2021 Dramas

While I watched a lot of 2021 dramas (a total of 40 out of the 71 I completed), I decided that there were too many older dramas that I couldn’t not include them in my top ten list of dramas watched this year. A departure from last year, which was a bad year for me to the point I had to add movies to bulk out the list. I tried to rank them, which proved hard as a group of dramas just felt like they were the same, so this list isn’t perfect in that regard but my #1 is definitively my top drama of this year.

---

10. Run On - 런온 (2021): Run On was a complete surprise for me. A drama that I only picked up because we were doing an episode on sports on the podcast, and wanted to try to at least watch some of a drama before the episode. I binged it over two days. The drama is simply about how you should keep going. Whether it’s small or large, just keep moving forward. It showcased characters’ relationships beautifully and was real with the hurt that life’s events could do to you, and didn’t try to be obnoxious in its sentiment. There was not a single time I didn’t feel the chemistry between all the cast and it made me love it even more.

9. Hospital Playlist 2 - 슬기로운 의사생활++ (2021): While the second season didn’t make it up as far on my list as the first one, it still was a solid drama. Listen, if you liked the first season, you’ll probably like this one. Hospital Playlist just has a special charm, and it was carried into this season. One of the biggest changes in the story was the focus on the secondary characters. While the first season spent some time with them, this season really started to flesh out their storylines and gave them more attention as those junior doctors and interns moved up in their positions and life.

8. Coma - 코마 (2006): I have a full review of this drama that can be found here if you want a detailed look at my thoughts, but I had to include it on this year’s top list - despite it being so old (the oldest drama I watched this year). A solid horror drama about the atrocities that happened to a hospital before its closure. It kept me interested and engaged, and I had a lot of fun with it.

7. The Guest - 손: The Guest (2018): Another drama that I have a review for so I won’t go too in depth with this blurb. I kept putting off watching this one far too long, especially since I had started watching it when it was airing. I just never made the time for it, and I’m glad to use the summer to finally do that. It’s got this really great mesh of crime/investigation with horror and doesn’t focus too much on religion despite it being about exorcisms. It’s on Netflix, just go watch it.

6. Memorist - 메모리스트 (2020): Memorist came out in quite possibly the worst time of my life, and so I didn’t get a chance to watch it airing. I finally picked it up this year, and am so glad I did. I had so much fun with this drama, I couldn’t stop watching. It’s got a great mix of crime, thriller, and fantasy with the main character being able to read people’s thoughts if he touches them. The drama doesn’t spend a lot of time on this, it’s part of the world and known by all and just that alone really melds it into the overall story without bogging it down with unnecessary filler to discuss it or even make the drama more of a fantasy than it needed to be.

5. Beyond Evil - 괴물 (2021): I’m sure this is on every crime/thriller lover’s list this year, and there’s a good reason. Beyond Evil takes you on an amazing journey where you don’t know what’s going to happen. It keeps you in this uncomfortable place because you don’t know who is good and who is evil, and if you should be agreeing with what they do. It’s an interesting way to keep you in that thriller state, and Shin Ha Kyun plays his role effortlessly and at a lot of times, disturbingly. If you didn’t get around to it this year you have to make room for it soon.

4. Youth of May - 오월의 청춘 (2021): Set during the Gwangju Uprising in the 1980's, Youth of May was the story of two ill-fated lovers. It’s a sad one, not only because of the pain of the two leads, but the pain of the events that are happening around them. While their story is not real, what is happening was, and the drama made time to focus the story on the heartbreak and horror of that time in South Korean history, even if it meant taking its focus away from our main couple. Lee Do Hyun and Go Min Si were fantastic in their betrayals and had a lot of chemistry. Make sure you have tissues around, you’ll need them.

3. Sell Your Haunted House - 대박부동산 (2021): I really didn’t think I was going to like Sell Your Haunted House as much as I was going to, and by the time it ended it had shot up to the top of my list. It’s one of those dramas that make you believe it’s going to be silly or light-hearted in between all the ghosts, and yet…it isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, there is some humor, but unlike a lot of dramas it knows when the humor should be there and when it should stop. The cast was incredible and the stories - including the main one with the two main characters - had a lot of depth to it. While it is about getting rid of the ghosts that haunt places, it focuses on the pain that has kept those deceased there.

2. Move to Heaven - 무브 투 헤븐: 나는 유품정리사입니다 (2021): I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get this drama into my watching before the end of the year, and I really made the push to focus on it. I’m glad I did, because here it is sitting at number two on my list, sometimes those last-minute rushes do pay off. Move to Heaven is about a cleaning service for those who have passed. The main character is autistic, and after the loss of his father his uncle (right out of jail) comes to be his guardian. Each episode focuses on not just the main characters’ growth, but also the story of those they help. There was not a time in my watch that I wasn’t crying, and most of the time sobbing. It’s raw, emotional, and absolutely beautiful. Beyond worth the tears.

1. Happiness - 해피니스 (2021): At this point I feel like a broken record, and if you follow me any where else you knew that this was going to be my number one drama of the year. Not only is it my number one, it’s also has secured its self as one of my favorite dramas of all time. A ten out of ten, the drama hit every mark perfectly. Perfectly crafted horror, amazingly written characters, zombies, and my favorite type of love story - it has it all and more. I don’t even know what more to say. It just makes me…happy.

+++

22 Anticipated Dramas for 2022

Last year I made a list of the dramas that I was excited for this year, and while a lot of that list didn’t end up airing because of various reasons, it was still fun to take some time to dive into the dramas that are expected to air for this coming year. I narrowed the dramas down to 22 picks. A lot have very little information on them, and I’m expecting like last year a lot will be pushed - in fact, some of the dramas on this list are from last year. While I tried to vary my picks, kdramas are really the only dramas that have the most information on what’s coming for the new year, and thus make up the majority of my list.

---

-All of Us Are Dead (Netflix: January)
horror/youth/sci-fi

High school students trapped in their school during a zombie outbreak. What more to love. No official date, but it is in Netflix’s coming soon section and by all accounts should start in January. King2Hearts director Lee Jae Gyoo and screenwriter Chung Sung Il (recently LUCA: The Beginning) are attached to the drama.

-Connect
mystery/horror

More of a hope that it will be out this year, than an actual knowledge, Connect will be the first kdrama Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition) will work on. It's about a story of a man who has a part of his body stolen by organ hunters and becomes connected with the person who receives it. Jung Hae In and Go Kyung Pyo have been cast, and if I had to guess this might be making it’s way to Netflix (both were in the recent Netflix production, D.P.).

-Deep
horror/mystery/action

There’s is very little known about this but it is adapted from the webtoon by Towoo and Kim Tae Heon of the same name and follows the story that takes place when a long-lost family returns.

-Goosebumps (Daum Kakao TV)
thriller/horror

The drama will contain short stories of the horrors that are often encountered in everyday life and props. Minho from SHINee will be starring.

-Grid (Disney+)
thriller/sci-fi

Starring Seo Kang Joon and Kim Ah Joong, as well as a slew of other notable names, Grid will be Disney+'s next kdrama after Snowdrop. It follows a mysterious entity who saved humankindi n the past, but has reappeared to help a serial killer escape. This was Kang Joon’s last drama before enlisting. Lee Soo Yeon is the screenwriter and has worked on Stranger and Life, and I have hopes that this is going to be a good one.

-Heaven and Hell: Two Psychos
thriller/mystery/comedy

A remake of a Japanese drama that aired the beginning of 2021, the drama is the story when the souls of a detective and a murder suspect swap. No cast has confirmed nor production team - really stretching on picking this one - but I think it might have a chance to be a lot of fun.

-Island (tvN)
action/thriller/horror

A drama that was scheduled last year, but because of delays and casting changes it was pushed to this year. Filming has already started with Kim Nam Gil and Lee Da Hee as leads. It was slated as a ten episode two season drama, but it might drop all at once because of delays. Island follows Mi Ho who's father assigns her to work at high school in Jeju, where evil roams free.

