Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Pablo Larraín, ‘My Sad Dead,’ or ‘Mis muertos tristes,’ peeks into the graying world of Dr. Ema Bascary, whose gifts are not medical in nature. Her ability to talk to the dead often makes her the talk of the town, but it isn’t until the death of her mother that things truly begin to take a serious turn. While she grieves, her sister, Lidia, moves in with her family, including her young daughter Jules, who also has the ability to see the dead in action. What Julie goes on to do with this ability, however, blurs the line between it being a blessing and a curse. As the ghosts descend upon the town and leave a trail of chaos in their wake, Ema and others are forced to wrestle with questions they aren’t prepared to answer. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Ghosts are Likely Linked to the Trauma Experienced by Ema and Julie
Though ‘My Sad Dead’ doesn’t explicitly provide us with a reason why Ema and Julie can see and talk to ghosts, it does leave us with a few clues. In the very final scene, the ghost of Susanna mentions that an allergy to morphine runs in the family, and while that might be a literal statement, there is also a metaphorical angle. Without morphine drowning out the pain, Ema and her bloodline are essentially doomed to feel all of the pain and suffering at every turn, and that is bound to affect their psyche. The ability to intercept ghosts, then, might be an extension of this uniqueness, in which Ema and Julie see the entire world come to life in its most morbid form, with people becoming ghostly reminders of their own suffering.
If Ema and Julie’s supernatural and seemingly inherited ability is to be interpreted as them tuning into the world’s collective pain, then the question arises as to why characters like Lidia or Carolina are the exceptions. A potential answer here can be located in their dysfunctional family dynamics, and how their go-to response to conflict is avoidance and escape. At the same time, however, they are perpetually unable to move past their individual pains, and the result is a sort of limbo effect that separates them from true empaths such as Ema and Julie. That said, just because the two of them share the ability doesn’t mean that they have similar perspectives on, and uses of it. Instead, the radically different meaning Julie derives from her ghostly interactions goes on to define both her and Ema’s arcs.
The Ghosts May be Real, But Ema Seems to be Limited by Her Own Mind
The question of whether the ghosts are real, as in actual supernatural entities, or purely psychological constructs, has some interesting arguments on both fronts. To begin with, the fact that the entire town gains the ability to see them after consuming parts of Julie’s flesh should be proof alone of the entire phenomenon being real. However, this can also be interpreted as the entire town experiencing mass psychogenic illness, or some chemically induced illness, due to consuming contaminated water. Em even suggests early on that the town is having a mass reaction to the recent string of traumatic events, which explains why people would begin imagining the dead in a place where brutality has become commonplace.
One detail that makes a strong case for the ghosts being real, however, is how Ema seems to know things only the dead person knew. This can range from figuring out how a person truly died to knowing that a person has a secret name they haven’t told anyone. However, in both cases, her revelations can also be interpreted as deductions or educated guesses. For instance, she only estimates that Naty is not the dead girl’s real name due to the latter’s mysterious past, but doesn’t know the real name itself until it is revealed during the investigation. But when Cora captures photographs of her mother conversing with the dead, Ema seemingly sees a ghost in the photos as well, going against the very nature of how the images are made. As such, a case can be made for the ghosts being either trauma-driven mind-constructs or actual beings, but their role in the story doesn’t change.
Read More: My Sad Dead Ending Explained: Does Julie’s Ghost Come Back?
