OhMahaZeeya

I have always been a sucker for weird dynamics. Give me something unconventional, something a little messed up, and I’m there. I was even into ‘The Witch’ when no one else liked it. Need to get a psych evaluation myself at this point.

So Siren’s Kiss had me from the beginning. Enemies → stalking → borderline obsession → fascination → attraction → affection → maybe love. Give me that. I LOVE it.

And the first half? Everything I wanted.
I was so into this drama that I was staying up until morning watching it. The first half had such a great pace. It kept moving, kept revealing just enough to make you curious, and every answer seemed to lead to another question. Multiple people dying, Seol-Ah somehow being connected to all of them, the increasingly strange relationship between the leads. I was sat. I needed to know how this was going to unravel.

And then they had to mess it up. The second half was such a huge letdown because it completely lost the dynamic that made the show interesting in the first place. The pace slowed down, the mystery became less compelling, and the sense of curiosity that had kept me glued to the screen just disappeared.
And that plastic surgery reveal for the ex? EWW. Like, eww. That belonged in an early 2000s drama. I was genuinely offended.
Then we got all the auction house workplace-conflict nonsense, which I could not have cared less about. Every time the drama went back to the workplace, I was basically sitting there like: Can we please go back to the weird obsessed people?

Because the actual couple was so good.
Their visuals matched perfectly, and Wi Ha-joon looked dashing as usual. He actually reminded me a little of his character in ‘Little Women’. And during the emotional scenes, I couldn't even fully immerse myself because half my brain was just going:
Why does this man look so pretty crying?

Park Min-young is just the queen she is. She is one of the very few actresses where I will automatically sit through a show simply because she’s in it. She gave Seol-Ah the emotional complexity the character needed, so I was never going to complain about watching her, even when the drama started losing its way.

But the chemistry between these two?
I was screaming KISS every two minutes whenever they came within five feet of each other. Like, please. Snog against the nearest wall. Do SOMETHING.
Having two insanely attractive people with that kind of weird pull between them and then not utilising it properly should be a crime.
And the drama barely explored it.

That is probably my biggest frustration with the romance. The relationship didn't actually develop properly. It just... settled.
It went from one stage to the next without letting us experience the process in between. I wanted the distrust to slowly turn into fascination. Fascination into attachment. Attachment into something neither of them could quite escape.
They managed perfectly well until attachment. But they couldn’t convincingly make that final jump into love. Instead, the drama basically went: okay, they're together now. And WHAT A WASTE.

Because there were glimpses of exactly what this relationship could have been.

That scene in the art storage where she leans in and he turns his face away because he thinks she’s going to kiss him? HOT.
That scene where she’s about to throw herself off the mountain and he pulls her back? UHHHH.
Him watching her from the apartment opposite hers without her knowing? UFFFF.
I wanted more of that.

And nothing makes me sadder than wasted potential. I don't give a rat’s ass about terrible shows. If a show is terrible, whatever. I complain and move on.
But a show that gives me a genuinely interesting premise and then fails to execute any of it properly?
That breaks my heart. This drama joins the graveyard of kdramas that could have been something incredible.

Also, I was so happy to see Lee Elijah back on screen after so long. And then she had to die within half an hour of the show starting. Shoot me already.

There was also that storyline about Seol-Ah being sexually assaulted by her psychiatrist that they introduced and then basically never addressed again. And somehow, the framing later made it feel more like a relationship than what it actually was: assault.
That was just weird. And not the fun kind of weird that I signed up for.

As for the mystery, it was obvious to me from the very beginning that the friend was the killer. And honestly? I’m glad they kept it that way.
He was the only one who really had enough motive, and the drama had already established that weird, obsessive, almost worshipping dynamic he had with her. So the reveal made sense.

The only other possibility I would have been satisfied with was Seol-Ah herself being the killer. And part of me really wishes they had gone there.
Imagine if the female lead had actually been the murderer. Or if she had been someone deeply manipulative who had been controlling and orchestrating everything from the beginning.
That could have been EVERYTHING.

And no, Siren’s Kiss was not a terrible show. It had an interesting premise, fascinating characters, complicated relationships, and a romance that almost got everything right. It had so many elements that made it easy to get invested in the story and its characters. There was a lot to enjoy here, and I think that’s what I’ll take away from this drama.

Siren’s Kiss could have easily ended up as one of my all time favourite kdramas. It had everything I look for in a drama. Shame it didn’t quite become the show it promised to be.