Sumala Ending, Explained: Does Kumala Die?

Netflix’s ‘Sumala’ is an Indonesian horror film that explores a terrifying urban legend of a supernatural entity that kills children. The film begins with a group of children playing in a field outside their village. When the sun sets, two children are left behind, looking for their ball in the field. This is when they come across a little girl who kills one of them. When the other boy witnesses the murder, he runs back to the village to notify people about it but is horrified to discover that no one believes him. Except for one man.

The man reveals that the girl who killed the boy is named Sumala, and she is no ordinary girl. To understand her identity, one has to go back a few decades. Soedjiman and his wife, Sulastri, had everything they could ask for, but they didn’t have an heir to pass down their wealth and family heritage to. Years pass, and the couple remains without a child. As Soedjiman’s uncle tries to get his land from him, the question of an heir comes into question, which makes the man so desperate that he tells his wife he will marry someone else if she can’t get pregnant.

An equally desperate Sulastri chances upon a conversation where she discovers that a shaman named Grandma Tukinah helps women get pregnant. As her last resort, she decides to try this option but discovers that Tukinah deals in black magic. She promises to give Sulastri what she wants, but there is a price. Sulastri will become pregnant with twins where one child will be beautiful while the other will be ugly. The couple will have to raise both children with love and care for ten years, following which the Devil comes to claim his share, the ugly child.

When he receives what he is promised, he will leave the family to their own devices, and they will be able to live happily ever after. However, if the promise is not fulfilled, then havoc will be wreaked upon their family, and no one will be able to save them from the catastrophe that will befall them. When Sulastri gets pregnant, she doesn’t tell her husband about this deal, and things go terribly awry when he kills the ugly child and mistreats the beautiful one for her disability. Ten years down the line, things start to unfold just as the shaman had promised they would if Sulastri didn’t hold her end of the bargain. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Why Can’t Soedjiman Kill Sumala? How Does She Survive?

When Soedjiman and Sulastri discovered they were having twins, they decided to name the girls Kumala and Sumala. When they were born, Sumala was ugly, as the shaman had already told Sulastri. Soedjiman couldn’t handle having a child like her, so he killed her shortly after she came out of her mother’s womb. This is when the couple’s fate is sealed because Sulastri’s promise to give the ugly child to the Devil is broken. Moreover, due to Kumala’s disability, her father terribly mistreated her, and while her mother showed some objection to his actions, she never actually did anything to stop him from physically abusing her. Moreover, she herself never showed any love towards Kumala, and that broke another promise she had made to the Devil.

For ten years, Kumala lives a miserable life, hated by her own parents and bullied by the boys from the village. Eventually, she is visited by a girl who looks awfully similar to her. The girl reveals that she is her twin, Sumala, who was killed at birth, and now, she has returned to keep Kumala company and help her fight the people who abuse her. Over time, Sumala’s influence on Kumala increases to the point that she starts killing people. When she goes on a killing spree where she kills the bullies, Soedjiman and Sulastri are forced to face reality. Sulastri comes clean about the deal she made with the Devil and what it means for their living daughter. To find a solution, Soedjiman visits a shaman, Grandpa Kusno, who gives him a remedy.

Kusno presents Soedjiman with two options. The first option is to bring Kumala to him so he can rid her of Sumala’s spirit and make her normal again. However, this option only holds till the girl’s tenth birthday. Because on her tenth birthday, Sumala was promised to the Devil he would claim her as such in Kumala’s body, and then there would be no saving the girl. In that case, Soedjiman has only one other option. The shaman gives him a blessed blade with which the father must stab his living daughter’s heart so his dead daughter can stop wreaking havoc on the village.

By the time Soedjiman returns home, everyone, including his wife, has been killed by Sumala, who seems to have completely taken over Kumala’s body. When it becomes clear to him that there is no saving her, he chases after her. At one point, he renders her unconscious and has the chance to kill her. However, this is still his daughter, and he cannot fathom killing her, even though he has done nothing but hurt her since she was born. He is overcome by guilt, and as he apologizes to her, he tells her that he will take her to the shaman so she can be healed.

Soedjiman’s hesitation costs him dearly because, soon enough, Sumala comes back into the picture and attacks him. This time, he has no option but to stab her with the knife, and he does so. He pierces the left side of her chest with the blade, but despite what the shaman predicted, the blade doesn’t kill her. Sumala and Kumala were supposed to be the opposite of each other. One was beautiful, the other ugly. One was deformed, and the other was able-bodied. One was human, the other the spawn of the Devil. It turns out this thing of opposites also applied to their hearts. So, while Kumala’s heart was on the left side, Sumala’s was on the right. Since Sumala had taken over her sister’s body, the heart had moved to the right, so when their father stabbed her on the left, he completely missed the heart, which means he didn’t kill Sumala.

