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.

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-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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Guardian (2021) Review

The 2021 Vietnamese horror movie, The Guardian (Thiên Than Ho Menh), was just added to Netflix’s catalogue and I decided to give it a try. I’m always looking for more Asian horror, especially accessible, and the plot of the movie seemed fairly interesting enough. After the suicide of a popular singer, her backup singer’s career starts to take off.

The movie, while not necessarily the best thing that I’ve seen, had some genuinely interesting moments. I have been burned by Netflix’s selection of Asian horror before, especially when it’s outside of Korea or Japan, and thought that a two + hour movie was going to be hard to get through, but I surprisingly didn’t feel too much of the length. Don’t get me wrong, the movie does feel weighed down by the time at moments, specifically as the horror is slow to come in, but the events leading up are an interesting drama about the fall of a singer, the rise of her backup singer, and the downfalls of the music industry and striving to make it when you fell you don’t have any sort of support. I think a lot of what I enjoyed about the movie was Amee’s portrayal of Huyen. She carries the role in a nice balance between naivety and genuineness, while being jaded by her dreams coming true. I felt the relationship she had with other characters seemed true and not forced.

The movie does fail at being a true horror, and frankly it’s not even a thriller. It chooses to follow more about the horrors and downfalls of the real world, and while it isn’t high-paced thriller it seems it wants to be, it lives in as an interesting drama surrounding an incident between the singers. While there is an introduction of a creepy doll, it fails to be much of the horror plot and is generally too campy. The doll we do get, however, is fairly interesting even if it fails to serve it’s horror purpose. Admittedly, I haven’t watched a lot of possessed doll horror, it’s not something I generally gravitate towards, but the movie takes it in a different approach than those that I’ve seen and incorporates local traditions and religion with the doll and even though we don’t get what I feel we needed with it, it added an interesting level to the overall story.

If you like slow (slooow) burn horrors, that fall more into the drama side and a creepy doll or two being thrown in, I say give the movie a shot. It’s not perfect and fails to deliver as a horror but I’ve seen much worse from Netflix’s selection, and at least the story was interesting.

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Random Asian Horror News 12.13.21

It’s been quite a while since I last posted a roundup of all the latest Asian horror news that has popped up around the web, but I figured it would be good to get one in before the end of the year. News has been fairly slow and quiet, so there’s not too much that I’ve missed but there is some fun things coming up soon, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about what’s in store for 2022 closer to the end of the month.

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Casting

-SHINee's Onew has been cast in the horror series 4:44 Seconds. Not much word on the Korean series, hopefully we’ll see it some time beginning of next year.

-Ong Seong Wu in talks of OCN thriller Blind. The drama is in the very beginings of casting, and there’s no word on date or a solid synopsis.

-Go Kyung Pyo in talks for the Takashi Miike kdrama, Connect.

-Lee Wong Geun cast in OCN's A Superior Day as Kwon Si Woo who seems nice but is actually a serial killer.

-Kim Yoon Hye is confirmed to lead upcoming occult horror movie The Scene as Siyoung, who is cast for an experimental film and caught in a mysterious accident on her way to the filming.

-Kim Nam Gil, Lee Da Hee, Cha Eun Woo and Sung Joon confirmed cast for tvN drama Island. Filming began in October and is expected for release the beginning of next year.

General

-Infinite Studios and the streaming service Catchplay will co-produce the Indonesian horror series Losmen Melati, scheduled for release next year. (source)

-Hellbound director Yeon Sang Ho when asked about second season of the drama says that nothing has been decided and plans to release a webtoon following the events after the series. (source)

-The 2019 horror thriller Repossession directed by Goh Ming Siu and Scott C. Hillyard will be getting a North American digital release on the 21st of this month.

-Korean thriller Midnight won the Best Feature Award at the British film festival Grimmfest.

-Shinya Tsukamoto's Hiruko the Goblin will be available on Blu-Ray January 24th. It has been restored and includes special features such as audio commentary and interviews.

-The music director for the Netflix kdrama D.P. confirmed that season 2 is in the works.

-Malaysian supernatural thriller ROH was released on VOD on the 29th of October.

-Shudder Original Raging Grace will be the first British-Filipino produced film in history. It’s scheduled to be released some time next year. (source)

-Takashi Shimizu's Suicide Forest Village has been acquired by Cinedigm for North American rights and is scheduled for release next year. (source)

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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.

