Pity (2018) Plot Summary Explained

Once his wife awakens from the coma, the lawyer realizes he will no longer receive pity from friends and neighbors who have been supporting him during her supposed convalescence. The pity he craves is directly tied to her condition, so he fabricates the lie that she remains unconscious to keep the emotional support flowing.

Foreshadowing: Earlier, the narrative establishes that his entire emotional life depends on the sympathy he extracts from others.

• coma
• wife
• lie
• pity
• deception

The lawyer experiences happiness only through sadness, forming a psychological dependency on pity from others. He actively cultivates unhappiness because his brain has become wired to associate suffering with well-being, creating a circular need to feel miserable in order to feel any sense of satisfaction.

Foreshadowing: The opening establishes his severe addiction to sadness before any external triggers occur.

• pity
• addiction
• sadness
• psychology
• dependency

After his wife wakes up and the pity begins fading, the lawyer attempts to manufacture extreme sorrow by abandoning his pet, hoping this dramatic act will trigger the emotional response he desperately needs. When that fails to produce tears, he escalates to far more violent actions.

Foreshadowing: This moment marks the turning point where his manipulation shifts from emotional deception to physical cruelty.

• dog
• abandonment
• sea
• sorrow
• manipulation

Driven by an insatiable need to generate genuine sorrow for himself, the lawyer systematically murders his closest family members. He applies the same psychological logic he used while investigating the murder case, treating his own family as instruments to provoke the tears that have become elusive. Each killing is a calculated attempt to feel the悲伤 he craves.

Foreshadowing: His work on the murder case serves as a laboratory for understanding the dynamics of grief that he later replicates.

• father
• wife
• son
• murder
• family
• escalation

Despite committing the most horrific acts possible, the lawyer remains emotionally hollow and cannot produce genuine tears. This reveals that his addiction to pity has made authentic feeling impossible, he can only experience emotion vicariously through others' sympathy, not through his own actions. His pathological condition has reached a dead end where even extreme suffering cannot fulfill him.

Foreshadowing: The film foreshadows this emotional void throughout, showing his detachment even during moments meant to evoke sorrow.

• crying
• tears
• emptiness
• emotional detachment
• nihilism

The lawyer uses the murder investigation as a psychological template for his own actions. He studies the family dynamics, motives, and emotional manipulations of the actual murder case, then applies those same principles to orchestrate his own family's deaths. The case becomes his blueprint for manufacturing grief.

Foreshadowing: Early scenes show him examining the murder case with unusual intensity, seemingly learning from the perpetrator's methods.

• murder case
• investigation
• psychology
• dynamics
• template

The dog swimming back to shore represents an ironic twist, the creature he abandoned to manufacture sorrow becomes the sole survivor of his rampage. The dog, incapable of manipulation or malice, contrasts sharply with the lawyer's emptiness. Its survival suggests that innocence persists while human cruelty leads only to desolation.

Foreshadowing: The dog's fate remains uncertain until the final moments, making its return a poignant conclusion.

• dog
• survival
• irony
• innocence
• ending

The film presents a man whose psychological condition has distorted his relationship with emotion, turning natural human sadness into a drug he must constantly feed. His escalating manipulation and eventual murders demonstrate how this addiction destroys not only his ability to feel but also his capacity for human connection, leaving him permanently detached from genuine emotion.

Foreshadowing: The entire narrative traces the logical endpoint of someone who has completely perverted the human experience of grief.

• grief
• addiction
• psychology
• pathology
• emotional disorder