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"Can you still hear the cry of that deer?"
Because of my love for Shin Ha Kyun I jumped into this drama right after the airing of the first episode. I just had to watch this so badly, even if it wouldn’t be a good production. But really, what else is there to say about Beyond Evil other than it’s the best drama of 2021 for now.The direction is so cinematically poetic, dark, deep, metaphoric.
The story is very well written and kept me on the edge of my seat. Nothing was forced, every episode made sense.
Some people might complain about the music, because it doesn't get every person into a serious mood, but for me it was so powerful it haunts me to this day.
The acting! Oh, the acting is beyond good... Shin Ha Kyun had definitely shown us the creepiest smile with the saddest eyes, so much pain hidden inside. And what’s even more amazing, Yeo Jin Goo wasn’t overshadowed by this veteran actor who always steals all of the attention. He also showed us marvelous emotional performance (especially with his heartbreaking gaze in a few scenes). AND THE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN THOSE TWO. I really don’t know how to say this, but it’s just something we probably won’t see anytime soon in the upcoming dramas. They played so extremely well together that it’s a crime to miss it.
And let’s not forget about the rest of the actors… even they were so immensely great! (Choi Dae Hoon especially resonated with me) It’s scary how I don’t have anything to complain about…
It’s just beyond good. I loved every second of it. This show is epic.
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Great acting and characters
The acting of each character is fantastic, which is so necessary when we have such layered and deep characters. I really liked the "whodunnit" style of drama where each character took their turn being a little specific before we delved into their actual stories.Ultimately though, I feel like this just didn't really hook me? While I highly enjoyed the unique ways in which our main characters responded to conflicts and clues, I felt like the case itself wasn't all that interesting, and on a note of more personal taste, I think I just prefer stories that are faster paced.
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Beyond your expectations.
Wow. Do you ever watch something so good that it puts you in a daze and takes over your mind entirely? Well, Beyond Evil is perfectly that. There are so many things about this drama that were a hit that I don’t think I will be able to cover it in this review. Most of the things are observations and emotions that you feel with each passing episode. How can every episode manage to be superior than the previous one? They seemed to have done it in this!One of the best things about this drama is the acting — every actor/actress has given it their best. And Shin Ha Kyun? What an amazing actor. So worthy of the Baeksang he won! And Yeo Jin Goo, despite his young age manages to give back to back hits and bring characters alive like no one else done. Considering his offline personality, he has hit Han Joo Won’s portrayal out of the part. Apart from the leads, the supporting characters have done an incredible job as well. All this wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the well written script — if the characters weren’t layered and realistic.
Plot wise, this is an absolute thriller. From the first episode we are drawn in, given details and made to suspect almost every single person in Manyang. One thing I absolutely love was how the plot was laid down so well and wasn’t dragged. When something is revealed, it is acted upon! It’s fun to watch this if you are analysing and theorising on the motives and wondering about the plot. Perhaps this experience has made it more memorable for me.
Music wise the drama manages to bring out all the right emotions. The way each scene has been filmed — such brilliant camerawork.
I’m in awe of everything about this show and looking forward to more projects from the people involved in the making and acting. Beyond Evil is an experience that will remain a beautiful heartbreaking part of you. One which you’ll want to go back to watching while knowing all you do. Please don’t disregard this drama for the hype, it is worthy of all the praise it has received.
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This review may contain spoilers
Overrated
This is a decent drama. Starts off good but drags till the end.The script is too thin and relies on editing to make things confusing. It keeps repeating unequal fragments of information to create pseudo-reversals. The layout is too small and there are too many characters, all concentrated around a police station.
It had many opportunities to be better but it doesn't get there.
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WORK OF ART!!!!!!
Beyond Evil is an absolute masterpiece. The suspense, the plot, the characters, the setting, everything about this drama is nothing short of a PERFECT MYSTERY THRILLER. Every episode will keep you on the edge of your seat suspecting everyone and no one at the same time. Heck you CANT EVEN TRUST THE MAIN LEADS yet alone the suspicious group of people surrounding themThe underrated thing about this drama is the tension and TSUNDERE BROMANCE the 2 leads have. They are both geniuses and crackheads at the same time. I love how important the supporting characters are to the story and how uniquely different everyone are contrasting one another.
GIVE THIS DRAMA A SHOT AND YOU WILL BE ADDICTED!!!!
