Should You Watch?

I gave this a try despite several negative warnings in the media. I found myself binging - unable not to watch each next episode. The story and predicament of the characters is intriguing, and the short fast paced episodes hard to resist. These high school kids make some odd choices, but given their ages within the story it's believable. It is obvious early on that given the fantastic and impossible and 'supernatural' things that are happening that this must be some sort of unreal dream scenario. All the impossible things are OK if the ending satisfactorily ties matters up. However, that's the downside - the last 15 or 20 minutes will likely leave you unsatisfied. Does all the good story telling that comes before compensate for the soft ending? I found it did and enjoyed the binge.

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Mixed Japanese Take on the Lost TV Series

Going in a potential viewer needs to be prepared for a heavy dose of Japanese cultural behaviors. On the positive side the subtitles were excellent maintaining a high quality translation throughout.

The basic story is a Japanese twist on the old TV series 'Lost' with two commuting train cars getting catapulted into the future leaving the occupants to learn to sort out their communities and how to manage to survive. The focus is on one of the cars' occupants (car#5) with the other car (#6) becoming those other people eventually getting discovered by our main characters.

My biggest problem was the writer focused on the relationships to the detriment of the story consistency. A few flaws here and there are acceptable but here even big story line points are trampled on which pulls the viewer away from the story itself and the characters' development.

Fewer background characters would have made for a better plot development. There are just too many people sitting around not contributing to the plot line growth.

Anyone who watched Lost may remember the character Hurley who weighed in at around 350 or 400 lbs for the entire six seasons! (Also the Captain on Gilligan's Island which was a comedy so maybe more forgivable.) The meager food resources the people were finding would have meant some weight loss even for the few months they were stuck in the future. And the hair and clothes would be deteriorating rapidly. It is very distracting to see clean faces and hair styles along with clothes that appear fresh from the laundry episode after episode.

There are other problems not adequately explained. These people are occupying a gone wild landscape with only a few distant buildings intact. Yet they find an intact power generating station nearby. That still works! All the buildings, roads, etc are gone with no trace, and there's still a fueled working power station???!!! The writer would have been better off contriving something with those glowing rocks and a periodically appearing wormhole than to go the route that he did.

Once the occupants of car #5, our main focus and characters, discover the wormhole they don't tell the nearby group from car #6. And then when they set things up to try and return they still say nothing to them apparently intending to just leave them behind, which they do. Not a word of guilt or conscience either before or after they leave them stuck in the future dystopian landscape!!???

It was worth the one time but not rewatching.

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Impressive Drama on Mortality, Love, and Redemption

Some TV shows can be passively watched, but others and DAYS I count among them require a more active participation to pay attention, maybe rewatch, in order to appreciate the layers of story, of meaning, offered to the viewer. In DAYS there are three main characters and three primary themes. There will be spoilers.

The main character, Tak, is a young woman who learns she has three months to live due to a terminal brain cancer. In frustration she wishes to end the world which catches the attention of Doom (aka the Devil) who pities himself immensely and uses a ‘loophole’ in the ‘rules’ governing creation to seize upon Tak’s wish to set up a contract with her to end the world which will also end himself (his goal) and bring about the end of his mother, God. However, God, who manifests as a young teen girl with a terminal heart disease, has a plan of her own.

The Devil covertly schemes, but his mother time and again goads him in her chosen directions, and it’s clear she has the upper hand with reminders such as “God always knows everything. She just pretends not to know.” Pay attention to this half a spoiler. Note from the early episodes the small clay flower pot that God is tending in her hospital room. Much later what this flower pot represents will be revealed and then the significance of its presence early on will redefine events and conversations throughout early episodes.

The first layer theme is that of the individual confronting their own mortality and the angst in not only their own end but the conflicts with friends and relatives left unresolved. In an early episode the Devil says to Tak, “All humans’ days are numbered. They only live forever until they realize it.” In the last episode Tak will repeat this exact wording back to the Devil. That most people avoid thinking about or confronting their own mortality will limit the appeal for some. The angst surrounding Tak’s end reminds me of a TV series Dead Like Me from 2003/4 but in that case the main character was a girl who died and became a grim reaper collecting souls near her family. Here Tak is contemplating her looming future death.