-Minamdang: Case Note (KBS2: May)
mystery/comedy

Another comedy. I know, who am I? I don't know, this one just looks interesting, Go Jae Hyun is the director, and I really like his previous works. It's about a profiler (played by Seo In Guk) and a suspicious cafe.

-Monstrous (tvN)
thriller/horror/supernatural

The drama follows and archaeologist (Kyo Hwan) who searches supernatural phenomena for a magazine and YouTube channel. I know I’ve said this in the past, but this one sounds like an episode of The X-Files and I am very much here for it. The cast looks great with Koo Kyo Hwan, Shin Hyun Bin, Kwak Dong Yeon, and Nam Da Reum.

-Shoutai (WOWOW: Mar 12)
thriller/mystery

The first jdrama on the list. The drama follow Keiichi (Kamenashi Kazuya) who is arrested as a suspect in a murder case but escapes.

-Snow White Must Die
mystery/drama

Two detectives go in search of mysterious incidents that happen in a village.

-Somebody (Netflix)
thriller/mystery

Somebody focuses on a social media app that leads to murder. Kim Young Kwan stars.

-Superior Day (OCN)
thriller

Despite not much a summary, the drama seems perfect for me. It follows a guy who finds out his neighbor is a serial killer. Lee Won Keun is rumored to be playing the serial killer and I just can't wait. The director is the same from Tale of the Nine-Tailed.

-The Journalist (Netflix, Jan 13)
thriller/drama

One of the jdramas that will be airing on Netflix, The Journalist is about a journalist (Yonekura Ryoko) who pursues the truth about a government corruption scandal. One of the screenwriters, Yamada Yoshitatsu, worked previously on Million Yen Women.

-The Mansion
thriller/mystery

Ji Na (Im Ji Yeon) is on a search to find her missing sister. Residents at an apartment building may know the answer.

-The Murder’s Shopping List (tvN)
thriller/mystery

Lee Kwang Soo plays a supermarket cashier who observes things that happen in his neighborhood.

-The Police Station Next to Fire Station (thriller)
drama

The drama follows a joint operation between a fire department and police force. The drama kind of sounds like one you’d find on NBC, like Station 19.

-The Youngest Son of a Conglomerate (jTBC)
thriller/fantasy

The plot for this sounds incredible. After an employee is framed for embezzlement and murdered, he is reborn as their son to seek revenge. It's directed by W/I'm Not a Robot director Jeon Dae Yun and stars Song Joong Ki.

-Thirty-Nine (jTBC: February)
drama

The only non-thriller on the list, Thirty-Nine is about three friends who met in high school and are now in their late thirties. I love a good female friendship story and with Son Ye Jin, Jeon Mi Do, and Kim Ji Hyun this can only be great.

-Through the Darkness (Jan 14)
thriller/crime

Starring Kim Nam Gil and Kim So Jin the drama is about criminal profilers, which is an automatic add for Jessie.

-Urban Myths: Tooth Worms (Netflix)
thriller/horror

The second season of the short horror anthology Goedam that aired in 2020, this has already been to a film festival so it has to show up this year. This time the cast features mostly idols.

-When the Day Breaks (jTBC: February)
mystery/crime/drama

After a body is found in a suitcase, a former forensic pathologist is suspected of the murder. The drama is an adaption of a Chinese book The Long Night by Zi Jin Chen which is also 2020 cdrama. The cast looks great including Han Seok Kyu and Jung Yu Mi and Hye Ran.

What are you looking forward to this coming year in dramaland? Let me know!

Last year’s list can be found here.

+++

The Silent Sea (2021)

Minor spoilers below.

For the final review of the year, I’m focusing on the drama that just dropped Christmas Eve, The Silent Sea. The Silent Sea had been one of my most anticipated dramas since it was announced and I was really happy when it finally got a premiere date. I had some other things that I needed to do the day that it was uploaded, and didn’t think that I’d end up getting around to it. And then I did…at 10:30 pm and then stayed up all night watching it. The drama follows a crew as they depart to the moon to collect samples at a research base that suffered a catastrophe years prior, in hopes to find a clue for another source of water.

On a whole, I enjoyed the drama. It wasn’t everything that I had expected or wanted, but I by no means thought it wasn’t entertaining. It kept me interested and engaged, and there was no time in my binge that I felt the need to stop to return to it later. I did find with the first two episodes we kind of got baited into thinking that the drama was going to skew much more into the horror side than it ended up being, and I would be lying if I didn’t say I was a bit sad it didn’t keep that up. There were also a few parts in the middle of the drama that I felt were a bit draggy, but with the episodes being so short the drama didn’t spend much time in that area. I do wish we got a bit more look at the other members’ lives on Earth and found that the parts we did get with Yun Ja (Gong Yoo) and Ji An (Bae Doo Na) were interesting, leaving me wanting to see more about the situation on Earth.

Kim Shi Ah who played Luna was fantastic. I thought she did well in her role as the younger version of Ashin in Ashin of the North (the prequel/side story of Kingdom) and it was nice to see her in this larger role. Being so young and carrying a role such as hers is a challenge she pulled off effortlessly. Bae Doo Na was incredible as always, as was Gong Yoo. Kim Sun Young doesn’t get many leading roles, but I’ve had a fondness for her since her character in Because This Is My First Life. I thought she was great in her role and had good chemistry with Bae Doo Na and the rest of the cast. Lee Joon was also phenomenal. I wasn’t expecting a pseudo-serial killer angle to come, especially not with his character, and the drama played it up well grounding it with the backstory of what happened at the research center previously, and his PTSD that eventually led to his decisions, and Lee Joon carried that transition well.

Some of the popular takes that I’ve heard so far about the drama have been about how slow it was and thought that it left too many unanswered questions. While I did think parts were draggy in the middle, on a whole I loved the slow burn it gave us. Especially as it started to shift to a full-blown thriller from horror, and worked with the mystery of what was going on, almost mimicking the sense of silence and stillness that outer space inherently has. I didn’t think the questions that I had needed to be explained. The drama didn’t set us up to believe that we were going to get all the answers, nor would it have been able to. In a way, it mirrored the character’s journey in the drama. Their questions were left unanswered as well. Yun Ja spends much of the first part of the drama telling Ji An to stop asking questions and keep on task to collect the samples. Answering questions was not why they were there, and the answers they do get are not the ones they want.

+++

Come and Hug Me (2018)

Merry Christmas!

I got the idea to review something for today a couple of days ago, and set out to find one that was not only horror or thriller, but also worked for this time of year. While I was trying to figure it out I realized there was only one true pick, and that is my personal favorite drama, Come and Hug Me. Instead of doing a traditional review on the drama, I wanted to share some of the reasons and plots that attribute to why this drama is my top drama.

Come and Hug Me is a crime thriller intertwined with a melodrama and gives a look at how the world perceives crimes and the family members of the people who perpetrate those crimes, as well as the effects they and the family members had. But at its core, it focuses on families. What it takes to be a true family and how that looks different to different people, and that blood family isn’t the only family that matters. The drama stems from one significant event that happened in the childhood of the two main leads, Namu (Jang Ki Yong) and Nak Won (Jon Ki Joo). Namu’s father murders Nak Won’s parents in front of her, and almost kills her but is stopped by Namu.

While the drama is about that and their relationship, it weaves through the aftermath of that incident as well as the reintroduction of that trauma when Namu’s father (played hauntingly by Heo Joon Ho) writes a book about the murders of all his victims bringing the case back into light after almost ten years. The drama focuses on the discussion of whether evil is made or created. Hui Jae spends his time focusing on his son, thinking he could create the evil that he is, the public shame and belittle Namu and his family labeling them because of their association with Hui Jae. Journalists spin stories to support that narrative, confirming to the public that those prejudices must be true, while the main characters are constantly fighting that stigma.