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This review may contain spoilers
Rice car
I feel like this drama is basically a Rice car. On the surface it looks amazing. The cast is full of good looking people, and the two male leads absolutely nail their roles. Did Shin Ha-kyun deserve the actor of the year award from the Baeksang Awards? Probably. Did the show deserve the best script? Absolutely not.This drama suffers from trying to be greater than it is. In doing so, it tries to add suspense and wonderment through (if I actually counted) probably around 50 different plot twists. I'm all up for plot twists, but they weren't meaningful in any way. Just a bunch of cheap suspense tricks. E.G. You see X as following victim at 8:10 so he must be the killer. Surprise we now know that at 8:15 X actually left the victim and the at 8:16 Y was the last person to be wit the victim. So on and so forth for almost the entire series. I don't really know why people claim that they were at the edge of their seats from suspense, but to me this is not suspense. It's the equivalent to cheap scares in horror movies. Just like cheap scares don't count towards making a scary movie scary, these cheap twists don't create actual suspense and certainly don't qualify as good writing.
People also praise the character development in the show, but I am still wondering what they are talking about. Sure we are all cheering for the two male leads to get along and at the end they finally do, but I basically just revealed the entire series of events that lead to that development with, "they finally do." LDS is dead set on finding the culprit for his sister's death the entire series and continues to hide from his friends what he's doing until he's doesn't and until he's not. We never see the progression of his anger slower subsiding, realizing that there is more to life than being stuck on his sister's murder for over 20 years, or that he should share that burden with his friends and family. The only semblance of development we get from LDS is his attachment to HJW which can be summed up over the prison scene where he says, "we protect our own," HJW multiple random barge ins and suspecting LDS, a bowl of soup that LDS treats HJW to, and the last episode where they smile at each other. HJW's development isn't much better, he's pretty much dead inside until he feels sorry about his father's crimes and then again the smiling scene before the end credits.
Lets talk about the council woman's unconvincing confession. She confessed because her son said he'd kill himself if it turns out to be true that she killed chief Nam and KJM. But she didn't and her confession has no bearing on that. There was no evidence that she did killed anyone and it was never shown that her acquittal banked on such a confession. Heck it didn't even show that she was ever arrested or charged. A huge leap in logic to reach the outcome we got. Plot convenience is not good story writing.
Now lets talk about the crucial moment where HJW learns of his father's crimes and convinces LDS to not take things into this own hands. He promises to go to hell to bring his father down by gaining his trust. He makes this promise knowing that the recording he has would be inadmissible in court. Not only does HJW not go to hell, he didn't even go to jail. He did absolutely nothing Beyond Evil worthy to go to "Hell." In fact, his father goes to jail because the Council Woman's plot convenience "confession" ( her word against theirs) magically makes the recordings admissible in court? Yea, sorry that's now how that works. And what exactly did gaining his father's trust do to bring him towards arresting his father? Absolutely nothing. Just some more showboating that make the audience go "OMG," with no actual substance. Just like the cheap plot twists exhibited throughout the series. What was the point of HJW saying he'd gain his father's trust if there wasn't actually going to be any follow up on that? Just more rice.
This show did not deserve best Screenplay of the year. Not even close.
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That said, as much as I'm no stranger to these kinds of genres I have to say that this drama can be pretty dark, heavy and intense. In which it might get a bit taxing to watch as almost every character in this drama seems suspicious and makes you wary about everyone. And the way Lee Dongsik kept acting very suspicious at times can be pretty exhausting to watch as one alternates from wanting to believe he was innocent or guilty, and it gets worse when almost every character in this drama behaved in similar ways. You can't help feeling like you're being gaslighted to believe anything you're being told and later get fooled over and over, throughout the drama by almost every key character. It gets pretty tiring if you're the kind who easily becomes engrossed in the plotline and is treated with constant gaslighting and manipulations from the characters.
On the bright side, it made the plot very unpredictable yet on another, it makes one question whether or not you should continue watching the drama as the main character tried too hard to act as the ultimate villain, just because they've become quite disillusioned with how the law works. It only really gets better or tolerable halfway towards the end, partially because the truth starts to finally get unravelled and the main characters start to become much more honest with each other, and we realised how some of the earlier behaviours had just been a false facade/
Overall, it was a good story though you do need to have quite a bit of patience to get through the first half of the drama before being able to properly appreciate the mystery and storyline.
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The best thriller of the year.
One of the best dramas in the world.Perfect.
The actors are great actors.
