Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Something Very Bad is Going to Happen’ follows a bride who tries to shake off the eponymous feeling as her wedding nears. The wedding is to take place at Somerhouse, the cabin owned by her fiancé Nicky’s family. The place heightens her paranoia even more, and she becomes suspicious of everything they say and do. One of the things that catches her attention is the story of the Sorry Man. It originates from a traumatic experience that Nicky’s older brother Jules had when he got lost in the woods as a child. While the story seems to have turned into a family myth, it later turns out to have been real, but not in the way Jules or anyone else expected. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Mythical Sorry Man Turns Out to be Real
According to the Cunningham family lore, Jules went missing for several hours in the woods, and when he came back, he told that he’d come across a man who ripped open a woman’s belly to get a baby out of it, while saying “I’m sorry” over and over again. His parents thought that he was imagining things, that this was the way his brain was processing the trauma that he had been through. Still, once his siblings heard the story, they thought he was talking about a real ghost who haunts the woods. Over the years, they bent the story to their own versions, and made it so scary that their parents had to put a ban on talking about the Sorry Man. Still, the lore was passed around, and eventually, it found its way to Jude, but by that time, so many new details had been added to it that it became more of a horror story than a real experience.
As an adult, Jules convinced himself that what he saw that day in the woods was not real, that his parents were right, and his mind had played tricks on him. Still, a part of him continued to believe in the story of the Sorry Man, even though he told his son that there was no such thing haunting the woods. Jules’ doubt about his own lived experience is cleared up when Jude shows him the video of a weird man hiding in their house, the man he believes has kidnapped Rachel. Seeing the man in the video brings back the memory for Jules, removing any doubt about it not being real. And he rushes to save Rachel, ending up at the cabin where he really had seen a man cut open a pregnant woman’s belly. Still, he is in for a shock when he finally gets a context for what he saw and what it means for Rachel and his family.
The Sorry Man Has a Close Connection to Rachel and Jules
When Jules reaches the cabin to save Rachel from her kidnapper, he discovers that the man is her father. He had come to the cabin all those years ago with his pregnant wife, Ali, to get married. Much like Rachel, Ali had a nagging feeling that something very bad was going to happen, though she couldn’t put a finger on it. Her husband-to-be assured her that it was most likely cold feet for the wedding or nervousness because of her pregnancy. So, Ali decided to ignore her fears and go through with the wedding. As it turns out, she didn’t know about the curse of her bloodline, and because she didn’t marry her soulmate, she bleeds to death right in front of her husband’s eyes. He has no idea what just happened to his wife.
Everything happens so quickly that Ali dies before she can receive help. The only thing her husband can think about now is how their unborn daughter has a very small window left to survive. Because they are in a secluded cabin, he knows that it will be hours before he gets to a hospital and has the baby delivered to safety. The only thing he can do now to save his daughter is to cut open his dead wife’s belly and deliver the baby. Of course, this isn’t something he is happy to do. He is still processing the loss of his wife, horrified by how she died and having no idea why she died so suddenly. The only thing he can do is say sorry to her over and over again, even though she is already gone.
What the man doesn’t know is that Jules had been under the bed all along. The boy ran away from his house and decided to stay the night at the cabin he came across. He had no idea it was already occupied, so when the couple entered the place, he hid under the bed. Before he could think about a way to escape, the curse took hold of Ali, and everything happened so fast that Jules didn’t know what to do. In her dying moments, Ali saw him under the bed, but at this point, neither of them could do anything for the other. Having witnessed the horrifying event, Jules had no idea how to make sense of what had happened. When he tried to tell his parents about it, his story was dismissed as a figment of his fearful imagination. He was told it didn’t happen for so long that he started to question his own memory. It was only when Rachel came into the picture that he finally understood what he had witnessed and got closure.
Read More: Is Something Very Bad is Going to Happen a True Story? Is Rachel Based on a Real Person?
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