Mysterious Summer (2014)

It's hard to review each individual story since there are total of fifteen of them, and if I went through all it would be ridiculous. So I'm going to give an overall review of the basics, and just tell you that if you like creepy stuff, this is for you. If you like the Twilight Zone, this is definitely for you.

Each episode tells a different story of different people living in Beijing, from romance to horror to supernatural to just getting chills down your spine. It's skin-tingling and you want to look away, but for some reason I kept clicking "next episode" just to see how the writers and directors and wonderful actors would make my skin crawl again.

Each set of actors did extremely well, from musicians to psychopaths to people who have been consumed with greed, fear, or the thirst for knowledge. Since we only spend about 25-30 minutes with each story, it's hard to establish the depth of each character but Mysterious Summer somehow manages to go into what has caused each protagonist to do what they did. The antagonists are left purposefully ambiguous, to increase the mysteriousness and overall creepiness of the more horror/supernatural genres.

Of course, some stories are better than others, but a bad episode or two doesn't detract from the overall quality of the show.

And of course, each episode came with it's own music, which upped the ante or made me peek through my fingers waiting for something to jump out. It was thrilling.

Overall, a good watch if you're looking for a strange mix of psychological, romance, horror, supernatural, and clever acting (Furukawa Yuki is in it... who doesn't love that guy?)

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