It’s an interesting study on how psychopaths can see no wrong and lack compassion, empathy, and understanding - all traits the father has - and how it applies in various ways with others in the drama: the reporters, the public, the victims’ families. The drama connects the actions of the father with the public’s response to show the real damage that can be caused to people, and how close everyone truly is to evil even when they aren’t related to that evil. When the perception is changed, the understanding will follow, and the drama tries to show the characters as they start to understand their biases. There is this great scene when the police officer Go Yi Seok, who was assigned to the case right after the murders and is looking after Namu, sees Chae Ok Hee (Namu’s stepmother) comes to take him in. He mentions something along the lines of the job making him hate and give up on people, but seeing the compassion of Ok Hee to him gave him hope. We see it happen again with the reporter Han Ji Ho seeing the relationship between Namu and Nak Won and how they hold each other up even in great sadness and burden and that even in her position as a journalist on the case, she doesn’t know all the details.

“Evil shall not wait to be proven. Evil shall prove itself.” - Hui Jae

Watching the drama a second time I didn’t realize the way they framed Namu was intentional in ways that were not what I initially thought. The drama leads one to believe it is focused on Namu as if he is a ticking bomb and at any point can stray from being good. He will somehow mess up and follow the footsteps of the father. When in fact the drama tells us clearly that it won’t happen. He’s proven numerous times with his actions and interactions with others throughout his entire life that he is not like his father, and that there should never be any doubt. The drama forces the viewer in a position of doubt even when clear information is given, showing that not only are characters in the drama susceptible to this negative thinking, the viewer is as well. It’s a neat use of that element, as it works to further the intent of the drama, but also plays up some of the thrilling aspects of the drama. It also furthers how the act of just believing in people and helping them at their lowest can turn them to the right path. Nak Won’s constant reassurance to Namu, Ok Hee (wounded) forcing herself inbetween Hyun Mo (Kim Kyung Nam) and the father’s wrath to save him. Even when Namu is about to hurt his father, it’s nothing comparable despite what the father tries to make him believe.

The stigma against non-blood-related families is prevalent everywhere, and the drama handles it beautifully. Nak Won and Moo Won (Yoon Jong Hoon) share true feelings for each other as siblings, being raised to just accept that they are family realistically and comfortably without burden. Seo Jung Yeon’s Ok Hee is my favorite kdrama mother having compassion and strength to take in not only two boys who were not hers, but the product of her failed and horrible marriage, and does so with loving arms. And while she falters a tiny bit at the beginning, she immediately sees the error of her ways. The little sister So Jin (Choi Ri) always views the two as her brothers, never questioning it or changing that stance no matter how distant they treated her. While the drama is on the surface about the murders and the two’s love story, the drama focuses on these other relationships as much as they do with the love story between the two and doesn’t try to take away from those essential storylines with those relationships. Even at the end, we see them confront their past selves to begin their journey in full healing and love in their relationship with themselves.

I can’t get enough of this drama, and this rewatch solidified my love for it as well as its position as my top drama. It’s everything I could want in a drama and more and I felt the same after seeing it again as I did the very first time I watched it. I don’t go over even half of the elements that make this drama great in this post, not mentioning other technical elements or favorite characters, this is just a glance at my love for it. I may return to at another point to give a tigher review. If you haven’t given the drama a try, maybe now is the time.

+++

Crime Puzzle (2021) Review

Crime Puzzle was a drama I had my eye on, but when no one picked it up when it started airing back in October, I figured it would have to be a drama I let go of. Thankfully, Viki grabbed it after it completed airing and uploaded all the episodes without much of a subtitle wait. For transparency, when I watched the drama a large portion of it was at various stages of translation, but as it was over 90% I decided I didn’t want to wait for it to finally get around to being all at 100% before finishing. I had no intention to talk about the drama, so I didn’t take notes nor screencap or do anything I would normally to prep for a review, but after finishing it up I did want to briefly talk about it.

Written by first-time writer Choi Jong Gil and directed by Go Jae Hyun (who previously worked on dramas such as Player and Black) the drama focuses on the arrest of a criminal psychologist (played by Yoon Kye Sang) after the death of a political candidate, and his girlfriend (Go Ah Sung), a profiler and the daughter of the deceased. The story winds its way around what happened in the events leading up to the murder, and things that are happening in the present as Yoo Hee (Sung) tries to figure out why he’s there and what actually happened. It’s an intricate plot, and the drama spends a lot of its time in twists and turns that were genuinely surprising and engaging. It took me a good couple of episodes to really get into it, however, but a turn in the investigation really got me into the story and it continued to be rather engaging.

One of the things that I found most interesting about it was how dark the drama was. I know this is weird to say, but I actually…enjoyed it? It added a lot to the general storyline and added depth to what was going on having it dive a lot deeper into the psyche of murderers and corruption and how truly and deeply unsettling and terrible it is. Not to say that you can’t pull off a drama like this without going as far as they did, but it did make the drama stand out on its own and differentiate itself from other crime thrillers. And when I say dark, I mean dark. The drama was broadcast on Olleh TV, a VOD platform, and had a lot more leeway because of it. Knives didn’t have to be blurred out, a lot of deaths were shown - and graphically. The drama was much more violent and gory than you will find in other dramas that have come out. Squid Game is mild comparatively.

Because of this, I do think that it’s not the drama for everyone. If you had intended to watch, be aware about it before you dive into it. If you do end up starting, the story and clues really keep you into the story. I felt that the acting was strong for everyone in the cast and while there were a few things here and there that I didn’t like, on a whole it was a solid crime drama and was glad I was able to get it in before the end of the year.

+++

Doom At Your Service (2021) Review

Doom At You Service had been on my list of dramas to watch this year, but by the time it came out I was just not feeling it nor did I have the time to watch it. I ended up being asked to record an episode with the K-BAE Podcast who have been recapping each episode of the drama. For the podcast I originally had decided to just watch the first episode and then skip to the episode that we were discussing (episode six). Their podcast is fairly loose, and that setup would have been fine for me to be able to participate, but when I started the watch one episode became two, then three…and by the time I recorded the episode I was half way through the series. Surprise, I liked the drama. I figured at that point I was already in the binge and ended up finishing the rest of the episodes the next day or so. Before coming into the series I had heard some mixed reviews from the people I knew that was watching it, and the general Twitter users I saw. Most of what I saw didn’t look favorable, so I was surprised when I started to watch it and found that I was enjoying it. The drama is by no means my favorite of the year, and I did find there to be faults, but it generally was a great watch. I had fun with the stories, I generally liked the characters, and found the overall watch to be a nice one. So much so that I decided that I should do a full review on the drama.

There are no major spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t watched it yet you should be fine reading this.

What I found most interesting with the drama and what I think pulled me in much more than I was expecting was the lack of a second male lead. The person closest in the second lead spot, Lee So Hyuk’s character, is not a love interest in a way. In fact, he’s barely a friend - he begrudgingly becomes a friend of Dong Kyung (Park Bo Young) and his story lies in the secondary plot between Hyun Gyu (Kang Tae Oh), and Ji Na (Shin Do Hyun). It’s an interesting device in the drama, as it is bulit like as a drama within a drama, and the usually tropes live inside of that secondary story line. Instead the main drama decides to focus the tension on the supernatural bits, and the general transformation of Sa Ram (Seo In Guk). The leads already have a lot of obstacles from the very beginning, and not having to drag them into a love triangle on top of that helped the story move along for me.

I saw that a lot of people found the Ji Na/JooIk/Hyun Gyu story line to be weird. I think the true hindrance of the story line wasn’t that it was written as a secondary story, it was that the the actors didn’t have that much chemistry between them. In fact the two male characters felt much more natural together and it felt off when pairing Ji Na with either of the two. I don’t think it was necessarily the fault of the actors, the main story line that they are given that pulls all three together didn’t work out as well as it could, and it didn’t mesh well with what was going on because of this and felt a little incomplete. These are characters that would normally not have much depth in favor of the main leads, and it’s felt in this.

