The Eyes Are the Best Part

Ji-won stops at a gas station near her home with a publicly accessible outdoor bathroom. She collapses onto the floor of the bathroom and, hardly believing what happened, removes the eye from her pocket and inspects it. She washes the blood off her hands and then rinses the eyeball under running water.

Before she can talk herself out of it, she squeezes the eyeball into her mouth. She finds it strangely delicious, and after swallowing, she drinks water until her stomach is full. Then she vomits into the toilet. The bowl is tinged pink, and she flushes the evidence away.

When Ji-won gets home that night, the rest of her family is asleep. Ji-won removes George’s license from his wallet and shoves it down the garbage disposal.

Ji-won wakes in the morning to several messages from Geoffrey, all complaining about her lack of communication with him and accusing Alexis of sabotaging their relationship. Ji-won types back an angry message asking him to leave her alone.

Ji-won heads to her psychology class for the final. She feels odd and distracted while taking the test, unable to get the image of the human eyeball she ate the day before out of her head. She looks down and sees her hands covered in blood. She tells Alexis that she needs to leave class, but Alexis claims that there’s no blood on her hands and pushes her to finish the final.

After class, Professor Thompson approaches Ji-won and wonders whether she’s been to see any of the on-campus therapists. She tells the professor that she doesn’t need therapy. Ji-won then leaves class and, paranoid about being caught for her actions the day before, begins to hallucinate blue eyes sprouting from people’s bodies. She puts her head in her hands and runs off.

When Ji-won arrives home, she overhears George talking on the phone in his bedroom. She approaches the door quietly to overhear the conversation. George is telling someone on the other end of the phone, whom he refers to as “Senator,” about being kicked out of the house by someone named Jen, which he says caused him to take up with Umma. He describes Umma in objectifying and disrespectful ways and then talks about Ji-hyun’s body and how attracted he is to her. Ji-won slams the front door of the apartment, pretending to just be arriving home. George comes out of the bedroom, looking guilty, and Ji-won promises herself that she’ll make him regret speaking about her mother and sister like that.

George notices that his license is missing right around the time that Umma and Ji-hyun arrive home. He accuses each in turn of going through his wallet and stealing it, but both deny the accusations. When they have time together, Ji-hyun asks Ji-won whether she took the license and then tells her that she’s been acting strangely lately. Ji-won flees to her bedroom, where she puts a pillow over her head and fantasizes about murdering George. Ji-hyun comes in, weeping, worried that her family is falling apart. Ji-won comforts her, terrified of Ji-hyun discovering her secrets.

Ji-won finds out that she passed the final and calls Alexis to tell her the news. Alexis invites her to a party over the weekend, and Ji-won agrees to attend. Alexis also tells her that the police have found the mutilated body of an unhoused man in the bushes outside her apartment. He was apparently drugged with sleeping pills before being killed.

George plans to leave for a business trip to Thailand in a few days, which was where he’d been before being kicked out of the apartment by the mysterious Jen. Ji-won wants to tell her mother about George’s behavior but, remembering her mother’s reaction when Appa left, keeps it to herself.

Ji-won hears George screaming. In total darkness, she crosses to where George lies in his and Umma’s bed, alone. Suddenly, Ji-won wakes to find her mother in bed and realizes that she’s sleepwalked into her bedroom. In the morning, Umma tells her daughters that she had a strange dream of a ghost watching her as she slept.

With George gone on his business trip, Umma becomes obsessed with wedding planning. She takes Ji-hyun out to craft stores, returning home with bags of craft supplies. At night, Umma spends her time altering her wedding dress herself. She also creates a variety of paper flowers as centerpieces for the tables. She fills the storage closet with boxes and boxes of wedding decorations.

Alexis has put out a large spread of food and drinks for the party, of which Ji-won is the guest of honor for passing her classes. Sitting close to Alexis on the couch makes Ji-won very nervous, and she becomes extremely aware of Alexis’s body and presence.

They drink champagne and tequila, and Alexis gently teases Ji-won for how red her face gets when she drinks. The playfully roughhouse, and the energy changes when their faces get close to each other. Suddenly, Alexis realizes that she’s missing her necklace, and the two women drop to the carpet to search for it, ending the potentially romantic moment.

Later that night, they stumble out onto the street, very drunk, to go find food somewhere. Alexis asks Ji-won to tell her deepest darkest secret. Ji-won dodges the question, and the two women tumble together onto the grass, laughing. Suddenly, a dark figure emerges from down the street, revealing himself to be Geoffrey. He pretends he just happened to stumble upon them. However, Ji-won is suspicious, as Geoffrey’s most recent texts have become increasingly erratic and desperate.

Ji-won tries to walk away with Alexis, but Geoffrey grabs her arm, telling her she’s making a big mistake. Ji-won tells him to let go of her, and he does, with slow reluctance, before stalking off. Ji-won tells Alexis she has to go home but needs to use the restroom first. In Alexis’s apartment, she secretly steals a handful of sleeping pills.

Leaving Alexis’s apartment, Ji-won encounters a man in an alley, bleeding from a cut on his head. Ji-won asks the man whether he’s all right, and when he opens his eyes, she sees that they’re as blue as George’s. Suddenly, a wave of hunger crashes over her. Without thinking, she takes the knife out of her bag and starts to cut into the man’s eyes. The man wakes up and grabs Ji-won. She starts kicking at him, and with a sickening crunch, the man’s head twists sideways. He slumps against a brick wall, dead.

