Summary
“Wedding Dress” has multiple effective visuals backing up a cautionary tale about body image.
I’ll say this for Episode 2 of Terror Tuesday: Extreme, which is simply titled “Wedding Dress” — it has a good sense of visual horror.
You can tell the story is about body image immediately; one of the first shots is of a very thin woman hunched over a sewing machine, her spine protruding noticeably from her back. The next shot is a needle through a fingernail, which isn’t as leaden with implications but is nonetheless an unpleasant sight.
There’s nothing inherently off-putting about being skinny, of course — “Wedding Dress” is playing with extremes. The protrusion of bone through skin or nail through flesh is not a mild visual. You’re supposed to recoil. Later, a ghostly woman follows our protagonist down the stairs without her knowledge, inching closer step by step, prodding at that universal fear of someone lingering right behind you.
Like right now.
Only joking, obviously. Let’s talk about the aforementioned protagonist, Milk.
A Tough First Day
Milk and Mild in “Wedding Dress”
Milk is a tailor struggling with money who takes a job at a bridal shop and moves into the apartment upstairs. The owner, Nuch, jets off to Phuket on her first day, trusting her to not only live there but also manage the store and the sometimes fickle demands of the clientele.
Milk is engaged to Bank, but her mother wants a substantial dowry which, as a delivery driver, he can’t afford. So, class is a recurring theme too. This is reflected in Mild, a snooty shopper who demands a particular dress for her wedding in a week’s time, despite the fact that she’s too big to fit in it and, as Milk explains, it’ll take three weeks to resize.
Curiously, Milk thinks out loud and insults Mild, calling her fat. Mild is livid and creates a damning video about the shop which she threatens to post on social media if Milk doesn’t get the dress ready for her wedding. Milk, in fear of losing her job and confusion over why she spontaneously shamed a client in the first place, agrees.
Milk Is Driven To Extreme Behaviour
Remember what I said about visual horror when you see effective shots like the mannequins that flood the top of the apartment stairs or the image of a human body standing behind a white curtain. That turns out to be Bank, who was allowed into the apartment earlier, seemingly by a much saucier version of Milk, who was wearing the wedding dress and confidently seduced him.
Naturally, Milk has no recollection of this. That’s two events, thus far, that have been carried out in her name without her knowledge, floating the idea of a dangerous doppelganger.
Milk and Bank argue over the egregiousness of the dowry and he leaves. The next morning, macabre scenes occur at pace. Milk wakes up next to the sewing machine, gripping a bottle of weight loss pills. When she eats, she vomits up her hair. When she wakes again next to the sewing machine — the pill bottle empty now — she skewers her fingernails with the machine and plucks out strands of her hair to thread through the needle.
A Tight Fit
Milk is in a state of disarray in Terror Tuesday: Extreme Episode 2
By the time Mild returns, Milk looks half-dead. But the dress is ready. When Mild tries it on, though, it’s even smaller and won’t fasten. She’s furious and berates Milk, and the zip snaps shut on its own, suffocating Mild. She’s eventually able to free herself, but she posts the videos slandering Milk and the store.
When Nuch, the shop’s owner, gets wind, she returns. She’s particularly dismayed to hear Milk mention the wedding dress which formerly belonged to a woman named Peet. When Milk heads upstairs, she finds Bank’s corpse in a closet, triggering a flashback. After their argument about the dowry, she stabbed him to death with a pair of scissors and stuffed his body in there, clearly controlled by another persona.
By the time Nuch gets upstairs, she finds a figure standing in the wedding dress. But it isn’t Milk, it’s Peet, prompting a flashback.
Peet’s Predicament
Peet was a previous employee of the store. She was overweight and struggled enormously with body image issues, becoming fiercely jealous of the glamourous ladies whose dresses she made. When Nuch mentioned that one of the women only looked like that because of cosmetic surgery, Peet had drastic work done. She became dangerously thin, and exacerbated her look by chomping diet pills. She got thinner and thinner, but when she looked in the mirror, she only saw her previous self.
Peet became more and more unhinged and obsessive about the dress she had made for herself. When Nuch intervened, the two squabbled, and the dress was damaged. Peet tried to kill Nuch, and in self-defense, Nuch stabbed her in the neck with a pair of scissors. She hid her body in the water tank on the roof.
In the present day, Peet returns the favor. Episode 2 of Terror Tuesday: Extreme ends with Peet getting her wish — she walks down the aisle in her dress to marry a handsome man, who turns out to be Bank, though admittedly he’s dead, the scissors still protruding from his eye socket.
When Peet kisses him she turns back into a horrified Milk, who understandably starts to scream.
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