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The Journey Across the Night chinese drama review
Completed
The Journey Across the Night
3 people found this review helpful
by Enigma05
Oct 30, 2023
26 of 26 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 7.5
Story 6.5
Acting/Cast 8.5
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 6.5
This review may contain spoilers

Psychological Thriller with Incorrect Diagnoses

Picked this randomly as it looked like a different role for Joseph to take on and though it does need a second season, I understand why it didn't do well over there back in 2020. Not sure why it has the horror tag as other then a few jump scares, there was nothing scary about it. It's a psychological thriller but with a very wrong diagnostic for the lead.

Premise is that the lead may hereditarily inherit schizophrenia at age 24 like his mother and brother did but they never really explored what the disease actually is or what the symptoms are. ML did have a mental disorder but it wasn't schizophrenia, it was multiple personality disorder or MPD which has completely different symptoms then schizophrenia and isn't known to be a hereditary disease but one that is caused due to childhood trauma. Instead of focusing on this main topic and really probing it deeply, the series focused on the ML, his idiotic love interest, and best friend who also was acted out way too over dramatically solving mysteries like a bunch of detectives all over Hong Kong. The HK scene was nice to see.

I have to give Joseph or LJ a hand for turning into essentially Eric Draven in the last episode when he finally learned the truth about the professor he thought was there to help him was actually trying to get him to have a psychotic break. The second professor finally telling him the truth and that switch to the alternative personality which was foreshadowed since episode 1 with the half eaten green apple, either at the end or somewhere in each episode.

Other than the ML, the doctor assistant, and a character nicknamed Sharp were done well. I'll give some credit to the professor villain and best friend for at least always being there. I can't say any of the other regular characters were necessary. Ramming romance in there was awkward and extremely unnecessary. Not to mention the love interest character was very cringey and childish; she matured only briefly when going through her own crisis. Lots of plot holes like how did LJ learn to understand Cantonese in just 2 months?

Reason I gave this a higher score is essentially because of how much I loved Dark LJ wailing on the professor and his office and how they dedicated an entire episode to Sharp's passing. I was very angry with FL for running to change the stupid lightbulb leaving Sharp to essentially die alone in that hospital bed. Was that light bulb more important than his final moments? Maybe it was her denial but it was poorly executed. Wish they had given an entire episode to Dark LJ instead of the last 15 minutes.

Would I recommend it? As an in between series maybe and Joseph really did well in acting here as well as the actor who played Sharp. They were my favorites.
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