The second theme is that of the romantic entanglement that grows between Tak and the Devil. The Devil first takes Tak as an average human, but soon discovers she has a strength of will that he cannot break. In one of their early conflicts the Devil tells her, “That’s just what you are. The rock that happens to be closest to me when I wanted to throw one into the lake.” But God knows all so was it a coincidence that Tak was the rock who happened to be closest?

Resonating within this second theme is a sub arc involving two brothers and Tak’s ‘adoptive’ older sister who make up a love triangle. The romantic entanglements of these three contrast with the love between Tak and the Devil that gets lit and burns hot within a mere 100 days. The three humans who are ‘living forever’ dilly dally for 10 years before they resolve their entanglement and then that is accelerated in part due Tak.

The third theme is the redemption of darkness gone astray. The Devil has a love hate relationship with his mother. She goads and manipulates him into rebellious behavior. These conversations between God and the Devil are a fascinating part of the series. God shows up when Doom is absorbed in his self pity while Tak is in the hospital. God tells her son, “It’s good not to see her. It’s the right decision.” The Devil storms off in anger and God smiles and says: “A child grows up when they defy their parents. And love is lit up when it runs into hardships.”

This third theme brings to mind a Netflix TV series, Lucifer 2016/21, which also involved God (a father figure) who was estranged from his son, Lucifer, who rebelled and was consigned to Hell where he punished the damned. Among Lucifer’s powers is that he is sexually irresistible. He is also self centered and impulsive having spent much of his time fulfilling his every impulse. Lucifer rebels and leaves Hell for Los Angeles where he meets a female detective, who is the only human entirely immune to his powers. Complications ensue and he finds his redemption through his relationship with the detective, who it turns out was placed in his path via a miracle by his father in order to bring about his redemption. In DAYS there are many striking parallels as the teen God again and again is implicated in the developing relationship between Tak and her son, Doom, aka the Devil.

Some hopefully constructive observations.

The redemption arc with Doom could have been meaningfully steeper. For example a few early scenes or even one in which God says, “You made love to 10,000 women, but never loved any one of them.”

The intense love between Doom and Tak is surprising for its chasteness. Explicit sexuality isn’t necessary but at least some allusion to a bit more physical contact would have added to story texture.

Subtitles were about average. Given the potential foreign English speaking audience it is surprising that the creators don’t pay more attention to getting this aspect right. Even modest mistakes force viewers to reverse and reread. In DAYS case there was considerable confusion regarding the important distinction between would vs will / could vs can etc, some clumsy tense mistakes, and a few cases of incorrect negatives i.e. a missing negative.

The most grating annoyance was the injection of the Canadian Kevin character. Those gratuitous scenes were seriously painful to watch. The money would have been better spent hiring the Kevin actor to edit the subtitles and using a Korean character in Kevin’s role.

There were a few cases of excessive emotion expressed. For example, when the younger brother finds out his sister is terminal. I blame the director, and then this may be a cultural difference.

Fancy clothes - new change every outing - seems unlikely for a woman of her modest salary.

Oddly Doom is often shown holding cigarettes but never actually lighting and smoking them.

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Good movie that could have been much better.

Overall I liked the movie but I often found the transitions in character arcs and major plot points clumsy and difficult to follow. For example, the how of someone crossing over and the role of the 'warden' were left under explained. Still despite the flaws the good aspects including the characters and acting held my attention until the end. The Korean series 'Missing: The Other Side' seems to have inspired much of the world building in this movie but the Korean version did a much job of explaining important aspects. For example, when someone passes over the Missing series shows it happening, whereas here the viewer must pick it up from context and the presence of the warden, but his role here isn't really clarified until well into the film.