Doom lies in the area of dramas I enjoy, less comedy and more romance and melodrama and found the drama enjoyable because of it. It had large breaks from the comedy, and it tended to not go as far as others. I suspect that this was also the problem with the drama for most. Because the secondary storyline was the ‘romcom’ story of the drama, and paired with the lead actors previous works, a lot of people came into this drama thinking it would be more comedy than it was. It’s largely a melodrama, a lot of parts tended to be bleak and dark and didn’t try to constantly be bright or happy until the jump back to the humans of the story. It’s actually part of a greater problem I’ve personally have run into with other dramas. A lot of people label dramas with romance and any level of comedy as romcoms. The lack of no popular genre tag in Asian dramas for the inbetween of romcoms and melos adds disjointedness when you come in thinking this was one or the other. While the main story line not being a true romcom didn’t bother me (in fact, I enjoyed it much more than if the main lead lived in the romcom parts) I can see how it would be a turn off, and nothing kills a drama faster than the wrong audience viewing it. I also suspect that this wasn’t as jarring for me because I watched it as a binge and not week-to-week, not having to wait long to figure out what was happening with the plot.

I generally like both Park Bo Young and Seo In Guk as actors. They are good actors and can handle leads well. I thought they played off each other really well and were good at focusing on the tension in various parts of the drama. I did find a lot of - at least the first half - of the drama and the couple’s dynamic a bit hard to watch. It lives in a tricky spot, where at it’s core it is an enemies to lovers where the enemy is an actual threat, one that is constantly talking about killing her and showing the power dynamic imbalance on how he could and would. It’s hard to get into a love story when you have that, and despite it being a supernatural and non-realistic take it still left an air of weirdness when they got close. I do think the drama did a fairly good job towards the later half of showing his character development and reminding the audience that he was essentially a dangerous non-human being that can’t be viewed as a human transforming, but felt the drama didn’t handle it well in the first couple of episodes.

One of the aspects of the drama that I was most surprised about, and heard next to no one talk about was the cinematography and set design. I think it’s executed really well and a lot of the shots were interesting and different. The director and crew used a lot of angles to portray the emotions and intent of the scene, well more than I had expected from the drama. It being a supernatural fantasy it also allowed them to set up fantastical shots. Showing Sa Ram’s world as black and white, only colored when Dong Kyung comes closer was gorgeous and added to the fantastical love story. Sa Ram’s bedroom melding into Dong Kyung’s bedroom was a fun set pick. A lot of the time the sets and shots were meshed together to bridge the fantasy/god world and what was going on in the real world and the drastic difference between the two was interesting visually.

All-in-all I thought the drama was an entertaining one, accomplishing what it personally set out to do, and am glad that I finally hit play.

Listen to my episode with The K-BAE now:

Doom At Your Service is currently streaming on Viki.

+++

December Premieres

A good amount of dramas premiered last month that are still airing and several projects got pushed to next year, but there’s still a good variety of dramas and movies coming out this month that I’m personally excited for.

---

-The 2015 action comedy film Veteran is coming to Netflix on the 1st about a detective (Hwang Jung Min) who pursues a man on the run (Yoo Ah In). It did really well when it was released in theaters, it's the 5th all-time highest grossing film in history.

-Thai horror movie The Whole Truth will be available on the 2nd on Netflix. It is directed by Sid Wisit Sasanatieng who wrote the thriller Deep (also on Netflix). The movie follows two siblings who find a strange hole in the wall at their grandparent’s house.

-Thai drama 55:15 Never Too Late premieres on the 6th. The fantasy drama is about second chances, following five high school friends. It should be available subbed on GMMTV.

-Psychological thriller kdrama Artificial City premieres on the 8th from the Mystic Pop Up Bar director Jun Chang Geun. The drama looks like more of a makjang, and is about power struggle and greed of the wealth.

-Indian crime series Aranyak drops on Netflix on the 10th about two cops trying to figure out a puzzling murder.

-Netfix will drop the Vietnamese horror film The Guardian (Thien Than Ho Menh) on the 16th about a backup singer who is pushed to the front due to the sudden death of a pop star. The movie was released in theaters earlier this year.

-Amazon Prime jdrama No Activity: Honjitsu mo Ijou Nashi premiers (potentially drops all of its episodes?) on the 17th. It follows a former detective who joins up with a rookie to work an undercover drug case. No word if it will be accessible internationally on the platform, but if I had to guess: no.

-Starring Lee Dong Wook and Wi Ha Joon, the Korean drama Bad and Crazy premieres on iQIYI also on the 17th. It is about a superhero who decides to become a champion for justice against police corruption. The Uncanny Counter director/screenwriter team is working on it.

-Bulgasal: Immortal Souls will begin airing on Netflix on the 18th. The fantasy kdrama revolves around two characters, one a woman who remembers her past lives and keeps reincarnating and a man who used to be human. The screenwriters for The Guest (Seo Jae Won and Kwon So Ra) will be writing for the drama.

-While the upcoming kdrama Snowdrop is not a horror, thriller, or fantasy, it is worth mentioning on this list. The drama is set in 1987 and adapted from notes from a man who escaped a political prison camp in North Korea. It’ll kick off Disney Plus’s Asian content as the service’s first kdrama on the 18th.

-And finally as a Christmas Eve gift Netflix drops the long-awaited sci-fi/thriller, The Silent Sea about a team traveling to the moon who uncover a mystery at an abandoned space station. The drama stars the best of the best in Korean actors and I have been literally waiting years for this one.

+++

Hellbound (2021) Review

I love and hate cult shows. On the one hand, I find them fascinating, and I love the look at the psychology that happens with the people who are involved. On the other, they annoy me to no end because I absolutely despise everyone involved. While I don’t have to love everyone, I have to at least care about them so they aren’t perceived as boring and meaningless characters. That wasn’t necessarily the case with Hellbound. I found that the way the drama dealt with the cult(s) for the most part was a different and interesting take, showing not only how they would advance in a world that has definitive proof of God’s intervention but the different ways people would take that information. That being said, while Hellbound had some good moments - and I generally liked the drama enough - it fell flat running out of steam after the time jump in the middle, creating disjointed circles trying to create a reason to have a cliffhanger at the end and story for future seasons.

Spoilers below.

The drama is divided into two parts, the first half comprising of the start of the prophecies and the angels coming to earth, the latter four years later as the prophecies have become a normal thing, with the focus on New Truth’s solidified power. And that is partly the reason I didn’t connect with the drama. The first half really got me into the drama, setting up more like a crime thriller, where we see Kyung Hoon (Yang Ik June) trying to figure out what is going on with the angels and the start of the rise in popularity of the religion helmed by Jin Soo (Yoo Ah In). It was an interesting look at religion and God in the modern world, and I felt that it created a fascinating look at what God was capable of and sort of in turn forced the narrative that He was not in fact something to be revered, and yet people were still willing to do anything for Him. The cult’s presence started to pick up fairly rapidly, so we were able to see some of the mob mentality of people blindly following, to the point they too would (and should) have been considered sinners. The radicals that stir up the pot in different forms such as The Arrowhead and the bat-wielding teenagers that followed his streams, the new religions and cults that spur on top of it, the aggressiveness of everyday people trying to find sinners all formed a broader look at the newly forming society. We see this portrayed most stunningly with what is essentially the public viewing of the execution of Jung Ja (Kim Shin Rok). Seeing everyone excited for her death, clamoring to take a front-row seat with their cameras ready was a good modern-day interpretation of Jesus’s death.

