Revenge that was served, not quite so perfectly

The show really leaned into the FL’s “family” being trash - forced confinement, poisonings, murder for hire, verbal abuse etc. At times it was completely over the top as was the way in which the FL ended up being raised by them. Though this is a fictitious story, it was hard to suspend disbelief surrounding how she ended up in that household due to the extreme contrivances and coincidences.

Many of the characters in this were as dumb as a box of rocks. The FL was pretty dense to start, but thankfully she wised up after literally getting a new lease on life. But her ex fiancé was probably one of the stupidest characters I’ve seen in a while. He repeatedly made incredibly imbecilic decisions and was just…argh. It didn’t help that the actor in the role wasn’t that good. He only had two facial expressions, mindless stare into nothingness or mouth hanging open with a painful frown which I guess was supposed to convey shock and horror. He was awful.

The FL’s father was not only a horrible person, but he was pretty dense too considering he couldn’t see that his wife was a sociopath despite her repeatedly deceitful and abusive behaviors. The ML’s half brother also wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but in hindsight I found nothing about that character made any sense. He was in the story purely for plot.

The revenge plot was okay, but I’ve seen better. The setup and execution lacked punch because the audience was oftentimes completely in the dark about what the FL was planning to do and the story didn’t build. It just moved along at an even pace. As a result, when the villains were finally taken down it was anti-climatic. Moreover, after everything the FL went through, I didn’t think it was realistic that she’d ever forgive her father. He allowed her to be abused in his household for years and did nothing about it. In the end, he didn’t deserve to be in her life or to walk away virtually unscathed.

The love story was a little ridiculous, but what else is new. The ML fell in love with a painting by the FL. Watched her from afar which led to him falling deeply in love with her. It can’t get anymore preposterous than this. But…the leads had really good chemistry, which made me a believer in their love. I would’ve liked to have seen more push/pull in their relationship before they got together. More close moments in the house they shared and a little more to their “honeymoon” would’ve been nice too. Though the revenge plot was lackluster I will admit I had a good laugh when the dumb ex boyfriend marriage plans got ruined when the FL’s stepsister showed up on his doorstep 9 months pregnant, declaring him as the baby’s father. He fought so hard and did so many utterly dumb and despicable things to please her and be with her. He finally got the spoiled insufferable brat just when he thought he’d moved on from her to greener pastures. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

Overall, this was entertaining enough to see it through to the end, but it wasn’t as well executed as it could’ve been.

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The Best Choice Ever Would Be For Chenghuan to Choose Herself

The story was good to start. A new boss Yao, the ML, comes to town from abroad to run the Botecelli hotel chain, but this boss is not just coming in to run the business he has he own agenda that may or may not be nefarious. While Chenghuan, the FL, is a sales and marketing superstar who is looking to grow her career but may be a hindrance to the MLs plans unbeknownst to her. There was entertainment value here, but then the story lost its way when it no longer centered around the business happenings at the hotel to focus on the soap operaic drama surrounding the Xin family and Chenghuan’s interactions with them. SMH. It was over the top, contrived drama. And don’t even get me started on the FL’s mom and the SML’s sister, who were insufferable busybodies.

I will say I loved the chemistry between Chenghuan, and Jia Liang, the SML. He could be cute with his actions towards her and they really popped together. It is too bad that he was immature, irresponsible, and failed to take control of their relationship when his family continuously butted in causing chaos. He was essentially a wealthy bum. Truly a shame.

Though the series tried to sell a budding romance between the leads, it was difficult to suspend disbelief and believe their relationship could actually go there. I know it was just business, but after he used her as a pawn for his own business coupe, which nearly destroyed her reputation and did derail her career, it wasn’t believable that the FL would interact with him in any way beyond an as needed basis. Moreover, she and the ML didn’t have any chemistry. They had the scenes and dialogue to create what may be a budding romance but there was no spark between them.

I didn’t finish this series because honestly I got incredibly bored with it. However, seeing as Jia Liang was a man child who’d never grow up, Yao being a scheming user who was a vulture coming to swirl around his elderly grandmother in a plan to acquire her business, and the Mai parents being a mix of passive uselessness to their children, to aggressively controlling them to the point of being intolerable, I came to hope that in the end Chenhuang will pull a Kelly Taylor and choose herself.

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CSI Meets Crime Solving in 16th Century China

A disfigured woman is shunned by society due to her “ugly” looks and knack for reading the dead becomes a lead investigator in unraveling a myriad of conspiracies in the town of Heyang. The cases and her investigative methods (along with the help of her love interest, the ML) were interesting as were the layers surrounding the crimes that revealed a bigger conspiracy.