Ji-won sets to work cutting his eyes out. One of them is tough, so she bites into the cartilage to free it, sending the eyeball shooting down the back of her throat. She eats the other one, ravenously, and then stumbles out of the alley.

On campus, Alexis seems preoccupied. When Ji-won asks her what’s wrong, Alexis tells her that a neighbor was robbed and murdered near her apartment a few nights back. Ji-won can barely remember that night, which feels more like a dream than anything. She tells the terrified Alexis that she doesn’t have anything to worry about.

When Ji-won gets home that night, she finds that George has returned from his trip. He, Umma, and Ji-hyun are gathered around the television. The news report is discussing two murders that occurred near Ji-won’s school, that of a student and an unhoused man. George opens his suitcase to give Umma gifts, and Ji-won quickly hides a condom wrapper in there before Umma can spot it.

George has a Rolex watch that his father gave him and that he says is his favorite possession. Ji-won secretly takes the watch and heads outside at 3:00 am to destroy it. In the morning, George discovers his broken watch and brings it back inside in despair. Ji-won looks at George weeping and feels hope that he might leave their lives.

A few weeks after the incident with the watch, Ji-won sees George driving quickly through traffic and resolves to follow him. She tails him until he parks and goes into a small, nondescript coffee shop. He emerges a few minutes later holding hands with a petite Asian woman in a sundress. Ji-won rolls down the window and slumps down in her seat so that she can overhear what they’re saying as they pass by the car. She hears George tell the woman that he was glad she called, and the woman tells George that she missed him. Ji-won continues to follow George as he goes to a downtown luxury apartment with the woman; she is furious about how he treats women, particularly Umma.

Ji-won drives home, where she encounters Ji-hyun. She asks Ji-hyun why she isn’t in school, and her sister bursts into tears, saying she feels as if nobody cares about her. Ji-won calms Ji-hyun down and promises that she’ll put a stop to George and Umma’s imminent wedding.

George is frequently absent from the apartment, claiming to be preparing for a presentation for a major client at work. The night before his presentation, he quickly eats dinner with Umma and her daughters before retiring to bed. Ji-won sneaks into the living room and accesses George’s laptop, where she deletes his presentation and replaces it with one of her own creation. She also removes George’s notes from a folder and replaces each sheet with her own.

In the morning, Ji-won heads home directly after her first class, planning on being present when George arrives home from work. He comes in the door already in a rage, throwing Umma’s wedding decorations to the ground and swiping at her dress. Then he pushes Ji-won to the floor and demands to know whether she was responsible. He tears open the envelope that had previously contained his notes. Pictures of young, nude Asian women in sexual positions float to the floor. George accuses Ji-won and, when she denies it, moves on to accuse Ji-hyun and Umma of sabotaging him.

Ji-won manages to convince George that his boss sabotaged him, not Ji-won or her family. George’s boss calls, and Ji-won listens as the boss screams at him over the phone. George hangs up and announces blankly that he’s been fired. George and Ji-won wordlessly clean up the papers. Afterward, George sits back on the couch, his face blank.

At dinner, George tells Umma that he was fired. Umma tells George that she would be happy to support him until he finds another job. George, feeling emasculated, storms off to the bedroom. After a few minutes, he emerges and tells the family he’s going outside to clear his head. Umma watches the door for an hour, waiting for George to return, and eventually goes to bed alone.

Ji-won creates a fake dating profile, using the photo of another Asian classmate. It doesn’t take long for her to encounter George on one of the dating apps. She messages George, who asks her about her background and ethnicity, clearly interested. Eventually, they agree to meet up.

It’s now one month until Ji-won’s first year of college will be over. George comes and goes from the apartment unexpectedly, spending less time with Umma than ever. Umma spends her days creating flowers for the wedding decorations. At night, Ji-won overhears her speaking to George on the phone, asking whether he even cares about the wedding at all. She tells him to call the wedding off if he wants to rather than continue to string her along. George hangs up on her, and Umma bursts into tears.

Ji-won heads to Alexis’s apartment that weekend for dinner. Alexis asks Ji-won if everything is okay, as she’s been acting distant recently. Alexis reaches out and touches Ji-won, trying to comfort her, but the action sends a bolt of pain through Ji-won’s head. She claims she has a migraine and flees from the apartment.

Driving home, Ji-won spies a local bar and hears the sounds of singing and revelry. She circles the block until she sees a drunk man leaving the bar. She pulls over and offers the man a ride, and when he looks up at her, she sees that he has deep blue eyes. Feeling incredibly hungry, Ji-won speeds off with the man passed out in her passenger seat. She’s pulled over by a police officer but claims to be picking up her boyfriend, and he lets her go with a warning.

She drives to an abandoned lot and pushes the man out of her car. She leads the man deeper into the weeds and lets him down onto the ground. Then, she crouches over him, takes out her knife, and cuts his throat.

The man awakens suddenly and bites Ji-won’s hand, breaking the skin. She stabs his neck over and over until the man lies still and silent. Ji-won tears his eyeballs out of his sockets with her hands and pops one into her mouth, moaning with pleasure. She’s just about to eat the other one when she hears a loud engine in the distance. She drags herself back to her car and drops the man’s eye into the cupholder. A mile down the road, she’s no longer able to resist, and she pulls over to eat the eye. Afterward, she leans against the window and cries.