finish the job after attacking her brother in the forest, Wat stepped in and killed his uncle. Thus, Sak becomes a new addition to a long list of his victims. All his life, the son has been getting away with the consequences of his actions by exploiting his family’s love for him. Therefore, even now, he is relying on his parents to play their parts in ensuring no harm comes to him. Yet, after the discovery of the first victim as well as Wat’s collection of stolen teeth, a cover-up isn’t as simple as a folktale. Instead, Narong needs to take the fall for his son, branding himself the killer so that the investigation would cease before it could touch the real killer.
Wat has a relative confidence that his father would follow through with what is expected of him. Likewise, he knows that his mother won’t ever sell him out to the authorities. That only leaves Wan as a potential source of trouble. If she continues to insist on their father’s innocence, it could ruin everything. For the same reason, the brother attacks her at the lake house before kidnapping her and Aim and taking them on a boat out to the sea. In this isolated confrontation, he reveals the entire truth of their family’s history to her. Furthermore, he also reveals something instrumental. On the day of his bully’s death, when he was still only tormenting Wat, the kid called out to his sister for help. However, even after witnessing her brother’s abuse, Wan walked away from the scene unbothered. In some ways, the serial killer wonders if her help on that day could have changed the course of history. Perhaps this plays into Wan’s eventual decision to follow in her family’s footsteps and keep her brother’s secret.
Alternatively, it could also be connected to the death of her husband, Yote. Earlier at the lake house, the latter had attempted to choke her to death over an argument. Fortunately, Narong had arrived on the scene and attacked his son-in-law. When he geared up to bash Yote’s skull in with a marble statue, Wan had the opportunity to stop her father, but she chose not to. This could suggest that the sister has a faint thread of similarity to Wat that she would rather ignore. Even so, the most probable reason she agrees to keep quiet is likely because of her son. All her life, Wan has felt second to Wat in the love and care that her parents bestowed upon their children. Therefore, she is finally deciding to leave her past behind her, and with it her family. If that requires her to keep Wat’s secret to ensure her and Aim’s survival, she is willing to pay the price.
What Was Wrong With Narong? Was He Possessed?
Throughout the story, Narong’s strange behavior gives some credence to the idea of Phii Pong. Although he is diagnosed with dementia, the older man also displays some actions that seem to be in line with the spirit. The most notable example of this stems from his attempt to drown his own grandson, Aim. Nonetheless, his actions aren’t a result of any spiritual possession. Instead, it’s the impact of his past coming back to haunt him. Even though Narong covered up Wat’s first murder, he has continued to carry the guilt for it. If he hadn’t saved his son from the consequences of his action that day, many more lives could have been saved. Yet, helpless to overcome his fatherly love, he has continued to aid and abet Wat in his crimes.
The weight of this truth hangs over Narong and is only worsened by his dementia. During his episodes, he reverts to that time in his life, capable of taking back his mistakes. On the night when he finds Aim in the woods, he mistakes his grandson for his actual son. Even back then, the parents were perplexed by the psychopathic tendencies of their kid. In some ways, Panee had convinced herself it was a sinister shadow on her son, buying into the idea of the Phii Pong one way or another. Thus, when he tries to drown the young boy, he is actually attempting to punish Wat for the murders. Ultimately, Narong’s condition was only ever related to his medical diagnosis.
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