Madhouse (2018)

It's lovely to have a unique cdrama that's not based on novels these days. The drama is split into two half, s1 and s2. s1 is two episode arc based suspense thriller wrapping with human drama as meat, s2 is less episodic and more interwoven story about superpowers + consipracy theory.

The director obviously have a lot to say and themes to explore and most of them are right up my alley! It's rare to have mental illness in dramas, and they did reasonably well in having some realistically portrayed, sometimes it might not be sympathetic for story reason, but it's still nice to create dialogues about it. Not only that, it also touch on dysfunctional family relationship, groupthink mentality, plagiarism/work stealing, sensationalised media. cult etc, all very topical issues.

There's fair amount of English in the drama, and it's fantastic Liu Chang who played the main character did decent job with it, even though he has a noticeable accent (and his character probably should have diff one or lighter Chinese one). But he spoke it with confidence, and the shorter sentences definitely flow very well. The dialogue can be noticeably translated in that it's rather stilted when the sentences are long or get technobabble-y, but the grammar and content are mostly fine and don't take me out of the scene.

I love the variety of characters who pop out throughout the drama. In s1, character drama is core of each story and with fantastic acting by all the supporting cast, it's incredibly easy to get attached to them. In s2 where there's various characters with their own motivation and factions come into play, one can end up feeling rather mixed about a character, which I mean as a compliment since humans are pretty complicated.

I love the style of the drama too. There were lovely framed scenes, interesting filter that worked with the mood of the story, nicely timed sound design to build atmosphere that was vital in s1, lovely soundtrack that complimented the story. The director made fabulous posters for the drama too.

There were lot of easter eggs at the end of episodes, early ep were nice technobabble background information, latter ep have some fantastic parody of food documentary and gov promotional video, vital and interesting tidbit about supporting character as well as additional worldbuilding information. Sprinkles of parody and homages were everywhere in the show. These small things basically cemented my love for the drama.

Please do give the drama a try if you get a chance, the first arc is more horror-based than the rest of the drama is!

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