I loved since ep1 i couldnt wait for the next episodes
Love love love
I hate when I am between episodes 6 to 14 of any show. Because I can't wait for the two last episodes, because I know all the waiting, waiting, guessing.... It drives me over the rails!
But when it comes I hate because when is over I will miss, because I may not find anything as good.
I know your feelings.
It was perfect crime thriller, it had everything corruption, serial killers, love, abuse (Park's mother she abuses him, by castrating his maturity), devotion, betraying, spirituality, friendship, good looking people, and showed a lot of Korean culture. Brilliance
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A rare masterpiece in psychological thriller genre.
When you watch a psychological thriller there are certain things you expect. There'll be one killer at least, it will be full of plot twists, focused on characters' psyche and the killer's grand reveal in the last ep. And that's what I expected from BE but boy did it prove me wrong.When I think of BE the immediate things that come to my mind are trust and family. BE breaks and constructs many layers of this concept while keeping the plot moving.
What does Beyond Evil mean? I think Dong shik answers it for us when Ji hwa confronts him about his lies. He tells her what she already knows that there existed no law that could judge the sinners and bring justice to the victims. Law is written by man and conducted by the ones who studied it. Humans are inherently flawed because we are social beings, we rely on a community and so everything is subjective.
But evil wasn't created by man. It was born through life but birthed out of nothingness and co-existed with the good because there is no good without evil and no evil without good. So when our law proves useless it should be the "creator" who rules.
See the killer is revealed fairly early in the drama and the bad guys are pretty much known, the intricacy of BE lies in how the characters react when the killer is right in front of them.
Many times both Dong shik and Ju won are faced with a decision, to kill or not to. They are handed that power but the inherent good in him fights back the urge.
How can a person keep taking lives? How is it that immense guilt and fear don't drown them? Evil can't be controlled by humans, hence it is beyond human comprehension. It is simply beyond evil.
At least that's what BE told me, I wonder what it will tell you. You just have to watch it for yourself then. :')
(PS: One of the best OST ever. There is something truly special in pairing strong, intense scenes with an acoustic guitar. The music fills you with that anticipation and the acting brings in the dread. Spectacular.)
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A thriller that didn't feels like a thriller
I read the reviews before watching this and i was expecting a masterpiece but this wasn't even close to be one.The first part of the drama wasn't that bad but the second part was so slow, predictable and it gets boring. It has very little suspense, we could discover and imagine what happened already in the first episodes and for the remaining 6 episodes we were basically waiting for them to discover and arrest the villains, it didn't feels like a thriller.
Dongshik's character's was good, i loved that he was unpredictable and creepy sometimes.
Jungje was my favorite and he was the most interesting character, you will probably hate him at first but trust me you will root for him in the end.
Jihoon was so cute and lovely, i wished they could 've write him as a more interesting character to know better in the second part of the drama but at least he was a breath of fresh air during the boring and unnecessary long episodes.
I liked Jaeyi, she was pretty and caring but her character wasn't that special for me, especially the unnecessary interaction with Joo Won? I don't know how to explain this but they made it look like there might be something between them, i'm not a fan of romance in crime drama but maybe it would've made things less slow and boring in this case.
Special mention to Changjin that was the only villain that caught a little bit of my attention.
I couldn't see the big family they were bragging about, they didn't look like they cared for each other at all.
Same for the bromance i had high expectations for it but the main leads kept pointing fingers at each other and arguing for basically 15 episodes with some little glimpses of affection in the last one.
The city was deserted and it was really weird and the others cops have been very forgettable for me.
The ost was good same for the acting but i really can't understand all the people saying it was a masterpiece.
The plot was weak, it was predictable and didn't have suspense, the villains weren't that good (usually they are my favorites), one of the main lead was annoying and had a little character development only in the very last episodes. It should have had no more than 10 episodes in my opinion.
If you want a good dark, psychological and super intriguing thriller that keeps you on the edge then this is not for you.
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Worth Your While!
This drama is not light, funny, or fluffy, even though it had a few amusing scenes for comic relief.However, if this is your type of genre, then you will love every single moment of this rollercoaster!
SHK did an exceptional job in this drama and really turned me into a fan. His best work yet, in my opinion.
I was a little confused with YJG's character in the beginning because he wasn't contributing to the plot at all, but I now understand why the writers did that. You have to let it marinate before you smoke it!
The acting was amazing, the plot was thick and full of twists, and the OSTs complimented the scenes perfectly.
Nicely done overall, I recommend this 100%!
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