Aahana Swrup
‘Terror Tuesday: Extreme’ is a Thai anthology series that presents a collection of horror tales featuring various blood-chilling twists and turns. The first episode, titled ‘Our Little Sister,’ tells a story about survivor’s guilt and the sinister ways in which it manifests. A young woman named Aye loses her little sister, Elle, in a tragic car accident. As a result, she develops PTSD symptoms, struggling to recover from the psychological aftermath of the event. Worse yet, her mother seems to be deeply in denial about her younger daughter’s passing and acquires a doll, said to be infused with Elle’s soul. However, as the charade continues, Aye can’t help but wonder if there’s indeed something more to the doll—but only in the worst ways possible. The episode enjoys keeping the viewers on their toes, throwing last-minute curveballs bound to leave certain questions unanswered. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Aye’s Mother Fills in Elle’s Absence with an Eerie Doll
One fateful night, Aye and her family, including her mother and her younger sister, Elle, get into a deadly car accident. As the older sister comes to consciousness, she witnesses Elle saving herself from the upturned car, only to get hit by an incoming truck. As a result, Aye develops severe PTSD, experiencing lucid nightmares and flashbacks that can only be controlled through regular medication. However, the same is nothing compared to her mother, who seems to be in denial about Elle’s death and regularly sets the dinner table for three people at their home.
Although Aye attempts to persuade her to take her medication, her mother refuses to listen and throws her dosage out to the trash every time. Yet, things somehow get even worse when her mother gets in contact with a shaman who sells her an intricately built doll. The shaman tells her the doll holds Elle’s soul and that the family must adhere to three rules to ensure her safety. Doll-Elle must be fed three times a day as a human, kept inside her wooden box after midnight, and most importantly, she must not escape the area bound within the sacred string to keep the binding spell strong.
While the mother diligently cares for the doll, feeding her and talking to her as if she were her real daughter, Aye remains deeply skeptical of the entire thing. Nonetheless, her friend, Toom, encourages her over a phone call to allow her mother to grieve however she sees fit. Still, after noting a few uncanny instances around the doll, Aye decides to take her out of the box one night after midnight.
As a result, the doll turns into Elle in the flesh. Nevertheless, after a brief, sweet reunion, the sister’s spirit turns vengeful, hurling accusations at Aye since she had been behind the wheel on the night of the accident. From then on, things become stranger around the house as Aye’s mother begins conspiratorially speaking to the doll. Even more concerning yet, Aye’s parrot, Jib-Jib, seems to have gone missing.
What Happened to Jib-Jib? Is The Parrot Dead?
The day that Jib-Jib goes missing, things begin to take a truly unpredictable turn around the house. After Aye asks her mother about her pet, she realizes the latter is acting extra standoffish toward her. Furthermore, when she tries to confront her about neglecting to take her medication, the mother insists that Doll-Elle has fixed everything in the family. In her anger, the young woman takes the doll and attempts to throw her out of the sacred string circle. Although she doesn’t succeed as her mother stops her, Aye realizes she can no longer sanely survive in her own house.
For the same reason, Aye attempts to flee the house the following night, only to be knocked out by her mother, who ties her to the dinner table afterward. Worse yet, the main course in serving is Jib-Jib, the parrot—Doll-Elle’s favorite delicacy. As it turns out, the mother has grown guilty under the doll’s scrutiny and wishes to join her younger daughter in the afterlife to keep her company. As such, she pours out glasses of insecticide for herself and Aye, hysterically oscillating between accusing her of wrongdoings and placating her of her incoming death.
Nonetheless, when the mother drinks the poisonous drink, Aye manages to fight her off and cough the insecticide out. Yet, Aye isn’t out of danger so fast, as the demented spirit inside Doll-Elle attacks the older sister, attempting to choke her out. Following a horrifying struggle between the two, the mother manages to use her last breath to stab the doll’s spirit, weakening it and allowing Aye the opportunity to drag the doll out of the house. However, once Aye crosses the sacred string’s circle, she realizes her injuries are entirely healed. Intriguing still, Jib-Jib seems to be alive and well in her bedroom inside its cage.
Did Aye Imagine the Whole Thing?
With the discovery that Aye’s violent altercation with her mother and Jib-Jib’s death had been nothing but the woman’s delusions, the reality of her other experiences comes under questioning. Did she really watch the doll turn into her human sister after midnight? Was her mother truly as unwell in her grief as Aye perceived her to be? The truth remains much more menacing than expected. Throughout the story, the woman’s sessions with her therapist are interspersed throughout the narrative to showcase the stark difference between her and her mother in their recovery processes.
However, as it turns out, Aye wasn’t doing any better than her mother’s denial—in fact, she was perfectly replicating her. The night of Elle’s death, the young girl wasn’t the only one to die. Instead, Aye’s mother also passed away as a result of the car accident. In the aftermath, Aye—the sole survivor—becomes wracked with guilt and finds herself unable to deal with her reality. Eventually, she came across an online forum where people discussed the loss of their loved ones where someone shared the phone number of a shaman who would be able to revive people. Thus, Aye contacts the shaman herself and buys two dolls from him—one for her mother and another for Elle.
Furthermore, Aye began discarding her medicines and passing her own tossed medicine bottles as her mother’s. Likewise, she flipped the narrative and started thinking her mother brought Elle’s doll into the house—even going as far as to have a hallucinatory conversation over the phone with her “friend,” Toom—who never actually existed. Thus, Aye’s guilt continued to manifest as her mother and her sister’s doll conspiring against her because the woman had already blamed herself for the pair’s death. Ultimately, the entire confrontation that took place around the house between the three was only inside Aye’s head.
Does the Doll Really Have Elle’s Spirit?
After the narrative establishes that the story’s events almost entirely took place inside Aye’s head, another pressing concern emerges regarding the supernatural scope of the shaman’s dolls. Even though most instances that unfolded inside the house were a product of Aye’s imagination, the reality of the dolls persists. Just because Aye bought the dolls rather than her mother doesn’t change the fact that the dolls were still procured from a shaman who claimed to be able to infuse the departed souls into dolls. Therefore, it is possible that the dolls—both Elle’s and the mother’s—were actually still possessed by evil spirits.
For the same reason, the dolls could’ve further aggravated Aye’s PTSD, increasing her delusional tendencies to the maximum. The same would explain the gradual nature of the woman’s psychological descent as well as her instinctual distrust of the dolls. Yet, the narrative leaves the same as an open end, encouraging the viewers to come to their own conclusions. Thematically, the same plays into the idea of a supernatural element antagonizing PTSD and survivor’s guilt’s volatile effects.
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