Black Out (2024)

Edge of Your Seat Suspense.. Thriller That Keeps You Hooked..

Undeniably the best thriller drama of 2024..

The drama boasts top notch production quality and excellent cinematography.. Though the beginning can be frustrating.. As the ML is gaslighted into a confession and his family suffers manipulation and helplessness.. It effectively sets the stage for a gripping and intense thriller..

It gets even more frustrating.. How they mistreat the ML's mother and how they try to protect the person who tried to Kill her.. How helpless the ML is.. Yeah it gets on your nerves..

The story progresses too slow at the beginning.. But that makes the eventual twists even more impactful and makes it even more interesting.. A proper thriller that slowly unravels and pulls you deeper into its web of suspense with each twist and turn... That's how it is.. I am glad I waited to binge watch it.. Because there’s no way I could have handled waiting a week between episodes.. Watching the ML spend more time in the ER than his house after getting out of prison was a bit much..

Besides the ML and SML and Ha Seol.. The rest of the characters were truly awful.. Most weren’t just bad they were outright evil.. Manipulating and feasting on others pain.. Even the detective who forced the ML’s confession was being gaslighted by the chief.. It’s a story packed with evil people.. I mean nobody felt a hint of remorse of regret for what they did..

Initially, I felt bad for Choi Na Gyeom. She stood by the ML for 10 years, visiting him in prison when even his mother didn’t. That devotion was admirable. That was quite something.. But how he kept pushing her away.. Ignoring her.. That felt bad.. But well.. She turned out to be a psychopath.. A total psychopath.. But Go Bo Gyeol nailed her role..


Around episode six the story starts coming together... Everything starts to make sense and just when you think you’ve figured it out.. Another twist drops and then another.. It keeps you hooked till the very end.

There were a few flaws though.. Like the unrealistically clear footage from a foldable keypad mobile phone.. Seriously.. how was it not grainy??

Anyhow.. Black Out delivered a satisfying conclusion.. Though I would have loved to see the ML’s friends suffer more for their actions.. They lost what they valued most and ended up in jail but they deserved even worse.. They deserved more pain.. More and more and more pain..

For the first time in a long time.. I was fully immersed in a Korean drama.. It was one hell of a rollercoaster ride..

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Multi-layered plot, strong acting & perfectly tailored with minimalist aesthetic, up to the OST

Complete memory gap after too much alcohol - a wonderfully promising step stone for a gripping, solid, emotionally complex (psychological) crime thriller in the high-end segment. "Black Out - Snow White Must Die" is the multi-layered dramaturgical documentation of the protagonist's desperate urge to remember that particular night, that he´s bond to since then.

Life with such a drastic memory gap may be difficult enough, yet even more difficult to digest could become what emerges while looking behind shiny facades. "Black Out" is, so to speak, a study about human chasm that lurk and seduce even behind the cleanest of vestments. And then it is also a solid, multi-layered, gripping crime thriller in KDrama format. Just great.

It is based on the 4th volume of the Bodenstein-Kirchhoff series by the German writer Nele Neuhaus from 2010: “Snow White Must Die”. The setting is not the Taunus, but an inconspicuous town in the wider area around Seoul. The scenario works just as well there.

Strong acting and perfectly tailored with minimalist aesthetic, right up to the OST.

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