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-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.

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100 (Asian) Horror Movies in 92 Days

This year I did the Spooky Sarah Says challenge to watch 100 horror movies in 92 days. The challenge started in August and ran till the end of October. The rules were simple: watch 100 new (to you) movies during the time period. When I decided to do the challenge, I was in the middle of watching a lot of Korean horror and had just started planning my October posts. Because I knew that I was already going to be watching a bunch of Asian horror, I decided to do the challenge with a focus on only counting Asian horrors. I started off just tracking movies, but as I got into October I feared that the challenge was forcing me to focus on movies too much, and added tracking dramas into the mix. In the end, it didn’t really work out and I barely touched dramas. Such is life.

I thought it would be fun go through the movies and dramas I watched and check out some of the stats on them to see how the challenge went (besides whether I completed it or not). I also think it would give a greater look into what I chose, and may help in the movies that I choose from here on out. I didn’t try to vary up my content that much, I was mostly concerned with the number, but towards the end when I was less concerned about hitting 100 I started to really try to expand what movies I was watching.

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The Stats

-My final count was 116. 8 of those being dramas. My starting baseline for this is 108 movies, 8 dramas.

-The oldest movie I watched was the 1958 Mansion of the Ghost Cat, from Japan. This was a movie I had no clue about before this challenge and one that I randomly picked up. It was a YouTube suggestion after another movie I had been watching and decided to give it a try after realizing that I was enjoying a lot of the older Japanese horror movies I was encountering. The newest movie I watched was Ouija Japan. Its premiere date is listed as October 19th, and I watched the day it dropped on Amazon Prime.

The years in between the oldest and newest least of my worries when picking, mostly because it would be the thing I have the least control of or care due to my options to watch and not having a budget to buy or rent new movies. I did want to see if I somehow favored a year. I assumed that they would mostly be older just purely because I was watching movies on streaming services and assume those would be the cheaper to get rights for thus populating my options. At a tie for first place with 9 entries each was 2009 & 2016. I don’t know how 2009 got to be so high - maybe it was just a good year for horror to come to the box office? I would like to dive deeper into this when I get the time, I would assume that the previous years had popular box office hits that reignited the passion to ride on that popularity or focus distribution rights budget on them. 11 out of the 33 years represented have only one movie or drama watched within them, a much higher number than I would have expected.

-I’m not much of a fan of rating things, and thus rate things extremely weird. Since most of the time I’m rating dramas, I've gotten used to my rating score over there. Problem is…it doesn’t necessarily translate to movies. With dramas I drop them and not rate if I do, that means that I rarely will have a low-rated drama and I’ve worked that into my rating system. With movies, I rarely drop due to their length being a smaller time restraint. I did want to include some stats on my ratings, though. Generally, my rating thought process was 5’s: perfect, 4/4.5’s: all-around great, 3/3.5’s: pretty good 2/2.5’s: not the best, but didn’t hate everything, 1/1.5’s: mostly sucked, .5’s definitely sucked.

Here’s the breakdown of each rating:

• .5: 7

• 1: 6

• 1.5: 7

• 2: 19 (1 drama)

• 2.5: 11 (1 drama)

• 3: 30 (2 dramas)

• 3.5: 13 (1 drama)

• 4: 21 (2 dramas)

• 4.5: 2 (1 drama)

• 5: 0

I didn’t rate any movie or drama a perfect 5, but I did give a 4.5 to one movie and one drama. One Cut of the Dead was the movie. It is the best movie that I watched during this time, and truly one I had on my watchlist for way too long. If you haven’t watched it yet, don’t read anything about it and watch it knowing nothing. The drama was The Guest. Fantastic drama that was also one I kept putting off not because I didn’t want to watch it, I just didn’t make the time to.

Some other interesting data from my ratings: 2 out of the 3 Indonesian films I watched got .5 stars, the lowest rating based on percentage. All three of the top dramas were Korean. Korea also dominates the 4 stars section. I gave out the most 3 stars (26%) which roughly translates to middle of the road in my enjoyment level, fairly average but possibly had some better than average aspects. I also gave out a fairly large percentage of 2 stars, about 17% of the movies. I was kind of expecting my 1.5/.5 ratings to be a bit higher than they actually turned out. Not because I think I am a ruthless rater, but simply because of the movie pool I was picking from. A lot of the time I would turn on movies at random on Tubi leading to more of a gamble if the movie was good or not.

