'Masthishka Maranam' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: What Does The Final Scene Suggest?

Masthishka Maranam (A Frankenbiting of Simon’s Memories) is an out-of-the-box, trippy sci-fi comedy directed by Krishand unfolding in ‘Neo-Kochi’ some 20 years from now. Climate change had a detrimental effect on Kochi, with the city losing its coastline to the sea. Class difference had only worsened; the poor became poorer while the ‘ultra-rich’ had access to most of the world’s wealth and had built themselves climate-controlled towers. Hospitals were privatized, and they only catered to the elite; television had become a propaganda machine, and black market technology had started to take over. People needed relief from their dystopian reality, and they resorted to immersive gaming experiences. Memories were now extracted in hospitals and traded for a price. These memories were installed in cartridges, and when plugged into a gaming console, one could literally experience someone else’s memory. But in doing so there’s always the risk of getting too invested in one’s memory and losing the ability to differentiate between one’s reality and the extracted memory. Masthishka Maranam translates to ‘Brain Death,’ which is quite an apt title for a film that unfolds in the near future, that is, 2046. Currently we are already experiencing the age of brain-rot content, and given how AI is making us dumber by the day, it won’t be surprising to ultimately live in a world where one needs technological assistance to perform things that are deeply personal, like processing one’s trauma. 

Spoiler Alert

Who was Simon?

Bimal Raj struggled to cope with the untimely passing of his daughter as a result of a brain stem disease. Constantly living with grief had left him frustrated, and when he discussed his emotional condition with his wife, Anindya, she suggested he get the same treatment that she did. She had gotten rid of all the memories of their daughter, and now when she saw her pictures, they didn’t affect her like they used to, and she preferred the hollow feeling over her overwhelming emotions. Bimal wasn’t ready to undergo the procedure. He feared that if they both erased their daughter from their memories, her existence would be completely gone. He wanted to remember her for as long as he could, even if it left him depressed. Anindya had told him about a sexually provocative memory titled ‘Simon’s memory’ that was doing the rounds in the black market and suggested Bimal try it, but he wasn’t so sure. He later spoke to Charlie, his trainer, and asked him if he could supply him a game with extreme stimulus. Bimal had grown fond of the near-death experience games because he believed he didn’t have what it took to kill himself. And these games helped Bimal feel closer to the idea of just exiting from the world. Charlie suggested Bimal play Simon’s memory, where he would get to experience Frida from Simon’s perspective. Now Frida was a popular actor, and Bimal had always fantasized about her. So the idea of experiencing her closely got him excited. But the video didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped. It was supposed to be a 4-minute watch with sexual intimacy, but instead it turned out to be a murder memory! 

Bimal was shocked when he discovered that Frida had committed two murders and Simon was her accomplice. She used him to get rid of the bodies, and Bimal was petrified knowing that the woman he once worshipped was a murderer. Meanwhile, Frida discovered that a video of her had been circulating in the black market, and she approached the cops to put an end to it. Charlie was arrested, and eventually the cops got hold of Bimal as well. Charlie explained that it had been long since Frida’s film was released, so her desperate audience had to do something to quench their thirst. Frida was obviously furious, and she decided to find out what was in the video by herself so that she could have the cops arrest the man who’d sold his memory. When she figured the memory was from the night she’d committed two homicides, she left in a haste. She tried to act calm, but she was completely shocked by what she’d seen. Frida’s accomplice was Shajimon, a fanboy she knew would do anything just to spend time with her. She sought his help to clear the crime scene and bury the bodies, but she never expected him to go behind her back and have his memory extracted. Shajimon had a social media fan page, where he would notice a spike in his followers whenever he uploaded Frida’s pictures. He had been in contact with Frida, and when he received a text from her the night of the crime asking him for help, he immediately responded. Shajimon had assumed it was an invitation for intimacy, unable to realize that she was in search of someone who would follow her instructions without questioning her. 

What happened at the trial?

When Shajimon faced trial, he confessed that after helping Frida get rid of the bodies, he went home and had a sexual dream involving the actor. Now most of the people who’d experienced ‘Simon’s Memory’ had basically seen his dream, and they got the chance to live their sexual fantasy. But Bimal had a very different experience; instead of the sex dream, he lived the memory of the crime Shajimon had committed with Frida. Frida’s legal team tried to establish that Bimal had actually committed the crime and sprinkled Frida’s DNA just to tarnish her name. They reasoned that Bimal wasn’t mentally stable; he was a drug addict with barely any means for survival; therefore, he was more susceptible to committing crimes. But when Shajimon took to the stand and admitted to helping Frida clean up the crime scene, her legal team couldn’t really defend her. The ones who’d experienced the memory were accused of committing a sexual crime since the memory had been shared without Frida’s consent. But now that Shajimon explained that it was his dream, they couldn’t legally be held accountable. It was his dream, which meant Frida didn’t really have any stake. Moreover, Shajimon didn’t really sell his memory; he had been brain dead for three months in Hong Kong, and it was assumed that his memory was stolen at the time. So, how did Simon end up at a hospital in Hong Kong? Well, according to his version of the story, he was attacked there. 