Even better was the big conspiracy was simple, yet intriguing. However, in the last 10 episodes the story started to lose steam. The episodes begin to drag and spent too much time on story threads that were boring or made the main story thread more complicated than it needed to be.

Though the leads were passible as a couple, they looked good together. I actually preferred the ML with the original actress who played the FL when she was scarred and “ugly.” They had good chemistry and I liked the idea of the FL not being this raving beauty. When the storyline called for the FL’s face to change it took several episodes for me to warm up to the new actress in the role. Moreover, when I did warm up to her, I begin to find interest in her interactions with the SML. I liked the potential that was their relationship. It was too bad that there was no chance for them to explore a romance considering their natural chemistry, which wasn’t quite there with the ML.

The acting was good from everyone. Both FLs were the strongest actresses out of the younger cast. The actor who played the ML struggled, at times, when he had to get emotional. The “love” story was anemic at best. I think the leads worked best when they were in that mode of distance and “sexual” (though there wasn’t much sexiness going on. lol) tension rather than when they became a couple. Some of their “romantic” interactions were awkward. I think because their chemistry was mediocre at best.

Thankfully the series didn’t spend much time on their “love” as the focus was on solving the conspiracies at hand. The show started off really good but meandered towards the end on unnecessary storylines. The story could’ve been tightened and completed in 18-20 episodes, rather than 32. That said, this was worth watching. Is it worth a rewatch? Maybe.

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Uninspiring Title. Nonetheless Solid Horror Flick

The act of a couple selling their home leads to strange and creepy circumstances that put their daughter in danger. It was obvious pretty early on that the husband had some role in the strange incidents happening around his and his wife’s daughter. The movie did a good job at incorporating some creepy and suspenseful moments. Having me waiver between the motive for the weird happenings being sinister or some ritual to protect the daughter from some unseen force, but with rotten food, black crows and a mysterious malevolent figure frequently appearing it became apparent that some evil plot was afoot. The nice twist was that this explored a similar theme as Annabelle Creation. Where in this case the husband had lost his 7 year old daughter, from a previous relationship, years earlier, to a horrible accident, and inconsolable with grief he made some terrible choices in an attempt to bring her spirit back to life.

Of course his attempt wasn’t as innocent as he was being led to believe and as a result he was duped into helping an evil priestess plot to regain a new body to possess. I felt for the father’s grief but I could not understand how he could essentially sacrifice the daughter he had with his new wife for the daughter who died. Moreover, it was unconscionable that he was asking a 7 year old to consent to her body being possessed by the spirit of her dead half sister.

The ending was confusing. It was clear that Ing’s body was taken over by Jaa. But it seemed for a second there that she’d become possessed by the evil entity as she appeared to have killed Ing’s mom. We later learn she survived, and killed Rattree whom we never see alive again after the attack. But last we see Ing/Jaa she appears to be a sweet little girl with no indication that evil resides within her. This was an entertaining horror movie with some nice twists. Definitely worth watching.

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A Compelling Journey of Peril and Perseverance, Abandoned for a Ridiculous “Love” Story

Started off as a brutal look into the struggles in immigrating from North Korea. The journey was tough to watch as Loh lived off the grid with his mother in China while she worked to raise enough money for them to escape to some European safe haven. Things don’t go exactly as planned when they are discovered by the Chinese police and his mother is killed while they’re attempting to flee.

Loh makes it to Belgium but continues to encounter some very difficult hardships. Though his encounters with the locals always escalating to violence, on their part, was heavy handed and unrealistic, his struggles for work and warmth and a roof over his head were authentic.

The part where this story goes off the rails is with Marie. A woman whose rebellion against her father over the death of her mother involves doing drugs and being the pawn of a Belgium gangster. It’s not love at first sight with these two being that she steals his wallet, which has all he has left of his mother and what little money he earned from her death. But soon their lives become entangled when she promises to get his wallet back and gives him a tip which results in a job.

There’s nothing more to their love story except a shared meal over which they didn’t talk but spent the entire time stuffing their faces, but somehow they came out of that being deeply in love, with Loh willing to do everything from OD on drugs, face off with gangsters and risk his ability to gain citizenship to save Marie. It was utterly ridiculous.

The movie seemed to have spent more time on the “love” story and Marie’s drama than on what should’ve been the focus of the story, Loh’s journey to freedom. In the end he finally gets citizenship in Belgium and in a voiceover states that he faced “many storms to get there. It would’ve made for an excellent story if we’d actually seen it. Instead his story became about saving Marie, then giving up his citizenship to go be with her on some island in the South Pacific. Needless to say I was left a bit perturbed by this waste of two hours.