What Happens to Kumala? Does She Die?

When a deal with the Devil is made, a person has to hold their end of the bargain. For Sulastri, the bargain was to get one daughter in return for giving her other daughter to the Devil. When her husband killed the Devil’s daughter, the Devil found a way to get what was promised to him. Ten years later, the spirit of Sumala shows up to possess Kumala. At first, she seems friendly and intent on avenging the wrongs done to her sister. But soon, it becomes clear that the spirit only intends to inherit Kumala forever. She wants the body she was denied by being murdered at birth. So, when the tenth birthday arrives, she will completely take over Kumala, and the Devil will get his due.

The shaman knows this, which is why he tells Soedjiman to get the girl to him before her tenth birthday. Before that, Sumala and Kumala would still be individual entities, which means they can be separated. If Sumala is removed from Kumala’s body, then the latter will have a chance to get back to normal and carry on with her life. However, once the girl turns ten years old, the Devil will have a claim over her due to what was promised to him when Sulastri made a deal with him. On the tenth birthday, he would get his part of his deal, which means that the evil spirit of his daughter would completely take over the human spirit of Soedjiman’s daughter. After this, there would be no going back.

For his part, Soedjiman tries to save his daughter. Even when he almost stabs her the first time, he has a change of heart, especially after she realizes that his wife was at fault for keeping everything secret from him and he was at fault for treating his disabled daughter the same way he was treated when he was a child. In the end, he fails to kill Sumala, which means that Kumala is now completely under her control. Even if the girl’s spirit is alive in her body, it is no more in control as her twin’s spirit has completely taken over. In the end, while Kumala’s body seems to live on, it is actually inhabited by Sumala, while the real Kumala is gone for good.

Is Soedjiman Dead?

When the shaman, Grandma Tukinah, told Sulastri that she could help her get pregnant, she made the terms of their deal very clear. If these terms were not met, she told the woman that her entire family would meet a terrible end, that each year would get worse than before, until eventually, there would be no difference between night and day. Perhaps if she had mentioned outright death, Sulastri would have taken her words more seriously. But the shaman left that part to be read between the lines, and in the end, the worst comes to pass.

As Sumala slowly takes over her, Kumala realizes what is about to happen. She doesn’t have any doubt about her evil’s sisters intention, especially after she kills all the bullies in the worst manner. Despite all the hatred she has received over the years, Kumala doesn’t anyone to die, specifically the people who have been good to her. This is why she warns the kind-hearted aunt, telling her to leave the house and go away as far as possible before her tenth birthday arrives. The aunt heeds her advice, and as a result, she is the only one to survive the ordeal.

As the eve of their tenth birthday begins, Sumala takes over Kumala and kills every person in the household. She begins with Sukir, her father’s right-hand man, who had always enjoyed torturing her. Then, she moves on to their mother, whose apologies fall on deaf ears as Sumala gives her a terrible end. The worst, however, she saves for the father, who had scorned her and hurt her all this while. There was a time when he had Kumala tied to a cross and left in the field in place of a scarecrow. Sumala gives a similar end to him. She stabs him in the belly as his guts fall out, stabs both his eyes and then leaves his corpse tied to a cross like a scarecrow for the villagers to find.

Who Killed Grandpa Kusno?

If it really was about avenging Kumala, Sumala would have stopped her murder spree then and there. If she really just wanted justice for her sister, she wouldn’t have killed any other innocent person. But that was never the plan. She is the spawn of evil, and she wouldn’t stop once she got hold of Kumala’s body. While apologizing to her, Soedjiman tells her he will take her to Grandpa Kusno. The shaman is the one who can heal her. He is also the one who gives Soedjiman the dagger to kill her if push comes to shove. So, when all the bullies and haters are dealt with, Sumala pays a visit to the shaman and kills him as well. Later, when the villagers come looking for him, they find his dead body, realizing that with him gone, there is no one left to save them from Sumala.

Sure enough, the evil lurks in the village for years to come. The villagers have to live in terror, fearing for their lives and that of their children. She goes around at night, killing anyone unfortunate to come across her. Eventually, the villagers learn that the only way to survive her is to evade her altogether. So, all the children are forbidden from being outdoors after dark. At first, everyone takes this rule seriously, but over the years, as the killings reduce to the adherence to the rule, people slowly forget about the thing they were supposed to be afraid of. So, when they eventually lapse, Sumala finds the opportunity and strikes again, reigniting the terrors in their hearts and keeping the fear alive for generations to come.

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