-Out of all the data I was most interested in seeing was my breakdown of movies based on location. Again, I didn’t try to vary this at the beginning between the Korean Summer Horror posts and the 31 Days of Asian Horror posts constraints. Here’s the breakdown:

• Cambodia: 1

• China: 1

• Hong Kong: 8

• India: 4 (2 dramas)

• Indonesia: 3

• Japan: 37 (1 drama)

• Korea: 37 (3 dramas)

• Laos: 2

• Mongolia: 1

• Philippines: 3

• Singapore: 1 (1 drama)

• Taiwan: 5

• Thailand: 9 (1 drama)

• Vietnam: 3

I pretty much knew that Korea and Japan would make it to the top of the list without guessing. I had the most options from those accessible, and the most that were already on my watchlist. Hong Kong came in fourth, which was the most surprising out of the group. I had some movies lined up because Hong Kong had the most options in vampire movies (a theme for some of my blog posts), but most of the ones I picked up were completely random. Most of the movies from Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines were from Netflix which I have found seems to be the platform’s favorite area to pick up Asian horror content from.

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I know this data is probably only interesting to me, but I had fun trying to figure out some of the stats and it gave me a good look at how I did. I think it’s an interesting perspective on my viewing habits, and I think in the future will help me try to diversify my viewing a bit more. I might do a break down like this for the dramas that I watched this year to give me a greater look at my drama watching.

If you want to see the full list of movies and dramas, check out my Letterboxd list here, and while you’re there follow me so we can be friends!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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-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.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Audition (1999)

Today’s movie is not only one that I adore, but I think a must for any Japanese horror lover to watch at least once in their lives. Audition is based on a novel by Ryu Murakami and was given to Takashi Miike to adapt alongside screenwriter Daisuke Tengan on the heels of the success of Ringu. The film follows Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a widower who, with the help of a film producer friend, holds a mock casting audition to find his new wife.

The slowest of burns in all the best of ways, Audition sets up the story almost flawlessly. The death of his wife, his relationship with his son and dog play into the type of man he appears. The silent grief and loneliness that occurs after loss, and the need to move on but not knowing when is the right time sucks you into the story and quietly takes you on an unsuspecting journey. The movie spends most of its time in this space and sets up the turn beautifully in a way that is not only unexpected but sombering. Eihi Shiina’s performance as Asami is the breakthrough out of the movie, her acting is quiet and unassuming and packs much more of a punch at the climax of the movie in a way that makes you question everything that you’ve watched - forcing it into a new light and playing into the true terrors of gender roles, how they can affect people, and how a lot of it goes unnoticed because it is the norm in society. Audition is one of those films that inherently work better the less you know about it and allow Miike is able to take you on that journey without knowing what is going on. It’s a top-rated movie for a reason, and highly worth checking out.

Audition is currently streaming on Shudder, Tubi, and AsianCrush.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Kaal (2005)

Written and directed by Soham Shah, Kaal follows the story of a group of wildlife experts trying to collect information about a string of attacks and deaths that are attributed to a man-eating tiger.

Whether intentional or not, Kaal is a campy thriller that tries to be scary and doesn’t accomplish any of that with overacting and a generally terrible plot. The story takes a while to get going, and really only jumps into actual tension and intrigue towards the latter half. The problem with this is that the movie is over two hours long, forcing you to trudge through an hour of random bickering, not-so-great characters, and overdone jump scares that attribute nothing to the overall story. It takes a while to be somewhat interesting, and that’s only after the turn. The movie is just not good enough to dedicate that amount of time and falls flat even when it starts to get sort of interesting.

The tigers used in the film are real, opting to not use any sort of computer-generated ones, which is a slight bonus to the overall story. The movie spends a lot of its time in this area of trying to be a solid thriller, but unintentionally going over into the campy horror side and using the tigers worked a little bit more to ground a lot of it when dealing with those scenes, even if the rest of the movie didn’t follow suit. I wanted a fun creature feature but was left with a boring 2-hour movie, that didn’t go anywhere and takes itself well too seriously.

