The Murderer is a Thai crime comedy film that focuses on the aftermath of seven bodies being found in and around a farmhouse. The prime suspect is a British national, but the plot holds many secrets that need to be revealed before the truth is unearthed. The film is now streaming on Netflix and is a first for the streamer in the Isan dialect.
Plot summary
The Murderer opens in Thailand with the local news reporting the discovery of seven bodies in and around a farmhouse in the Bung Kla district.
It is reported that the victims of this killing spree are Boonluck, the family’s patriarch, his sister-in-law, Parsuree, his son, Kai, his ex-son-in-law, Phet, Kai’s ex-wife, Tukta, her American husband, Charlie, and a police officer.
The only survivors are Boonluck’s daughter, Sai, her British husband Earl (the prime suspect), and their little niece June. The case is handed to the lead inspector at Don Kratok Police Station, Nawat Banluecha.
Harboring a deep hatred towards “Farangs” (a local derogatory term used to refer to foreigners), Inspector Nawat interrogates Sai, Earl, and June separately. He believes that Earl is clearly the killer because he was found at the scene with a gun in his hand and covered in blood.
With all the evidence against him, Earl continues to state that he is innocent and Sai too believes that her husband is incapable of killing anyone. June isn’t too clear in her retelling of the events which doesn’t help.
The film switches to flashbacks where we see Sai and Earl travel to the farmhouse to visit the former’s family. They are shown to be stereotypical and dislike Earl.
Sai’s parents and aunt believe that foreigners marry Thai women so they can feed and pamper their husbands in old age. Meanwhile, Sai’s brother Kai has a daughter, June who he doesn’t take care of.
He is in a legal battle with June’s mother Tukta for custody. When they reach the farmhouse, Earl decides to board up the windows because a vicious storm is on the way.
Tukta arrives on the scene with her new American husband, Charlie. The former berates Sai and threatens to take June, but Charlie helps Earl with construction work.
June, who had gone to the market, returns and is delighted to see her aunt and uncle. Sai and Earl are kind to the little girl but she is scolded and pushed around by her grandparents. Furthermore, her alcoholic and good-for-nothing father pays no attention to her.
At dinner, the family is joined by Sai’s ex-husband and Kai’s friend, Phet. Everyone, except Sai, Earl, and June, devour the food like savages and call it a night.
Earl and Sai gift June a mobile phone, and she is ecstatic. The couple finally gets some alone time, but it is ruined by a power outage and Kai and Phet’s drunk singing.
It is extremely dark, and Earl goes downstairs to check. Sai’s retelling of the events shows that she was in the room when she heard the sound of a hammer being struck against something, with Kai and Phet screaming for their lives. She then saw the pickup truck leave.
Earl comes back to the room, covered in blood, and Sai frantically searches for the first aid kit. Meanwhile, Boonluck saw something and is convinced that Earl killed Kai and Phet.
He uses his bloodied shirt as evidence and convinces her wife Jan and Parsuree that Earl has gone insane and will murder everyone else. They grab household items as weapons, but Sai tells them to calm down as there are no bodies, and she saw the truck leave.
Sai sends Parsuree upstairs to look for the first aid kit while she argues with her parents about Earl’s actions. Boonluck is convinced he saw Earl kill, but nothing supports her statement.
Before they can conclude, Parsuree falls from the window above and breaks her neck. Sai’s parents are convinced that Earl threw her. They try to take her to the hospital, but the roads are closed.
When they return, Earl isn’t in the room, and June is missing. However, Kai and Phet are alive and drinking. Boonluck and Jan warn them that Earl has killed Parsuree and kidnapped June. Now, he plans to finish them off one by one.
Sai is still confused as to why her family has suddenly turned against her husband. As the night progresses, we see what really happened.
The Murderer ending explained in detail:
What was Nawat Banluecha’s interpretation?
The inspector shows Sai life insurance papers and claims that Earl wanted to kill everyone including her, so he could get rich. Sai points out that the papers aren’t signed so the insurance is invalid.
Nawat then accuses her of being in cahoots with Earl, but she claims that it would make no sense for her to kill her own family. He mentions a prophecy that a sage had made, which said that her husband would die when she turned 30 and tries to use that as a motive.
Sai is confused because the inspector makes no sense in his reasoning. He is biased as he hates foreigners. They check the body cam footage from the deceased police officer, and it also shows a bloodied Earl running into him and breaking the camera.
Furthermore, Parsuree has Earl’s blood under her nails, and his fingerprints are on both guns recovered from the crime scene. There is enough evidence to get him the death penalty and none to prove his innocence.
What really happened?
June turns out to be the savior Earl needed because her phone is recovered from the fields she was found in that night. She claims that she recorded everything but didn’t say anything as she thought no one would believe her.
Through June’s retelling of the events and the videos she recorded, we discover what really happened. June was making videos on her new phone when she saw her grandfather, Boonluck, running away screaming as if he saw a ghost.
