We all have lived a life that we don’t remember; it is our past life. Most of us are intrigued by the concept of previous lives, and we want to know more about it. Well, according to Timothy Bevan, the famous hypnotist of the film “Past Life” by director Simeon Halligan, we can revisit our long-lost experiences through hypnotism. Jason, the war journalist who has spent his years in Syria and somehow escaped the brutality of the place, becomes one of his patients. He gets to know about a dark past, and now, he can’t help himself from investigating further.
Spoilers Ahead
What Is The Story Of The Film?
The film opens six years ago in war-torn Syria, where we see a woman being tortured while the perpetrators force Jason to witness the scene. Cut to the present, Jason is doing well since his time in Syria. His wife, Claira, is pregnant, and this will give him an opportunity to start his life afresh. Beth, one of Claira’s colleagues, has invited the couple to a broadcast of Timothy Bevan, the well-known hypnotist of the town, to enjoy the night. While the couple is on the show, Bevan performs his hypnotism on a girl named Sarah. At first, Jason thinks this is just a party trick, but when he volunteers to become Bevan’s next participant, things change for him. Bevan hypnotizes Jason, and he gets visions of women getting ruthlessly killed by someone. This terrifying visualization sends Jason into shock, and he collapses on the floor. In his trance, Jason has opened a door to a haunting memory that needs to be closed, so he visits Bevan yet again.
Who Is The Woman That Jason Sees?
After Claira gets out for work, Jason hears a particular song by the Blues. When he enters the room to turn the song off, he comes across a horrifying vision of a dead woman with her throat slit. Jason realizes that the woman is not Jane, and she is not related to his PTSD. Instead, this vision has to do something with the one that he saw in his trance during the podcast. The woman that Jason sees is Kim Ellis, who was murdered by a serial killer in 1987. She, along with her friend, was returning home through a dark alleyway at night while being followed by the killer. The intruder, who had managed to follow her till her home in Mangle Street, broke into her house without her notice. While Kim was taking a shower, she could sense someone was in her room. Before she had the chance to save herself and escape, the serial killer captured and threw her on the bed, tying her hands to the bedpost. Mercilessly enough, without thinking twice, he slit her throat and took her necklace with him before fleeing the scene.
Why Does Jason Go Back To Bevan And Who Is Emily?
Jason goes back to Bevan because, after the night of the broadcast, he saw a vision of Kim Ellis. He knows that they opened a door that needs to be investigated. This door is somehow related to Jason, which is letting him get visions of dead people from a life that he did not live. To stop these visions from getting out of hand, Jason wants to take Bevan’s help to find out more about them and where they are leading him to. Although it is a risky job, he convinces Bevan to hypnotize him again. If these investigations can lead them to some concealed truth, then Bevan can also prove the credibility of his job to the critics. During the hypnotizing session, Jason discovers another woman named Emily Phillips, who was killed by the same serial killer on the same night as Kim. Like the previous incident, the killer followed her home and broke in without any notice. When Emily finally noticed the killer, it was too late; he stabbed her to death and stole her neckpiece.
Why Do Jason And Bevan Visit Elliot Reid?
When Jason tells Detective Sage to reinvestigate those murders from the late 80s, she refuses to do so because that was a long time ago. Since the investigation ran dry then, she does not want to take risks anymore based on what Jason has to say. Both Jason and Bevan make up their mind to reveal the truth somehow, which leads them to Elliot Reid, a true crime expert who covered all those murder cases, and also vividly explained the mentality of a serial killer in his podcasts, which appears quite strange in the beginning. They think that visiting Elliot will give them some insights into the case, and that he will be able to assist them in solving those cases. At first, Elliot does not believe in the hypnotizing thing that Bevan does, but when Jason reveals details about the killer that nobody has ever known, he starts to believe him. He shows them another case of a mysterious murder of a girl named Cheryl. She was the third and the last victim of the serial killer in the late 80s, and probably knew the perpetrator. Elliot reveals that all the three girls who were murdered were university students of the Psychology department, therefore, the person who killed them must be connected to the university.
Who Is Sebastian Drake, And Why Does Jason Think He Is The Killer?
Sebastian Drake was the tutor of the three girls who were murdered in the late 80s. He was also a psychiatrist, and Elliot Reid was his patient. He was the only person who had connections with the girls and the university. This information makes Jason believe that he is the original killer, but Bevan tells him that his visions are from a past life, which can only exist if the person, through whom he sees the murders, has died. Unlike Bevan, who can just hypnotize people and let them remember their past lives, being a psychiatrist, Drake could use his ability to control people’s minds. He controlled Elliot’s mind like he wanted to. Jason and Bevan don’t know this yet, but Drake had a thing for those female students. Thus, did he kill those girls? Let’s find it out.
How Is Bevan Sure That Elliot Killed Those Girls?
While Bevan was having a conversation with Elliot regarding their progress in Jason’s absence, he discovered the jewellery of the dead girls. He stole those from his safe and took off with the key as well. This discovery makes Bevan sure that Elliot is the killer of those girls, and he wants to inform Jason of this as soon as possible. While his life is in danger, he hands them over to Jason, who dismisses him at first; however, seeing similar visions once again, he drives to Bevan’s house. Once inside, he finds blood prints on papers that are scrambled everywhere and realizes that he was not bluffing. For one last time, Jason hypnotizes his own self and opens the final door that he could not do the last time. This time, he learns about the killer, who is none other than Elliot Reid. While Cheryl was trying to evade him, she burnt his arm, which will later serve as evidence to bring Elliot’s sins to light. After she was murdered that night, he suffered a car crash during his escape. While the doctors were trying to save him, he flatlined for five minutes, during which Jason was born (20th July 1988), hence a part of Elliot was embedded into Jason’s memory of his past life. After those five minutes, he came back to life and continued to become a Podcaster. Since he was the killer all this time, it explains why he could describe the thought processes of a serial killer so clearly.
What Happens To Jason In The End?
Since Jason knows too much, after attacking Bevan, Elliot’s next victim is Jason’s wife and him. He breaks into their home and gets Claira in a chokehold; meanwhile, Jason comes running to save her and confronts Elliot. Claira, the clever woman that she is, bites into Elliot’s arm and runs away from his grip, and later goes into hiding inside the bathroom while undergoing severe labor pain. Before Jason and Elliot engage in a vicious fight, Elliot tells him that during those murders, he was compelled; it was as if he was under somebody’s control. To save himself, Jason stabs Elliot in the neck, and the moment his heartbeat flatlines again, Jason’s little girl is born. In the end, after eight months since this incident, we see Jason signing books that he wrote based on his experience regarding past life regression, but the scene becomes tense as Sebastian Drake enters to get his book signed. It is revealed that he has been the culprit throughout. He controlled Elliot to commit those murders, and soon he is going to come for Jason. He warns him about rewriting the epilogue of his book because now, he knows the truth.