Once we actually get to the focus of the New Truth cult as a fully infiltrated and established group after the time jump, they lacked anything super interesting for me. The time jump derailed a lot of what had been happening. I felt that not only did New Truth suffer from this, but also the Sodo group was not allowed depth, they both were just not given enough of a chance for the viewer to really connect with what they were because a lot of that information would have been given during the time period we don’t get to see. We get the before and after of New Truth and I felt it left a lot of emptiness to it not having the middle. The latter half of the series lacked direction, trying to force more storyline into it while simultaneously pivoting to a messiah story that it knew it would not be resolving, and also focusing on setting up the ending.

Netflix did what Netflix does best, and killed what is great and wonderful about Asian dramas, containing the entire show in one season. By leaving Hellbound on a cliffhanger, the plot suffered. I suspect that a lot of the lack that the latter half of the series had was because Yeon Sang Ho had to start winding everything down so they had a reason to give it a cliffhanger instead of just allowing it to be part of the story. And while it isn’t the worst thing to have to wait for more of the story, cliffhangers are a fairly new plot device in Korean entertainment. It’s a weak point in Yeon Sang Ho’s writing, as it isn’t worked into the story well. Also hindering everything is that there’s no word on the second season being filmed, thus making it a potential reality that we won’t get a conclusion. The only two kdramas that are Netflix originals that have had second seasons that come to mind are two dramas that were essentially filmed as one season and just split in half. At this time, there has been no word that they had already filmed more episodes for this drama, and so I’m just not that hopeful to ever see any of this resolved.

I honestly would have loved to see the messiah storyline with the baby play directly alongside Jung Ja's resurrection. The interpretation I have for the series is that this first half (as in these first six episodes) is supposed to focus on God causing destruction on earth to make everyone repent for not following His will, with the second about humans reclaiming it. Having the messiah storyline start at the beginning of the time jump left the plot disjointed and rushed, instead of allowing these six episodes to be squarely about God taking control and seeing the full growth of the New Truth cult in society and how those opposing were suffering. A more plausible cliffhanger would start with the baby being given his death date and Jung Ja’s resurrection, thus allowing the reclamation storyline to be played out during the (hypothetical) six final episodes (in this case, season two).

I feel like all I’ve done is bash the drama and have been overly critical about some of the plot in this post, but it does have good moments. I thought that the deaths were done well. The level of gore and spectacle (as in the spectacle of us, the viewer, not the people in the world) was tampered down by it not being constantly shown. It was a nice touch that focused more on the act of the angels being there as opposed to the kill itself. Speaking of the angels, having them stay close to the comic designs was a nice nod to the manhwa the drama is based on. They are a little bit cartoonish and silly but they worked for me, especially since they were tied to God and varied from what we would classically see in religious texts, and were an interesting variation of a monster design. In the beginning of the first episode, there is a group watching a video of someone being prophecized to die and the group thought it looked fake. I think the fact that they looked fake worked more because of what we expected these angels to look like (pretty, human-like, etc…), and surprises the viewer in that nothing is as we perceive or think, and that God’s power is not pretty and magical.

The drama has a solid cast, and the acting followed. I've always really liked Kim Hyun Joo, and her role as Min Hye Jin was my favorite of the cast. The rest of the production was equally as great. I really connected with the struggles of those outside the cult and enjoyed that it didn’t shy away from characters having a solidified anti-God narrative. Yeon Sang Ho has a way of focusing on the realities of how humans will react to catastrophic events (as seen in Train to Busan), and the drama highlights how different people would handle what is going on, and the reality of how selfishly most would act because their want to live outweighs their love or care of others.

+++

First Impression: Happiness (2021)

It’s been a while since I’ve done a first impressions post on an airing drama, so why not write one on a drama that I’m currently hooked on. Happiness premiered this past Saturday on tvN, and after a bit of delay on subs, Viki finally had both of the episodes up to watch. One of my many (many) dramas premiering this month, Happiness was one of that I was most intrigued by. I purposely didn’t read or watch much in the way of teasers, but I knew that it had a good chance of being a solid drama with the team behind Watcher, director Ahn Gil Ho and writer Han Sang Woon. I will admit that doing a first impression on this drama after only the first two episodes is not necessarily wise. While we get a lot in the first two episodes, the drama only has started its journey into the meat of the story by the end of the second episode, but I was so into the first two episodes that I couldn’t not say anything about it.

That being said, I think the drama has done a really great job in setting up what is about to unfold even when we obviously haven’t gotten there, its eventual main focus on the apartment building and its tenants after the outbreak of an unknown disease. While the drama hasn’t gotten to that point yet, only briefly setting the dynamic between the people of the apartment, we still do see a good bit of the foreshadowing within the building. Sae Bom (Han Hyo Joo) is presented with a lot of separation right after moving in and meeting her new neighbors. The higher floors (which house the bought properties) are blocked and restricted from access from the lower rentals. Amenities in the building were bought by those same rich owners, and thus being barred from the renters. While we don’t know how the building is going to play out for the rest of the series (and it does - it is the main part of the synopsis), I liked that we didn’t see that much of it for the first week of the drama. It gave that plot point a lot more mystery and allowed the setup of not only it but the zombie outbreak time to unfold. The drama is only going to be a 12 episode one, and I thought that it would try to rush to get everything in the get-go, so it was interesting to see how they were allowing it to take its time.

The way that the story has already started to set up the disease is also probably one of my favorite aspects of the show. The disease presents itself zombie-like, the drama referring to its rabies-like spread. While zombies are a pretty overused trope, the drama integrates an added layer to the world landscape as it is set in a world where infectious diseases are already running rampant. The people in the world are at this point used to being quarantined or wearing masks, and I think it’s going to present a more interesting turn when this new disease has been spread, especially from what we see at the end of episode two. I think the military/police involvement and the potential of other outside entities who may or may not have been the cause of the virus spreading are an interesting plot and I’m excited to see how the drama takes it. The drama has also taken an interesting turn in while it does have innate horror because of the zombies, they aren’t overused or used only to produce horror. A lot of the horror you see lies in the way that the virus is affecting the victim, and the steps taken to control the person. I think any drama that is set during this time and deals with a disease is going to evoke a different response than it would have if it had been made a couple of years ago, but I felt that the drama grounded itself in the realism of everything and didn’t try to focus a lot of the actions as over the top. Maybe that was in response to how we know things are now that we’ve lived through this, but I thought that the way they handled the virus - especially so far - was integrated well and not being abused in response to our own current emotions about disease.

There’s a scene in the first episode when Sae Bam has been taken to quarantine after being bit by someone feared to be infected. At this point in the story, other viruses are already a lived experience, and her response is that of the infections she already knows. She is a bit hostile and thinks that the military is going a bit too far in keeping her in. It is then she sees her…commander (colleague?) who had also gotten attacked while detaining the same person. He is locked in a room with a mask on. Her not understanding the new infection, she breaks in. The way that the scene unfolds is a great example of how they’ve integrated the horror, and also shows how dangerous the infection is, especially within a world where the populous has already started to check out on the lived experience of viruses being present. The way he snaps and the means they have to detain him not only work in the horror but also share a lot - that it’s something that has been going on long enough for them to have measures to control the person, and that the actions are not what have been present in the normal viruses of this world. On the flip side, the tenants of the building have a mysterious pull. They are oddly controlling and secretive, and we see very little in who they are. They are mysterious and eerie, and I feel that the drama might surprise us on where the horror actually lives. I’m really interested to see how the power struggle is going to evolve in the drama between the tenants and the governing offices.

I’ve never watched anything that Hyo Joo has been in (that I can recall) and I’m already liking the way she is setting up her character. She is young and ambitious, and while she has done the typical thing that you find in most crime/thrillers where she goes above and beyond to find out things, I think the way that she has been handled has allowed for her character not to be over the top. A lot of the time these characters go well over the line and a lot of writers overuse it to add action or to move the plot along when they couldn’t figure out how, and the character becomes damaged in the process and you have little care if they hurt or not, because they have repeatedly put themselves and other in harms way selfishly. I'm also interested to see how Park Hyung Sik does in his role. I’ve not watched him in a lot, but he has been in mostly comedic or lighter roles, and this is very much not that type of role. The first two episodes focus more on Sae Bom than his character so we have more time to get to know how his evolves and his role in everything, specifically his role and relations with Jo Woo Jin's role as Han Tae Seok.