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Well worth giving a try, with a few reservations

I watched this because I had just finished Extraordinary Attorney Woo and I wanted to see Park Eun Bin outside of that extreme autistic character. And she does not disappoint. If I had not known the characters Woo and Seo were played by the same actor I would not have realized it. It is a remarkable talent that can take the audience so deeply into the character as to not see the actor. There are too many famous actors that overwhelm the character they're playing so that the audience only sees the actor.

The music and performances are well worth the time. The story and plotting are at times fragile meaning that characters' twists and motivations were not always believable and relatable. However, the acting and music carry the flow and engage the viewer. I found the first few episodes not as engaging as the later ones. At times the plot twists seemed overly complicated and manipulative. For example early on I became aware the writer wants to play with the audience as to which brother is KiHo. Once aware of that manipulation, instead of the story flowing naturally the audience becomes too self conscious that the clues obviously dropped are likely meant to be misleading.

I found the positives more than made up for the few flaws and kept me engaged through to a satisfying conclusion.

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Should you watch?

If you don't mind plot twists and character development you've seen before then this series will reliably entertain. I noticed borrowed elements from 'Goblin' and 'Doom At Your Service' to name two. The walking out of the fire scene midway through was taken from the American series 'Lucifer'.

The set up was good, but the follow through weak. For example, the main character is a demon, who it was shown must make deals periodically or perish himself. Ok, but then this was dropped and only alluded to much later. The story twists and turns don't make use of this seemingly important initial set up and constraint. What if he had had to make deals with the human present?

The first third of the episodes had more misses than hits. The balance began to shift in the middle third as we see some entertaining traction. The last third worked much better and had me binging the episodes for the next reveal. The ending seems a bit forced leaving ends loose that naturally come to mind. A big one is the female lead's father, who was not evil and made his deal out of desperation to help his wife, and yet he ends up in hell suffering eternal damnation. And the female lead expresses no concern or remorse over this inconvenient development. I was expecting something to tie this unfortunate circumstance up given all the other feel good endings we witness.

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Finish Falters

Strong opening and enough intriguing questions raised to hold you to what turns out to be an unsatisfying conclusion. The opening and first few episodes caught my curiosity, but I found myself sticking it out to the end just to find out how it would tie things up. But it didn't tie many important threads up and we don't learn what happened to the characters and in important cases the why behind their actions. I was waiting for a supernatural angle to appear given the physically impossible things occurring, but there isn't any. The makers just walk away from a reasonable finish. That last 'special' episode or epilogue was weird. The idea that a surgeon/doctor would pursue relationships with two or three high school girls was absurd and I suspect as illegal and socially unacceptable in Japan as it would be elsewhere in the world.

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Remake has all the high and low points of original

This version holds its own compared to the original meaning that the viewer will see all the original high and low points of the original story. However, the finished product has a few rough edges. Some of the support acting (or perhaps the director?) was a bit weak. On the positive side a few of the subplots were improved over the original in particular the relationship with the big bad doctor and his female student and third in the love triangle with the two leads. The Korean version didn't develop this relationship whereas the Thai shows us the potential.

Several rough edges came through which may be due to the many writers involved in the Thai version.

The lead's uncle withholds key information (that there is a demon stalking him) until suddenly he reveals a few morsels in front of the ghost girlfriend which struck me as odd. It moves the plot tension but didn't make sense to tell his nephew based on prior exposition, particularly because a few times in the same episode and before he told his shaman ally that he absolutely could not tell his nephew about this demon, and then he does...in front of a ghost he knows nothing about. It would actually have made a lot of sense to explain all about this dangerous demon much earlier.

A really rough edge occurs in an early episode when the Detective explains to his officers that he wants them to tail the doctor suspect. One officer does, and the doctor detects this, and leads the officer behind the building within a stone's throw of his clinic and parked car, and kills him. Then.....nothing. What happened to the body? Neither the Detective or any police officers note the absence of their colleague. That was just sloppy execution.