I will say the Korean actors were great in this, but the premise advertised is not what this turned out to be.

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Ready Set…Should’ve Been So Much More Than Love

This started off like it was going to be light comedy built around a love story with all the bright set colors and silly incidents with the FL. But once the story started to unfold I found that there shouldn’t have been anything light and fun about this series. Or if there was going to be comedy it should’ve been used to lighten the story when it got too heavy.

The premise of the show was interesting and original, but the writers failed to do a deep dive on the themes they were throwing out. For whatever reason the birth of boys had severely declined. We are never given a reason why or even if research was being done to determine why they were rarely being born. As a result of this decline, there was a shortage of men in the world, so the government’s response was to essentially hold every boy that was born hostage at “The Farm”. They had this national reality game where women would compete to marry a man , but then we are told that’s just a scam and the marriages don’t actually happen.

It seemed as if TPTB were forcing the men to be with women whom they chose, for the purpose of…we’re never told why? The assumption was also if a girl was born, she was allowed to be out in the world and free. It was said that some women’s son’s were stolen from them and taken to The Farm if the they failed to comply with the law in giving up their sons. And those women would then be drugged and imprisoned. But if all men were held hostage at the Farm, who was impregnating these women in the outside world?

So again, it wasn’t clear what the government was hoping to accomplish with imprisoning boys at the Farm and marrying them off to what appeared to be wealthy families. As previously stated, this show had an interesting concept. There were many social commentaries at play ie “fake” vs “real”, population decline, human rights just to name a few.

With all the other more pressing story threads going on the love story was really irrelevant. And at times it seemed as if two shows were being explored within one, but the writers didn’t know how to merge those stories into a coherent show. The leads looked good together and had nice chemistry. It was sweet that they got their HEA but it seemed so out of place within the context of the story, much of which was not properly explored.

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An Incoherent House of Potential

It’s difficult to give a coherent review on this one because the story was so disjointed. So in short the Fuma who are apparently an ancient Ninja group of Japan wants to remove those who are currently in power to install their own puppet master to do their bidding. What that bidding entails is never explained. But then in order to reach this goal, they kill a bunch of innocent people and are fixated on some ancient scroll that details the genealogy of the Hojo clan. The belief is that as long as they have the scroll they will succeed in their goal to rule Japan. Again, we are given no history on these clans and ninja groups. Some things are implied but never explained.

We spend several episodes on Haru and the reporter investigating all the mysterious deaths and disappearances only for the reporter to become irrelevant halfway through the series.

In the final battle the Tawaras are fighting the Fumas and are about to lose the battle when a group of ninjas whom we’ve not heard of or seen, show up to help them out. There were many story threads not fleshed out, that didn’t make sense or just there it seemed to fill time with no connection to the overall story.

The actors had strong performances in this, and there was the potential for a good story but it just wasn’t well, written.

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Destitute Didn’t Have to Mean Dumb

The first episode kicked things off well, but the story failed to keep that strong premise. I was expecting to see three sisters who were ride or die, bringing down those corrupt killers and manipulators whom they found themselves entangled with, while managing to elevate themselves, even if just enough to do better than they were, out of extreme poverty.

Instead, we got three sisters who were as about as bonded as three siblings living oceans apart. The oldest sister was the dumbest out if the three. She spent almost every episode in tears. Sometimes warranted. Sometimes not. She signed her name to a legal document that was in a language she couldn’t read. Repeatedly confronted potentially dangerous people and threatened to expose their crimes. Handed a stack of stolen money to a woman who knew she was dirt poor, while knowing people were looking for said money. Trusted everything a man said whom she didn’t know from Adam. And continued to be a crusader of justice for her BFF who set her up in a serious mess of financial fraud. The stupidness went on and on with this one.

The middle sister had a few more brain cells to rub together. For she could see the forest for the trees. However, she wasn’t smart enough to be meticulous and strategic in her efforts which resulted in her ongoing failures.

The youngest sister was gullible and dumb. I guess she can get a pass as she was a teen and having to deal with being dirt poor and abandoned by her parents. However, her complete disregard for her sisters and total belief in her rich BFF and family was ridiculous. Also, she looked high throughout the series but perhaps that was in effort to convey her depression with her situation. Still it did the character no favors.

The plot actually could’ve been good if those at the center of it wasn’t so dumb. I gave this 7 episodes because I like Kim Go Eun. However, I finally gave up on the series because the plot continued to drag and I became over these characters lack of intellect. Moreover, what also annoyed me was all the educated and/or rich characters in this came off smart while the poor characters came off dumb.