If the drama is at all handled as well as Watcher was with a good mix of intrigue and action, and the way that Han Sang Woon was able to accurately write morally grey characters and toe the line with who was good and who was bad to keep the mystery alive, I think this is going to be end up being a pretty awesome drama. Maybe one of my favorites of the year.

Happiness is airing on Fridays and Saturdays and being subbed over on Viki.

+++

November Premieres

It feels like so long since I’ve just done a regular post that’s not a review! November has a lot of dramas premiering, and a lot that I’m personally excited for. It’s going to be a heavy watching month for me, especially with some other dramas that premiered during October.

---

-The supernatural romance Thai drama Prajan See Daeng will be out today, the 1st, about a boy born cursed to turn into a tiger-man during the red moon, and his journey to try to find the only way he can break the curse.

-Not a new movie, but the 2020 Korean horror The Closet will be available on Shudder today. The film follows a widower who enlists the help of an exorcist to help him find his daughter after she goes missing.

-On the 3rd the cdrama Wisher premieres on iQIYI. The sci-fi thriller tells the story of a mysterious organization that creates an app that allows users to make a wish - if they do the assigned task. It is part of iQIYI’s Light On Series, iQIYI produced dramas that are in the suspense genre.

-Also coming out on the 3rd in celebration of Apple TV+ being available in South Korea is the sci-fi thriller Dr. Brain - the first original Korean drama on the platform. It’s director/writer is Kim Jee Woon, known for being the director of the movie I Saw the Devil. I have high hopes for this one.

-While Dead and Beautiful may not be a by-the-book definition of an Asian horror film, it does follow an almost entirely Asian cast and is partially set in Taipei. A group of friends bored with their socialite lives go out for the night…and end up vampires. It’s been making the rounds at film festivals but will be streaming on Shudder starting on the 4th.

-Another older movie, the 2014 Japanese movie The World of Kanako will drop on Shudder on the 5th. The movie follows a former detective who uncovers a secret about his teenage daughter.

-Kdrama Happiness begins on the 5th about a deadly virus that spreads throughout a city, and the apartment building that has been sealed off from it. It looks super interesting, and the team behind it is really good.

-The webdrama Find Me if You Can will premiere on the 9th about a four-way love…square? And a stalker who is obsessed with the main female lead. The drama will star almost the entirety of the kpop group ASTRO.

-Korean horror drama Hellbound drops all of its episodes on Netflix on the 19th. The drama is about people being able to hear predictions on how they’ll die and are able to see the death angel in front of them. Director/writer Yeon Sang Ho is known for Train to Busan. This is one of my top dramas this month.

-Taiwanese drama Light the Night will be streaming part one on Netflix on the 26th. Set in 1988 Taipei Red Light District about the lives, love, and struggles of the club madam, and their hostess ladies.

-On the 27th the kdrama One Ordinary Day premieres. The drama is about the murder of a woman, and the person in jail who might not be the culprit. It is a remake of the BBC series Criminal Justice.

No Date:

-There hasn’t been much movement or information on the kdrama Goosebumps after some casting news, so there might be a good chance this one won’t be out this month. It’s directed by Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum director Jung Bum Shik so I’m interested and hopeful it’ll appear.

+++

31 Days of Asian Horror: Blood (2015)

Switching gears a bit from a full review of a movie (and technically not horror but let’s just let that one slide), today I’m focusing on my first impression of the first two episodes of the 2015 kdrama, Blood. Written by Park Jae Bum (God’s Quiz) and directed by Lee Jae Hoon (Run On, Ghost Detective) and Ki Min Soo (Good Doctor), the series follows top Ji Sang (Ahn Jae Hyun), a doctor that specializes in a specific surgery who is also a vampire, and his colleagues at a top cancer treatment center.

Blood has always been on my radar, but I never quite pulled the trigger to put it on my watch list, mostly because it was always sort of pitched like a romcom to me. With my aversion to most romcoms, I steered clear of the drama for a while. I wish I had looked into it sooner, not realizing who was behind the project. Director Ki Min Soo’s recent works include some of my favorites of recent date. Park Jae Bum wrote most recently for Vincenzo, and is the writer for one of my favorite kdrama series, God’s Quiz. While the drama is not fully a romcom, it does have some of those elements and is a closer follow to the structure of older kdramas, having heightened exaggerations of situations and heavily leaning on the clash between Min Soo and the female lead, played by Ku Hye Sun. I’m not a fan of those tropes and is a turn-off for a good bit of the scenes concerning the two. The drama does have enough of a rotating cast, and because it’s a medical drama more excitement or intrigue than if the drama had to follow just their relationship.

For me, the biggest draw of the series is the integration of his vampirism within the drama. It’s a unique take on the trope, and from early on we see the struggle he has with being a vampire. It plays into some interesting storylines, and also helps introduce him as a doctor. It’s doesn’t seem as corny or off the wall. Having the scenes when he’s younger feel compassion towards others while fighting his demons worked with the drama and with the death of the parents the drama set up some mystery for a larger issue that I’m interested to see. I also liked that we didn’t have to wait around for a tangible reason why he can be out in public or out in sunlight. The drama sets up a lot of the questions regarding him being able to do what he does fairly early on, allowing the viewer to not have to dwell on it. I respected how tight everything was in that regard, and it didn’t needlessly bog down the episode with these types of unanswered questions on the logistics of him operating as a vampire.

That being said, I know I will have trouble with the main pairing. This time period of kdramas have some pretty insufferable female leads, and it makes it hard to really get into the drama because of that. I also find that Hye Sun’s acting, in general, tends to be overexaggerated a bit too much despite the project she is working on, and it interrupts my care for her the characters she performs. It also presents a specific problem within a medical drama where her character has literal lives in her hands, and feel that she is jeopardizing those patients to show off and not being held accountable. I have a hard time believing in characters being truly good and empathetic when they show that they’d rather place a patient in harm’s way than to be upstaged by someone, a long-time hated trope that is very much present in this drama.

Will I continue the series? Honestly, it’s a possibility. I was intrigued by the first two episodes enough to want to continue the series but it is a longer drama, coming in at 20 episodes. Add elements that I know will be a struggle (that will take a longer time to settle and resolve in the story), and I’m not in any rush to continue watching. I do have some hope for the rest of the series, though, even if I end up completing it and it’s not a top drama for me. The team is pretty stacked in favor of this being a generally good series for me. Another factor that is preventing me from picking it up fully is that I do have a lineup of dramas that I’m currently watching, as well as a November packed with new dramas premiering that picking up the drama now just doesn’t seem as feasible. At the very least I intend to keep it on my list so that I can watch an episode or two here and there, but not commit to watching it in one sitting or in any time frame.

Blood can be found on Viki and Kocowa.

+++

31 Days of Asian Horror: Suddenly in the Dark (1981)

When I say that Suddenly in the Dark has been on my watchlist for a long time, I mean it. It’s one of those movies that has been there a little too long, I just never made time for it. October seemed like the perfect time to finally rectify that, and after watching it just confirmed my suspicions that I was wrong for not getting to it faster. It’s an engaging psychological thriller with slow builds and a perfect unreliable narrator that is further supported by the interesting camera angles and various filters used. While I’m not going to give away too many spoilers in this post, it’s a movie that I can’t not talk about for some length. If you haven’t watched the movie, go watch it and come back here.

The movie follows Seon Hee (Kim Young Ae), a housewife whose life is disrupted when her husband brings home a young woman, Mi Ok (Lee Ki Seon), a daughter of a shaman priestess. Mi Ok has been recently made homeless due to a fire that claimed the life of her mother and comes to help out Seon Hee around the house for a place to stay. Mi Ok brings home a doll that her mother gave her, a doll that has been tormenting Seon Hee’s dreams. Suddenly in the Dark is director Go Yeong Nam’s only horror film out of his over 100 film credits.