Kaal is currently streaming on Netflix.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Pulse (2001) vs Pulse (2006)

It’s the last paring of the month, and today we are focusing on the 2001 Japanese techno-horror and its 2006 US remake of the same name. The original is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a well-known director in the genre and known for a slew of horror films such as Cure (1997) and Creepy (2016). The remake was scripted by Wes Craven and directed by Jim Sonzero. The two movies sort of stay in the same storyline, but a bit of is changed, the major difference is that the original movie follows two storylines that eventually merge together. The original follows Michi (Kumiko Aso), a florist who finds her coworker dead, and Ryosuke (Haruhiko Kato), a student who finds his computer showing weird images and the two eventually unveil a slew of suicides that result from a ghost taking over the internet. The remake focuses mostly on Mattie (Kristen Bell) who finds her boyfriend dead and starts to investigate what happened.

Pulse has a relatively weird plot and premise, and it’ll inherently be a hard sell to translate to Western audiences, especially when you tie in the advancement of technology in Japan compared to the US at the time of both movies, but the remake does an okay job at recreating the atmosphere of the original all things considered and does try to lean into the techno-horror, whether they accomplish it or not. The original is a slow-burn mystery, heavy on the investigation, but has some creepy elements that help aid the mystery, more poetic and gothic than outright creepiness. The remake tries to focus more on concrete things, such as a more definitive definition of the ghosts and heightened thrills. A lot of the movie heavily plays into the use of internet technology specifically in the early 2000’s. Using suicide as the form of death isn’t just because it’s needed, it ties into what the internet was mostly used for when it first came out. There’s an overall feeling of “joining in the loneliness” which was present at that time in message boards and chatrooms. A lot of people were using the internet to connect with other people because they were feeling lonely in their daily lives and trying to create some sort of community with the people they were talking to online because they weren’t feeling that connection in real life. The original movie conveys this sentiment much more and focuses the plot to be driven by loneliness and the desperate need for some sort of community. Even the videos of those who passed convey that loneliness, the ghosts were alone in life and trying not to be alone in death as well by taking everyone with them.

I do think that the remake falls flat for most of the movie, however. Mostly because the slow build does not translate to what the remake is trying to do. It falls into the trap of trying to heighten and over exaggerate things more, focusing more on the horror that is presented, and not allowing the horror to be created from the tension and atmosphere. While the original focuses more on the mystique of what the ghost is, the US remake defines it a bit more and just loses the creativity of the original. I think a lot of that downfall is because the target audience was a lot younger, trying to pull in the audience from the teen horror craze, and ultimately dumbs down a lot of the story because of it, leaving behind a lot of the plot that is driven by loneliness which I found was the most unique and interesting part of the story and made the general plot make so much more sene. If you are trying to decide between the two, the original is worth finding and presents an overall creepier story that has great builds and a deeper storyline.

Pulse is currently available for rental on most services and on DVD, with the original available on Tubi.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Betaal (2020)

Today’s drama is the short Netflix series, Betaal. Produced by American film studio Blumhouse with India’s Red Cillies Entertainment, the 2020 series was written and directed by Patrick Graham. A military unit is dispatched to settle a dispute between a remote village and a construction company regarding a closed tunnel. Despite warnings from locals, the tunnel is opened unleashing evil spirits.

What makes Betaal unique is how it uses spiritualism and folklore with the intrusion of modern day society. For years the locals have been able to live peacefully with their rituals helping contain the curse in the mountain and it isn’t until a commercial contractors greed unleashes the evil. This also plays into the spirits themselves as they are much closer in appearance and to that of modern zombies. The difference between the two sides makes for a really interesting first episode, and I was really excited to see how it was going to play out throughout the series. However, this doesn’t carry over for most of the series. All the locals are gone by the time the tunnel opens, and we don’t come back to them.

Even with the intrigue of the new take Betaal falls flat. The plot is kind of messy, it’s largely boring with storylines that go on and feel like needless filler and the reveal of the truth behind the zombies just doesn’t live up to what it could have been. I also felt that there was some weirdness in direction, as there are times when the group would be serious and the acting fine, with other times almost purposeful campiness and weird line delivery. The series is relatively short, which helps a bit, but on the whole feels like it would have been better as a movie, especially it focused more on the butting of heads of modern vs tradition and less exposition. That being said, I do think it’s worth giving a shot. With the episodes being about 45 minutes apiece, it’s a fine way to spend an afternoon and an interesting new look at the zombie genre.

Betaal is streaming on Netflix.

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