After everyone went to bed, Kai and Phet sat outside the house to drink. The former showed Phet the life insurance papers and revealed that if Earl dies, Sai would inherit a lot of money. He only needed Earl to sign it and would get it done at gunpoint if he had to.
He showed Phet his gun, but it had no bullets. That is when Earl came downstairs and asked the two to quiet down. He saw that the planks on the window were loose and decided to hammer them in place.
He turned on a small construction light and got to work. Kai and Phet were intoxicated, and the hammering sound make their head hurt. They screamed for Earl to stop, and Boonluck saw this scene from a distance.
He thought that Earl was murdering the two boys and started screaming the same. Kai and Phet left to get more drinks, and Earl injured himself. The light went off as he was fixing the window, and a glass shard pierced his head.
He went back to the room, and Sai helped him get into bed as she looked for the first aid kit. Later, when Parsuree went upstairs, she opened Earl’s bloodied wallet to steal money and got his blood under her nails.
She hallucinated her dead husband where Earl was sleeping, and fell out of the window in fear. When everyone left to take Parsuree to the hospital, Earl woke up and went outside to seek help for his wound.
He saw Kai and Phet returning and ran towards them. The drunk duo didn’t slow down as they didn’t see him and Earl jumped out of their way to save himself. He landed on the edge of the road and passed out.
With Parsuree dead after her fall, and the family (except Sai) convinced that Earl is responsible, they all set out to look for him. Jan called the police, and one officer answered the call.
He accidentally arrived at Tukta and Charlie’s place and asked them for directions to Boonluck’s farmhouse. When they found out that there had been a potential murder, they decided to accompany the police officer, fearing for June’s life.
The officer found Phet and Kai’s bodies near the fields. He recovered Kai’s gun from him and put it in his car. He asked Charlie and Tukta to wait while he investigated more.
How did everyone else die?
Kai and Phet found Earl lying unconscious on the side of the road. The former asked Phet to keep watch while he returned with everyone. Phet saw this as an opportunity to kill the British national and reclaim Sai.
He loaded Kai’s gun, but before he could shoot, the pick-up truck’s hand break gave way, and it ran over Phet. Earl woke up and saw Phet dead. He took the gun from the body and ran, only to find Kai.
Kai thought Earl killed his friend and threatened to beat him up with a spade. Earl pulled out the gun but Kai snatched it from him. Intoxicated and fuelled with ego, Kai mocked Earl and pointed the gun at his own head, stating that it is empty.
Since he did not check if it was empty, Kai blew his brains out. This is what the police officer saw and then recovered Kai’s gun.
Meanwhile, Earl went back to the house and locked himself in the kitchen, not understanding why his in-laws were trying to kill him.
Boonluck and Jan saw this and tried to lure him out. They planned to stab him with a garden fork, but Earl refused to step out. Elsewhere, Charlie and Tukta got impatient, took Kai’s gun from the police car, and made their way to the house.
As Boonluck waited for Earl to step out, he was startled by Charlie and stabbed him instead. Tukta saw this and threatened to put them all behind bars. Desperate to save himself, Boonluck also stabbed his former daughter-in-law.
Earl broke a kitchen window and ran. This is when he accidentally banged into the police officer, who apprehended him and took him back to the house. Sai saw Charlie and Tukta dead and demanded an explanation from her parents.
The police officer arrived on the scene with Earl and started investigating. Boonluck and Jan stuck to their story that Earl had pushed Parsuree and killed Phet and Kai in the fields.
However, when the officer saw garden fork wounds on Charlie’s body and blood under Boonluck’s feet, he realized that the old man was the culprit. Before he could act, Boonluck attacked the cop.
In the scuffle that broke out, Sai got knocked unconscious, Earl passed out, and Jan shot the cop. She also got shot in her shoulder and passed out. Bookluck put the weapon in Earl’s hands and died of a heart attack when he hallucinated a ghostly figure again.
Was June the real culprit?
After hearing June’s statement and watching the videos she recorded, Nawat Banluecha is satisfied that Earl is innocent. He is released and reconciles with Sai. To further cement this, Sai’s mother runs away from the hospital, confirming that she was guilty.
As June is let go, she relives the night in her head, and we discover another layer to the story. After constantly being scolded and treated as a burden by her family, June hates all of them except Sai and Earl.
That day, she went to play with Charlie and Tukta’s son, Jamie, and they discovered hallucinogenic mushrooms in the fields. They consumed some and experienced a small trip.
So, June took a bunch of them home and put them in the soup. Everyone had the soup except her, Sai, and Earl, causing them to hallucinate and believe ridiculous things.
Inspector Nawat asks her about the mushrooms, but she denies knowing anything about them. Later, he reports to his superiors that the deaths were the result of a very strong mushroom trip and nothing more.
In the end, June finally gets what she wanted, as Sai and Earl take Jamie and her with them and drive off.
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