As it turned out, Frida had hired an assassin to get rid of him since he was the only witness to her crime. While Frida had assumed that Shajimon was killed, she couldn’t have been more wrong. His memory was extracted at the hospital, and the nurse who was in charge of labeling the memory assumed that the patient’s name was Shi-Mon instead of Shajimon, and that was how it ended up becoming ‘Simon’s Memory.’ Shajimon begged the judge to not punish him based on his imagination and wet dream. He told the judge that as an artist he was glad that his imagination brought ‘joy’ in the lives of several others. Bimal also pleaded innocent, stating that after losing his daughter, he’d found himself getting addicted to near-death experience video games because it numbed his senses and temporarily helped him forget the tragedy. Bimal explained that he chose to experience Simon’s memory for the very same reason, and perhaps he saw the murder memory because he had always gravitated towards death. He mentioned that, in a way, he was glad that watching the memory resulted in such chaos, because it was probably the first time in over two years that he didn’t have the time to grieve his daughter’s demise. And Bimal believed that if he were sentenced to a few years in prison, he wouldn’t really mind because he knew it couldn’t be worse than living with constant numbing agony. 

Did Frida Soman Commit The Murders?

Considering the cops had already found the skeletal remains of Clint (an executive producer) and Harry Kumar (paparazzi), it was obvious that the murders had been committed and Frida was the primary suspect because her DNA had been found at the scene. Moreover, after Bimal’s emotional speech, the streaming networks informed Frida that the audience’s sympathy had drastically increased for Bimal and she had to do something to ensure that they understood her side of the story as well. In the end, Frida admitted to killing the two men. She stated in court that she’d killed the man who attempted to grope and rape her in the name of audition. She’d smacked Clint’s head with a vase and tackled him with her exceptional karate skill. He was a member of the Malayalam syndicate, and he threatened to ruin her career now that she’d dared to mess with him. But Frida wasn’t afraid, so she kicked his face and smacked him one last time with a lampshade. She ended up killing Harry Kumar, a paparazzo who’d arranged her meeting with Clint, knowing well what his intentions were. Frida pulled out her gun in court and pointed it at Shajimon, but she soon held it to her head. She was tired of being objectified, and she blamed the audience for her outburst. Every day thousands of people searched for her ‘private videos’ online, hoping to stumble across something sensational. She couldn’t believe that men she had no idea existed had experienced sexual intimacy with her through a memory game! Her fans didn’t care about her well-being; they simply wanted to own her, exploit her, and obsess over this made-up version of her that didn’t really exist. Her fans expected her to tease them through a provocative item dance, and at the same time they didn’t spare her from moral policing if she was seen stepping out of her house late at night. She was supposed to be this perfect blend of pious and sexual, and a slight imbalance resulted in outrage. Frida threatened to blow her brains since clearly her fans were so desperate to get a glimpse of every inch of her body. 

At that very moment she knew that her outburst would also be sexualized; there would be many in the audience waiting for her to twist and turn in the hopes of getting a glimpse under her skirt. During Frida’s monologue, the film cuts to a clay doll that was made to look like Frida. The dolly symbolized the pious girl that the fans expected her to be. They craved a glimpse of her cleavage and enjoyed watching videos that were taken without her consent; essentially, they wanted to believe that she was this helpless woman, and with every word Frida uttered, that pious version of her that her fans had in mind was gradually destroyed. The bottom line is that Frida committed the murders, and she’d acted out of years of frustration and disgust after being objectified every day of her life for simply existing. 

What does the final scene suggest?

Masthishka Maranam’s ending scene adds a twist that will leave you thinking about the end. Frida had lost control of herself, and since she’d already admitted to the crimes, she figured she might as well kill everyone around her before being put behind bars. She attempted to kill the judge and her sleazy ‘fans,’ but just when she had pointed her gun at Bimal, everything around him (including himself) started to glitch. He became frustrated, and we soon discovered that he had been playing the immersive video game, and he was actually in his apartment. Bimal couldn’t distinguish between his memory and the one he’d just witnessed. He saw a glimpse of his wife and daughter, and soon they started to glitch as well, and the world around him pretty much began to fall apart. 

Masthishka Maranam essentially arrives at the idea that none of what we’ve just witnessed can be trusted. Maybe Bimal had decided to erase his memories like his wife did, and that was what resulted in the glitch. Or he might have taken drugs and as a result of his mental health the memory became distorted. Perhaps Simon’s Memory was this extensive film-like video that had a court trial. It’s also likely that memory could now be fabricated and monetized, and who knows, maybe it was created for entertainment! If we consider that everything we’ve witnessed actually happened in reality, then perhaps Frida managed to shoot Bimal, and that was why his world started to glitch and his conscience escaped to this place of comfort (his apartment) consisting of his wife and daughter before he took his final breath. The ending is meant to make one come up with several theories, but the one reality that we can be sure of is that women won’t be safe even in 2046; they will continue to be objectified, AI will be used to morph videos (it’s already happening), the line between real and fake will blur with time, and the truth will eventually become subjective. 

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