Netflix’s If Wishes Could Kill revolves around a cursed app called Girigo and the consequences that users face. From deaths and possession, the app destroyed the lives of several high school students in the horror K-drama.
It all began with the death of two friends, Hye-rung and Si-won. Hye-rung was the one who started the curse by performing the ‘deolmi’ ritual, which resulted in the death of Si-won and Gi-tae. Si-won again makes her wish in the Girigo app and triggers Hye-rung’s curse to go on forever.
More on this in our story.
If Wishes Could Kill: Deolmi is a shamanic ritual that Hye-rung performs
If Wishes Could Kill opens with Hye-rung’s s*icide as she slits her own throat after putting a curse on her crush Gi-tae and Si-won. It is later showcased that it was Si-won’s mother who taught her how to make a deolmi doll. While she dismisses it at the time, this is the same ritual she uses to kill Si-won.
After Si-won humiliates Hye-rung by showing her confession video to the whole class, Hye-rung takes a drastic decision. She goes back to the abandoned factory where she and Si-won stay, and finds the wooden deolmi dolls. The ritual appears to be similar to voodoo dolls, where a person’s personal items are used to connect them with the dolls.
She ties one of them with Si-won’s hair and uses Gi-tae’s nametag on the other to connect them with the dools. The next step that Si-won’s mother told her was to use blood. While she suggested using a pig, Hye-rung ended up using herself as the sacrifice to trigger the curse. She recorded her video on the Girigo app, where she cursed Gi-tae and Si-won and wished for their death before slitting her throat. This triggered the curse, resulting in the death of Gi-tae and Si-won.
In the final episode, Haetsal performs the deolmi ritual again to trick Si-won in the other realm to make her believe that she was Hye-rung, not Haetsal. This gave enough time to Se-ah to find the actual ‘Maehyung’, which was not Hye-rung but Si-won’s phone. She was the one who made the wish to let Hye-rung’s curse go on forever.
Therefore, the shamanic ritual was an important aspect of the horror element in If Wishes Could Kill, as it was the only ritual that killed Si-won at the start. Later, Haetsal uses the same ritual to distract her and buy some time for Se-ah to find Si-won’s phone and destroy it.
Also Read: If Wishes Could Kill parents’ guide: Why you shouldn’t let your kids watch the Netflix horror K-drama, explained
The latest Netflix horror K-drama stars Jeon So-young, Baek Sun-ho, Kang Mi-na, Lee Hyo-je, Roh Jae-won, Hyun Woo-seok, and Jeon So-nee, among others.
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Edited by Debashri Roy