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Dark and Gritty Crime Story Featuring Poor Police Work

A police detective decides to take her life over the loss of her husband who committed suicide a year earlier, but changes her mind when she discovers dead body nearby.

The story was just as expected, abandoning the glitz and glamour of many Taiwanese shows/movies to explore the dark underbelly of illegal immigration and the vulnerable situations , specifically the women, those immigrants find themselves in. The story was suspenseful and interesting due to the mystery of who was killing these migrant women and why. Come to find out it was some psycho who’d been scammed by his migrant wife so I guess he felt the need to make all migrant women pay for her misdeeds. Strange reasoning, but when has a serial killer’s reason for killing made sense.

That part of the story was relatively okay, but the detective part of the story was not great.The FL was a horrible cop. She managed to lose her gun to one suspect who ended up killing himself with said gun. Another suspect managed to get the better of her and nearly smothered her to death. She would go off with dangerous suspects alone without backup and her terrible decisions resulted in her rookie partner being stabbed by a suspect. They’d sometimes call for back up when needed but backup never showed.

We never learn why her husband committed suicide and why she decided to live. Her solving the case did not result in some profound moment for her where she found a reason to live. At least as far as I could see it didn’t.

So while the premise of the story was an interesting one, the execution was poorly done. The cops in this didn’t have to be perfect but they shouldn’t have been incompetent. Moreover the lack of depth in the characters made it difficult to care about any of them.

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Off the Rails Before the Story Could Gain Traction

Nice science fiction setup about parallel universes. The wealthy FL is transported to the past after following the advice of an acquaintance who assures her if she arrives at a specific location at a specific time she’ll find her missing friend. Speeding to that location in an effort to meet the deadline she ends of careening off a bridge into the water and traveling to an alternate universe that ends up being the year 2018.

Sounds exciting right? Yes! Unfortunately this is where the excitement ends. The FL struggles to understand what is going on and immediately discovers the life she previously had doesn’t exist in this version of 2018. She gets some help from a stranger who gives her shelter for the night then she meets the ML who proceeds to help her while also stalking her. The first four episodes is literally her finding a job and the ML following her around town because of course she’s some woman, likely a love interest from his past, whom he must look out for. There is nothing more about the sci-fi of the story. If a viewer didn’t know any better this would be another boring romance drama.

Such a shame because I like the actors in this and the premise has promise, but the show seemed to have abandoned that premise for the mundane day to day life of the FL and her inevitable romance with the ML.

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A Rebellion, A Monster and a Weak Love Story

A mission to find a government official’s side piece leads down a rabbit hole of horrific human experiments, a rebellion against the Japanese occupation and of course love.

I generally liked the leads in this but am on the fence about whether PSJ was the right actor for the ML role. He wasn’t bad in the role but I think there are other actors out there who could’ve really owned the part. His acting is good but I don’t think he’s the embodiment of who Jang Tae-sang should be.

The monster being created by the Japanese was a creative way of referencing the history of the experiments they conducted on Koreans during the war and its horribke impact on those individuals. However, how the monster worked within the story wasn’t always consistent. Some managed to fight off the monster and escape its attack unscathed while others were completely eviscerated by it. This was driven more by plot than logic. Same with the anthrax attacks.

The action on this show was pretty good, but what engaged me the most was the human stories of those impacted by the war and the Japanese occupation as well as those working in the rebellion in an attempt to fight back.

The implied feelings developing between the leads was not believable because they have no romantic chemistry and the development of those feelings was random. Having the ML join the rebellion due to his feelings for the FL made no sense for the previously mentioned reasons. There was more than enough going on in his life to drive his change of heart without the FL being the reason.

The production value was superb, save for the CGI of the monster which was hit or miss. The episodes were a little too long, but overall the acting was good and the show entertaining.

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Old Concept with An Interesting Twist

This wasn’t perfect, but did its job in being suspenseful and entertaining.

Right off students on a school trip are forced into a game akin to the Hunger Games. Kill or die. Thinking it was truly just a game the students played until they came to the realization that their vote meant death to a fellow classmate.

I knew this was some type of virtual reality game when the adults disappeared and were never seen again. This was confirmed when the students tried to find a way to escape but found the outside world presented the illusion of an escape when there was none.

Things that annoyed me about the show, the bullies, specifically Kyung Jun and his crew. These guys were utter assholes who despite the situation didn’t even attempt to make nice to save their own lives. In fact they were worse than ever. Thus, in reality they should’ve been the first ones voted out the building but somehow they managed to survive for most of the series. Most of the students not questioning what was going on and why. Once they realized they had to kill to survive they did it without question with only Yeon Su questioning the why behind what was happening and investigating to find the truth.