The main plot of the movie is Seon Hee’s spiral into distrust of both her husband and Mi Ok. A lot of the tension had been growing slowly over some time, well before we see her, but her friend’s remarks only further help it and aid to solidify her paranoia about her husband. Because of Seon Hee’s position and where she was living, she is essentially shut off from society. There is only ever one car shown, and has no visible neighbors. She only has, seemingly, one friend and spends her life waiting for her husband to return from long trips and now her routine has been disrupted with the entrance of a younger female - one that she didn’t bring into the house. Seon Hee has only been known as someone else’s. Yu Jin’s wife, Gyeong Ah’s mother and now there is a clear threat of that being stripped away from her, and that she is losing the only identity she knows. She’s at a turning point in her acceptance of being her own person and it is presenting itself in her dissolving mental state.

In Korean culture, the butterfly is a symbol of joy and prosperity. When shown in pairs they symbolize harmony and unity among a husband and wife. (source) Seon Hee’s husband spends much of the movie away from the house trying to catch a rare butterfly that has only been seen by few in Korea. There is also a superstition that if you touch one you’ll go blind. Yu Jin is blind throughout the movie to his wife’s diminishing mental state and how far gone she is truly becoming. The events of the movie only further heighten it. Everything comes to head at the very end as his butterfly collection is destroyed, and too their marriage.

The film makes you question everything, and there are parts that seem like her delusions of Mi Ok are true and supported by events that are happening. You are constantly questioning the husband and Mi Ok’s actions because of this. The use of Seon Hee being such an unreliable narrator not only helps the psychological mind play that is happening, but it also creates a sense of constant uneasiness. Seon Hee forces a mirrored version of the woman in the magazine onto Mi Ok, which we see in numerous times through the lens of the camera. Mi Ok’s naivety and age only help create a false reality to support these stories. It really helped with the tension because I was being forced to figure out if it was all true, or if we were truly seeing a woman who is mentally spiraling. Both options aren’t good, Seon Hee purposely sabotaging this facade seems unlikely and you are left sadly watching a woman losing everything because she’s not getting the care she needs. The upkeep of the image of the wealthy perfect family was too much for her and had rendered her silent for years until it was forced to bubble over with Mi Ok’s arrival.

While a little too experimental and hokey at times, the film’s use of practical camera effects and angles add to the delusion. Any time Seon Hee is seeing the distortion of truth, a kaleidoscope lens is applied. An almost broken mirror that we are seeing only bits and pieces of what is truly going on. In these instances, you really start to feel the erraticness of her actions and how she is spiraling out of control in her distorted reality. The movie worked well to use the camera tricks to help with the tension and added some good eery parts and I was also left guessing. The creepy doll only adding to everything and made my enjoyment of the film only grow. I was immersed in everything which led to me not only letting my guard down, but also feeling like Seon Hee at times. I was uncomfortable and confused. There are weird things constantly happening, almost seemingly in the background, but because of Seon Hee’s fixation of Mi Ok they are almost missed. Kim Young Ae does a fantastic job in her role and carries Seon Hee well. While the other’s acting is slightly lacking, it works well for the crazy ride of the movie and I wasn’t bothered by it. I’m really glad I decided to pick this one up, as its become a new favorite.

Suddenly in the Dark is available on Blu-Ray and streaming on AsianCrush (and by default Midnight Pulse).

+++

31 Days of Asian Horror: The Guest (2018)

Today I’m focusing on a drama that I have had on my watchlist for much longer than it needed to be. I tried watching it back when it was airing but had some other things happen that led to not having time for it, and since Netflix picked it up the end of last year it’s been a drama that I knew I needed to rush to the top of my list. That obviously still took till now, but I still finally got around to watching it now, and am really glad that I finally did. While I probably missed a lot waiting this long, it was nice to go into the drama without having to wait for it to air, and binged it in a couple of days.

After a powerful demon is found possessing the weak, a trio consisting of a psychic born to a shaman family (Kim Dong Wook), a Catholic priest (Kim Jae Wook), and police officer (Jung Eun Chae) are forced to join forces to stop the demon. The drama was directed by Kim Hong Seon, who's previous works included the first season of Voice and Black. It premiered on OCN's new Wednesday/Thursday slot on September 12, 2018. There's been some talk of a season two, and back in 2019 a movie was in the process but neither projects have had more momentum.

While the drama is an exorcism story and focuses a good chunk on the possession, demons, and religion, it ends up not living in that world for most of the show. One of the most surprising aspects of the drama was in the investigation storyline. I thought it was going to center more heavily on the exorcisms or dive more into religious topics, and I was taken aback with how much the show was spent on it - almost like I was watching a crime show. Setting the show as more of a crime thriller than a horror really worked well for me. While exorcism stories aren’t something I avoid, they are in a grey area for me. If the plot is too heavily into religion I find myself not caring about the show or the characters and so it’s always a tricky venture for me. With the differences in the characters, and the heavy crime thriller elements I enjoyed it throughout.

Don’t get me wrong - if you are a horror lover, I think you would really enjoy this series, and it does have some truly great scenes that are disturbing and creepy. However, I do think it starts to follow a bit too formulaic pattern for the insertion of the horror. As I talked about above, the story follows much more closer to that of a crime thriller, and a lot of the storyline is based on that. The horror and scares tend to always come at the end of the episodes, and so a lot of the scares are too predictable. Despite this, what we got of the horror is interesting and deep. It’s creepy and dark and focuses much more on the realness of the evil as opposed to the antics. It also helped the reveals to be not only surprising but more devastating. Coming back to the realness of the world and how horrible it is in the viewpoint of demons worked well for the series and the real horrors of the world integrated well.

The dramas shines most in its the focus on characters and their relationships. The trio are interesting and fun together, all being strongly independent from each other in their beliefs and actions. In any other other drama, this might be used as a main conflict point, but the show focuses their relationship as more of a trio of siblings and despite their differences understand that they have to fall on each other because they share the same grief. All have been affected by the demon in some regard, but their differences are vast. The drama doesn’t try to hide that, and develops a real relationship between the three that allows for each of their personal beliefs to shine through and grow, with the understanding that they need each other. Not just to be able to heal, but because what they are fighting can not be fought alone. Each brings something to the table and their differences are interesting to watch. The trio spend a lot of time together and I came to really love the energy all three brought out of each other. It creates some great scenes together that not only lighten the mood, but also ground the horror. It’s a great found family plot.

Because the drama focuses more of the investigation of the trio, we don’t spend too much time with the main group of cops that Gil Young works with, and it adds an interesting dynamic that allows for the drama to not fall into a lot of the stereotypes that are prevalent in other crime dramas. I really enjoyed this aspect, as I was not spending my time annoyed with the investigation and how the cops were handling it, especially since this was in an area that was supernatural and a harder sell to the general population. Gil Young and her partner, Go Bong Sang (played by Park Ho San), have a great relationship together. He has taken her under his wing since her father’s passing and is a constant support to her. Even towards the end of the series when he has to face some developments that would question his faith of her, he trusts her enough to value her decisions.

I’m really happy that I was able to pick up the drama now, and happy that is now easily accessible for a much larger audience. I think the Netflix audience is a good choice for it. The cast and storyline are solid, and it’s hard to stop once you start. If you are looking for a darker show to watch for the season, or anytime, check out the drama.

The Guest is currently streaming on Netflix.

+++

October Premieres

October seems like a fairly quiet month in comparison to previous months, which is a good thing so we can all focus on rewatching all of our Halloween favorites and just generally catch up on things. I personally have a lot of things going on in October, and while I will still be watching a lot I won’t be able to get to many new things. However, there is some great content heading to Shudder this month that I’m super excited for.