Something interesting that caught my attention was in the 10th episode at 4:30 the two leads are in a scene which was probably improvised where they are bantering over their dinner. The female lead speaks Thai followed by Japanese, and then a few English words. The difference in voice timber was striking. Her voice is very different in the three languages. I've heard this often among Japanese where both men and women will have totally different voices between English and Japanese.

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Good but shy of Great

On the positive side are the three main characters and their shared shattered backgrounds from their childhoods. Over several episodes they are brought back together and their shared pasts are unlayered through a series of satisfying reveals. The support acting was well done and other overall production values high.

On the bad side the antagonist was so powerful - as we learn through slow reveals - that we wondered how they planned to defeat him. This is the main flaw in the show - a structural problem is that the main characters and we the audience never understand the how and why the big bad can be defeated. In an early episode it's said they will exorcise him/it when they catch him/it. At times they behave like impulsive middle schoolers talking about catching the bad guy with no clear idea what they'll do with him should that happen. There are scenes where they rush towards the big bad, especially true for the taxi driver, Hwa Pyung, with absolutely no expressed plan how to get through bodyguards or other obstacles or what happens when they 'catch' him.

One common problem with media centered on exorcism is that they contain exorcism scenes in which the priest or shaman endlessly chants some holy words that fail over and over and over until they work - or not. This show has the same flaw in that we (and the main characters) never learn (until they very end) what MacGuffin - thing or rule or process - will defeat the big bad evil spirit, and in fact as the episodes progress it becomes obvious that the big bad, Park Il-Do, is seriously powerful and far stronger than we were given to believe in early episodes.

And because of this structural flaw the close had to - literally - reveal a Deus Ex Machina. Notice the prayer the priest uses at the very end in the water. He calls upon God directly, and God delivers. And the last scene where the three are reunited is as pure DEM as it gets given where we last saw Hwa-Pyung.

Despite the serious structural flaw the good (main character arcs, relationships, story arc) out weighs the bad for at least one watch through.

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Great Follow up to the Original Series

The original TV series had some pacing issues, but the characters and story set up were excellent. This movie appears to be the first of a series of self contained movie long episodes with the main characters from the original series. This movie has thrilling action with a fast pace. Baek So Jin doesn't appear until late but she is clearly the center and is defined by her actions as a new super hero. Reminds me of the Dexter character from the book series - not the TV series - who was literally possessed by a demon or evil spirit that resulted in a tense balance between good and evil. Dexter would offer up serial killers for torture and death to this demon to keep it and its influence on him in check. I look forward to seeing what they do with this demon possessed So Jin character. BTW the subtitles were horrible (e.g. she vs he) but the intended meaning is understood from the context.

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Impressive start to finish

Supernatural suspense crime thriller. I was engaged from the first episode through the last. It's not easy to sustain the tension for 12 hours but the screenwriter, Kim Eun Hee, and directors do just that. The reveals build as we follow two parallel investigations - secular police detectives and a supernatural expert - separately pursuing the 'culprit' behind a series of suspicious suicides. These two avenues collide frequently as they bump into the each other following various evidence and leads. The performance of Kim Tae Ri as the focus of the story deserves praise as exceptionally well done.

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Top notch comedy

The best thing from among many delightful aspects of this series is the dynamic comedic duo Kim Se Jeong and Seol In Ah. Whenever the scene focus is on these two they generate laughter and this was much more apparent my second time watching. This praise shouldn't be taken as criticising the performances of the other leads. This is a feel good romantic comedy that comes across as fresh and original despite treading some old cliche pathways. The two leading couples have chemistry that works together.

PS One personal irritation for situation comedies is when the situations are so badly contrived i.e. people making absurd choices and then scramble to escape. 'Business Proposal' has few like that. What makes much of the humor work is that the choices and resulting situations are usually 'reasonable' enough to be believable. That sets the stage for the comedy talents of the dynamic comedic duo, both together and when working off of their leads, to shine at their best.

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