Avi

The story is decent. The acting is good but suffers under the editing and setting design, which is at short drama level. Some of the directing even positions the characters differently after every cut. It just makes it all really fake.

The production is so bad that I am struggling to make it through episode 3.

Oh my god, so it sneak aired after all.

It's surprisingly good. I didn't even realize the episodes are closer to 20 minutes than the state 30 minutes here. The first few scenes are overly dramatic but then the production team calms down a bit (while the leads don't, lol). The pacing doesn't seem too bad for a show of its length. (Just finished episode 4.)

I felt it was no horror at all and more like a supernatural suspense story. But it depends on how much you're affected by the special effects. The spirits seemed more morbid to me than horrifying.

I can see how that would break the immersion somewhat. Would be great if her agency or the production team can give her a good dialect coach for her next sageuk or season 2 .

Haha, yeah. Thanks. Auto-correct.

She did well portraying Saeng-gang. The princess is a nervous character given the conflicting things that happened to her. Roh Yoon Seo brought her internal conflict to life well. She's so constraint and then bursts into action when it all becomes too much.

What am I watching at this point. This should have been a really interesting tragic romance. Instead every plot point from the romance to the mystery is so half-baked. Things just happen. The only thing slightly thought out is the parents' beef.

It's more that the King just blamed it on spirits again. Prince Inha was already moving again when the King stood over him. So it can be assumed the King used non-lethal poison on him and when noticing he was recovering, send him out of the palace to prove Prince Inha really can't stand the palace energies. That was already the scheme the first time Prince Inha entered the palace during the Queen Dowager's birthday, and it explains why the King temporarily installed him as the Crown Prince. It was part of the plan to get rid of him.

I get why the Stranger Things comparisons are coming easily but the World of Gwi reminds me a lot more of Silent Hill's Otherworld than the Upside Down. Maybe because the leads bleed so much, lol. Overall, the fights in the World of Gwi have a bit of a videogame vibe too.

Her only target was the queen dowager. The queen dowager mentions that the oppressive feeling on her palace is gone so the pond spirit must be gone too. It seems the most favored court lady essentially cursed the queen dowager's family line specifically but there is no family line to cut off because the queen dowager never had a child (that's the very reason she gives for killing the court lady while under the influence of the snake). So, even the brothers the now King killed where from other consorts and concubines, but because they are all the queen dowager's children culturally/heavenly, nobody questions them dying. Then the crown prince decides to curse his father as he dies with those same words and he is already more murderous and spiritually stronger than the court lady ever was, so his resentment takes root immediately.

I thought Saeng-Gang's wound by the pond spirit reacting when the crown prince got angry would have been a nice touch to show a connection between the curses but that probably wasn't meant that way. It was just to show the damage to her spirit increased the danger of her brother possessing her.

When Gu-Cheon flies off into that yellowish light after defeating the crown prince and saying something akin to "I'm an ak-gwi already anyway, not point in serving a gwi-mae", I took that as him deciding to take on the gwi-mae in a fight and it predictably not working given the chain remains.

The Shaman had a spell to figure out that Gu-Cheon was hiding beneath the Buddha statue. I'm guessing he used that spell to find the pond spot. Given he wanted the crown prince as his new presiding deity, he would have known Saeng-Gang is confronting him, not Gu-Cheon. The pond is also rather infamous. The most favored lady died there and one of the princes. Plus it's the only big body of water in the palace. Considering how often the leads use it without hiding their intentions, the queen dowager's people might also just know about it by then.

This was such a cool thriller! I was expecting a more dramatic ending, but it's so sequel coded that they just must give us more Gu Cheon and Saeng Gang. 🙏

I thought this would have more of a The Ingenious One dynamic between ML and FL but the FL is really underutilized. And then she only appears more because ML's logic has left the chat.

Loved her as Li Zhen. I hope there'll be more historical storytelling like this with female leads.

> it feel as though the cast members are reenacting real crimes

Yikes.

At this point (EP 11) they can't make me hate the Eagle King. He's just Qin's answer to Wuyi.

Love that Xie Jia Yu's mom is staying around and has her own story.

Episode five was heartbreaking after an already shocking episode four. It's so good to see Xie Jia Yu react to the horror that is happening around her appropriately instead of keeping her stuck in one place of character development for way too long like some other FLs.