---

TBA/No Date:

-The kdrama Crime Puzzle follows a criminal psychologist who is sent to prison for murdering a political candidate, who is met with a former lover who is a criminal profiler trying to figure out a murder that occurred at the prison he is in.

-Some of the Drama Special Season 12: TV Cinema will be premiering this month. Here is this list of the darker drama offerings for October:

• F20: A psychological thriller about two mothers, one whose son has schizophrenia.

• Landscape of Pain: A thriller that tells the story of three people who are caught up in a bizarre murder case.

Confirmed:

- On the 3rd the jdrama Solomon no Gisho premieres, an adaption of the 2016 Korean drama Solomon’s Perjury and previous Japanese movies from the same source.

-Remember You is a Thai drama remake of the kdrama Hello Monster that premiered back in August, but Netflix will be dropping the subbed episodes on the 5th.

-The Labyrinth finally has an official premiere date on the 6th.

-While V/H/S/94 is not necessarily an Asian horror film, it does feature Indonesian director, Timo Tjahjanto. It’ll be available for streaming on Shudder on the 6th.

-Based on a true story about an incident that happened to a band that went on a trip to Chuncheon, Fearsome premieres in Korean theaters Oct 7th. The teaser looks interesting and has a pretty good cast lineup.

-Taiwanese drama Danger Zone S2 will be airing starting on the 8th following the previous season. iQiyi had the English subs for season one, so I assume it’ll also sub this season.

-The Taiwanese movie, Detention, will be hitting select US theaters on the 8th. The 2019 horror film is based on the horror game with the same name. Set in 1962 during Taiwan's White Terror period the movie is about two students trapped in a high school. There is also a Netflix limited series that is also based on the game that was released end of last year.

-The Medium will be available on Shudder for streaming on the 14th. I’ve talked about this one before, and am super excited for it. I’m glad that Shudder was able to get rights.

-Rasen no Meikyu: DNA Kagaku Sosa follows Detective Genji Ando (Yasuda Ken) who’s wife has been killed by a serial killer, and the DNA expert that he reaches out to help with the investigation. The jdrama starts on the 15th.

-Also on the 15th, Netflix will drop all the episodes of a kdrama I’m personally excited for, My Name, starring Han So Hee who plays Ji Woo, a member of a crime ring who goes undercover as a police officer.

-The Japanese remake of the 1997 Canadian film by the same name, Cube, will premier on the 22nd. 6 people are locked in a mysterious cube-shaped room, if they don’t decipher the code they won’t get out of the cube. No word on International release yet, but I assume this is one of the films that will get one sooner than later.

-Jirisan/Cliffhanger, one of the most anticipated kdramas of the year is finally coming out this month. Starring Jun Ji Hyun and Joo Ji Hoon and written by Kingdom screenwriter, Kim Eun Hee, the action/thriller follows the mystery surrounding the mountain and the rangers trying to rescue the survivors and lost trekkers. It’ll be available Internationally on iQiyi on the 23rd.

-Rounding out the month on the 30th is the OCN drama, Chimera. A present-day case leads to evidence being uncovered that relates to a series of murders from 1984.

Want some more new dramas and movies to watch? Check out what happened in September.

+++

Review: The Master's Sun (2013)

In honor of The Master’s Sun having premiered today 8 years ago, I decided to finally sit down and watch the drama and review it. I know it’s a pretty universally loved drama as it is always brought up by a slew of people, even those that don’t like darker dramas and its MyDramaList score is fairly high. Going in the drama had a pretty big shoe to fill and sadly it never filled that for me. In fact, by the first episode I knew that it wasn’t going to be an enjoyable watch for me, but I continued for all seventeen episodes because I wanted to try to see what I was missing.

---

The Master’s Sun follows Tae Gong Shil (Gong Hyo Jin) a medium who is plagued with being able to communicate with ghosts. She meets stoic rich businessman, Joo Joong Won (So Ji Sub), who had suffered a tragic loss when he was younger and in trying to find out what happened, developed a disdain for anyone who says they can see ghosts. They meet and develop a relationship as she deals with her ability and he uncovers the truth behind his first love.

One of the biggest problems I had with the drama was the relationship between Gong Shil and Joong Won. The relationship is entirely based on him controlling her. Consistently. There was never a time I thought that their relationship was sweet, or that there was some push for me to believe that they should be with each other. Usually, these types of yelly/grumpy male interest dramas at least change the guy to a passable person that you can imagine the female being with, but that never happened here, he stays consistent till the end. I guess in a sense it’s the most realistic option as people don’t change like that (especially not with professional help)? An exhausting realistic option for a drama that’s main focus was romance.

Another part that was hard to watch with the drama was the fact that we never saw real growth from Gong Shil in any real sense. The drama wanted you to believe that she does, but she doesn’t. What little growth we saw was only tied to Joong Won, and that was only through her falling in love with him. She never believed in herself the way that she was and accepted her faults, and didn’t see the real good she was doing with helping the ghosts. She blamed everything on herself, and Joong Won never provided any true or lengthy support to help her see her strength or to make her know that it wasn’t her fault. She never got to grow the way she deserved. The imbalance in the power dynamic between the two stayed present and dominating throughout, making the relationship feel messy and uncomfortable. And that’s really sad. It was entirely a one-sided relationship that I was never rooting for and never felt good about.

While I did like the sub-story about his first love, I found that it was nothing like the rest of the drama and didn’t work well when paired with it. It was darker and felt like the writer was constantly forcing two completely different stories together. Even the stories of the ghosts tended to not be consistent, and while I do think the format of focusing on a different ghost and its story for an episode or two helped with the entertainment, you could tell their only purpose was to bring in the horror element and clashed just as much as the first love story. It just never fit for me, and I do think a lot of that had to do with Gong Hyo Jin’s character and how scared she was at not scary things it just made it seem like they were trying to hit you over the head that this was a horror drama through her (or just a catalyst for her to constantly run into Joong Won’s arms). I feel that a lot of times the ghost storylines were rushed to the point that I never connected with them, which is a loss because a lot of the heart and warmth of the drama was supossed to be pulled from those stoylines and fell flat, especially when they weren’t accomplishing that warmth through the main relationship. As far as it being labeled a horror drama, they do mean this in the loosest of terms. While some of the ghosts had a little bit darker storylines dealing with their death, for the most part they are the scare level of Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

While I didn’t like the drama, I don’t want to spend this entire review bashing it, because that’s not fun and not realistic. There were parts that I enjoyed about it and thought worked well. I specifically loved the assistant character played by Choi Jung Woo. I’m a sucker for the gentle fatherly type of presence, and I thought his character really did this well and was not only good for Joong Won, but all of the other characters. He developed realistic and healthy bonds with all of them, and I think that if anyone learned anything in the process of the drama, it was from him.

In a drama that is so fraught with the generic tropes (and I’m serious about this, they used every trope from wrist grabs to amnesia to random separation), the one thing it did surprisingly well was handle the evil mother in law. While she was a presence of nonacceptance, she was level-headed and not over the top. It was real and refreshing to see the character be handled that way, and I really enjoyed that her husband was equally as good and that their relationship was not a relationship of hatred, but of love and acceptance for their differences. It was really nice.

The second female lead was also not over done and drawn out as I thought she was going to be in the first couple of episodes. She was annoying, and created some minor barriers, but overall she was fine and allowing her to not be an evil character helped her storyline. I liked her parts with Seo In Guk, even if she was a tad too pushy, and their storyline was generally cute and not draining.

All-in-all I’m sad that the drama didn’t live up to what I thought it would be for me. With a strong cast of actors and the praise it constantly got, I thought that it would be a fun watch for me and it was anything but. Make no mistake, I know that the drama is outside of my genre tastes a bit, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t enjoyed other romcoms and with the addition of the horror element I was sure that this one would be at the least a fun watch but that just wasn’t the case.

+++