Other questions, how long had these kids been tortured in this virtual game? Was no one looking for them? Where were their families? How did they even get to the game room to be put into this virtual reality? How long did Se Eun’s parents plan to continue their revenge?

I could understand them wanting to take revenge on those who drove their daughter to suicide. However, their method was too much. Moreover, they also blamed those who weren’t aware of their daughter’s pain and punished them too, but failed to extend that punishment to themselves. They did not take into account their own ignorance about her struggle which was hypocrisy at its worst considering how they were punishing those who were just as ignorant as them about what was going on.

Though concept is not new , Thw writers did a good job keeping it entertaining and suspenseful and the acting was strong. This is not the type of series I’d rewatch, but despite its issues it was good and worth the watch.

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Curious and Creepy Horror Story

Like with most horror movies almost all the characters were stupid save for writer who was trying to finish a book and so he left what sounded like his difficult marriage to live at this creepy apartment building (not mansion) so that he could focus on his work.

The pharmacist kind of deserved her fate considering she was willing to run off with the man whom she'd been having an affair even after learning he killed his wife and kid.

The student who'd returned from abroad should've left his "friend's" apartment immediately after arriving there and seeing what he saw.

Though nicely done for the genre. The audience never gets the real story behind why the apartment building is haunted. It's said that it used to be the sight of a church, but then a dead mummy is found in one apartment chain up in what appeared to be some ritualistic killing with a large amount of money hidden in a nearby closet. Weird. Also, it seemed that strange things happened to the residence of the apartment building even when they left the building, which wasn't explained. It was also never made clear how long the property had be closed and condemned and how long ago all these incidents happened with the people who'd gone missing while living in the building.

Despite these unknowns, this had some nice vignettes and a great, yet predictable, twist in the last chapter. The "scares" weren't scary, but this did have a creep factor. Good movie. Definitely worth a rewatch if one is in the mood for horror.

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The Past Outshines What Should've Been An Intriguing Present

There seemed to be a crisis every episode with this series, especially during the present day. The historical storyline from 1500 years earlier was way more interesting than the present day story. The present day had promise until the ML became possessed, then he spent most of the series walking around with an "evil" look on his face, brooding about why he was delaying in completing his mission in killing the FL. That got old fast.

The leads had nice romantic chemistry in the historical storyline. Perhaps due to the kind of star-crossed lovers aura and thus angst that embodied their love. Strangely the present day version of them lacked the same emotion and connection.

I found myself mostly fast forwarding through the present day storyline because it just wasn't that interesting, so that I could continue the story from the past. But once the story from the past finished, circling back to where it left off in the first episode I just couldn't garner the interest to keep watching. So I stopped.

If this was only a historical drama I think it could've been really good. Would I rewatch what I did watch? No.

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Bad Sex Framed Around A Poorly Written Version of the Oedipus Complex

So the ML becomes a call boy because ...I'm not sure why. But it's revealed that he has a thing for older women, which morphs into this weird Oedipus complex implying his attraction to older women is due to his mother who died when he was 10.

The ML had no personality and no boundaries. There was no insight into his character, what was driving him, except the reveal about his mother’s death. There were no details on how that impacted him and thus was driving his decisions in the present. Nothing to indicate why he was indifferent about life and school. Why he found women “boring.” Why he would choose to be a call boy.

The call boy jobs were boring. The madam framed it as him making love to his customers, but he was not making love. He was f***** them. And he was HORRIBLE at even that. He was like a bull in a China shop, ravaging his customers, and even the woman he did know, with no care or finesse when sleeping with them. I didn’t believe for one second that he grew as a lover and learned to read a woman’s body and focus on how to give her pleasure. He always went from 0-200, with no in between, when having sex. The title of the movie was right he was a call boy, because he did not have sex like a man who knew what he was doing.

There was no depth to the story whatsoever. And even weirder was the madam, having her deaf and dumb daughter test out the call boy candidates, potential in bed, while she watched. Just weird and frankly abusive and disgusting. Oh, they gave the excuse that the daughter wanted to do this and who was the madam to stop her, but it still felt very wrong. I didn't understand why the ML suddenly fell in love with the madam and wanted to "make love" to her. They barely interacted throughout the whole movie. So him "falling for her" was not shown. I guess they needed that poorly written storyline to make the big reveal that she used to be “on call” herself and as a result caught AIDS.

Again, this movie had no depth whatsoever and overall was just bad. After a while I just started fast forwarding through all the horrible sex scenes in hopes of getting to some substance in the story. Unfortunately, there was none. This was not worth the two hours I spent watching it.

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