“Unlocked” is a crime thriller movie that came out on Netflix. It was directed by Kim Tae-joon. It stars Chun Woo-hee, Im Si-wan, and Kim Hee-won in the lead roles. The South Korean movie is based on the 2017 book “Sumaho O Otoshita Dake Na No Ni” by Akira Shiga. The story is about Na-Mi, a young office worker who loses her phone and finds herself the target of a well-known serial killer. Detective Ji-man is also trying to catch the criminal, so the target, the killer, and the detective are all in a game of cat and mouse. Here is everything you need to know about the ending of “Unlocked” if you want to know who lives and who dies in this game of twisted psyche and cyber suspense. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Unlocked Plot Synopsis
‘Unlocked’ follows Na-Mi, a young marketer who works for a food product company. Na-Mi can’t live without her phone, and she plans her day around it. She uses it to interact with her friends and promote her company’s products through a secret account. She works at the cafe her father owns and helps him out when she can. One day, when Na-Mi is drunk and riding the bus home, she drops her phone. An unknown person picks up the phone and talks to Na-Mi to find out more about her. However, the “Man” cannot crack the password and unlock the phone.
The Man sets up a meeting with Na-Mi through her friend Eun-Joo and tells her that her phone screen is broken. But the Man says that he sent the phone to be fixed and paid for it. Na-Mi goes to the stranger’s address and hands over her phone, along with her personal information and password, so that it can be fixed. The Man fixes the phone and puts spyware on it, which lets him follow Na-Mi’s every move with a clone phone.
Detective Ji-man and his partner, Jeong-oh, find the body of a young woman who had been killed in the woods. When detectives find plum trees near the crime scene, Ji-Man thinks that his son Jun-Yeong, who he hasn’t seen in a long time, did it. On the other hand, the stalker goes to Na-Mi’s father’s cafe and asks for a drink that is not on the menu: the Plumenade. The fact that he likes plums shows that he is Jun-Yeong. After their meeting, Jun-Yeong makes a list of the things Na-Mi cares about and plans to cut her off from her family.
Ji-Man finds Jun-Yeong’s apartment and finds evidence that connects him to the body in the woods. But Jun-Yeong goes back home and tricks his father into leaving, so he can get rid of the evidence. Later, Ji-Man and Jeong-oh’s investigation leads them to find seven more dead bodies buried in the woods near the crime scene. Jun-Yeong gets close to Na-Mi by selling her tickets to a baseball game, and under a fake name, he introduces himself as a cyber security worker.
But Na-Mi’s father starts to worry about Jun-Yeong.
Soon, it’s clear that Jun-Yeong is a serial killer who has killed eight different women. Na-Mi is the ninth person he has tried to kill. Jun-Yeong takes Na-Mi’s father hostage and then uses the information he has gathered about her to ruin her career. He pretends to be Na-Mi and makes incentive posts and sends mean texts that hurt her company’s latest project. Because of this, Jun-Yeong loses her job and can no longer talk to her coworkers. Since her father has gone missing, Eun-Joo is the only person who can make her feel better.
The women think that Na-Mi’s phone was hacked, so they try to report it to the police. But when the police won’t help, they call Jun-Yeong for help. Jun-Yeong says that someone put spyware on Na-Mi’s phone while posing as an expert in cyber security. In private, he thinks that Eun-Joo hacked Na-Mi’s phone, which caused the two best friends to fight. Ji-Man and Jeong-oh, on the other hand, find Jun-Yeong’s mobile repair shop. Na-Mi looks at what happened before she was fired and realizes that Jun-Yeong hacked into her phone. Because of this, Na-Mi meets the detectives face to face.
Unlocked Ending: Do Ji-Man and Na-Mi Catch Jun-Yeong?
In the last part of the movie, Ji-Man and Na-Mi work together after Na-Mi finds out that Jun-Yeong is following her. But Ji-Man doesn’t tell Na-Mi that her life is in danger because Jun-Yeong kills people over and over again. Still, Na-Mi comes up with a plan to catch the well-known stalker. She decides to use her phone to lure Jun-Yeong to her apartment while the detectives hide to catch him. The plan works, and Jun-Yeong shows up close to where Na-Mi lives. But the detectives don’t notice him, so he gets away. So, the plan doesn’t work out because Jun-Yeong doesn’t show up.
Na-Mi suggests that she turn off her phone to stay out of sight. So, Jun-Yeong won’t be able to find her, so he’ll have to go back to her apartment. While this is going on, Na-Mi agrees to talk to the detectives on a different phone and goes to live with her father. Jun-Yeong finds her, though, and again puts spyware on her phone. When Na-Mi meets her stalker in person, he stops her from calling the police and tells her that he is holding her father hostage.
Jun-Yeong says that he is going after Na-Mi just for the thrill of hunting her and to show that it is easy to cut people off, even though everyone is always connected to their phones. At the end, Jun-Yeong says he will kill Na-Mi and her father by leaving them in the bathtub to drown. But his plan falls through when Ji-man and Jeong-oh show up because Na-Mi had already told them where she was. So, Na-Mi and Ji-Man are able to catch the criminal, but Na-Mi and her father’s lives are in danger.
When Ji-Man finally talks to his son, he finds out that the mysterious stalker is not Jun-Yeong. The crazy serial killer says that his childhood was hard and that he probably grew up alone. Jun-Yeong was his first victim, and he killed him and took his identity. So, when Ji-Man and his son first met, Ji-Man did not recognize his son. Also, when Ji-Man went to Jun-Yeong’s apartment, he found a bunch of fake business cards and documents, which let the killer use different names.
Is Jun-Yeong Dead? What Happens to Na-Mi?
When the detective thinks about what’s going on, the fact that the killer is not Ji-Man’s son throws him off. Jeong-oh saves Na-Mi and tries to bring her father back to life. But Na-Mi gets up the courage to get Jeong-oh’s gun and shoot Jun-Yeong, putting an end to the cat-and-mouse game. Na-Mi’s father also lives, and both of them get good medical care while the detectives talk to the press. Later, we see Na-Mi and Eun-Joo back together at their cafe, where Eun-Joo’s father works with her.
On the other hand, Jun-Yeong seems to have lived through what happened and is now in police custody. A news story says that the killer was out of his or her mind after the shooting. Also, since he was not registered when he was born, the police don’t know who he is. In the last few seconds, we see someone texting in a chat group about how excited they are to go to Na-Mi’s cafe. In the last scene, an unknown person takes a picture of Na-Mi before the credits start.
The way the story ends makes it sound like Na-Mi has put the nightmare behind her and moved on. But the killer is still out there, and it’s likely that he or she got away from the police. So, the ending makes it sound like the killer is ready to mess up Na-Mi’s life. Even though we don’t know why the killers did what they did, the way they isolated and cut off their victims by using data from their smartphones is a warning about how important it is to keep your personal information safe. In the end, Na-Mi is probably going to be scared for the rest of her life.
