Elias
Belgium
Thoroughly dissapointing
Hear me out.
If I watched this show 4 or 5 years ago I would be impressed and would've probably given it a 9 or something. After all, "serious" shows with a dark undertone are somewhat rare in the kdrama landscape yet they're my absolute favorite thing to watch. Shows like Stranger and Signal tick all my boxes: Serious, investigative, no random forced love tropes, some subtle humor between the characters at times without ruining the seriousness, etc etc. Through the Darkness follows this pattern, so I should adore this show right? Right?
Well, here's where my problems with it come in. This show is essentially a way, way worse Mindhunter. Where Mindhunter is one of the best shows ever made, masterfully painting real world killers on your screen, showing how the earliest forms of profiling took form, how the agents came to certain conclusion, Through the Darkness also attempts to do this exact formula, and misses the mark on literally all of these points.
The killers are just your typical edgy skinny dudes who are angry and evil, the start of profiling in Korea apparently boils down to "I know you're smart, here's an American book, let's catch baddies", and the way the "genius" profiler comes to conclusions during cases in this show is just straight up laughable cause he always just magically solves the case cause he's just so smart.
I tried loving this, I really did. The first couple episodes I thought this was on track to be my next big kdrama love, but it then rapidly dawned on me that this was just laughable. I know comparing it to a show like Mindhunter which has a budget so big that even Netflix didn't wanna invest in it anymore, and a genius director like Fincher is maybe a bit harsh, but while watching this show it's clear how much inspiration they took from it, yet executed things you don't even need a huge budget for so annoyingly bad, that I just can't recommend this show.
If you like darker kdramas I guess you could give it a shot and see for yourself, the vast majority of other reviewers did seem to like it, but I will take the liberty to say that the average reviewer on this website, me 3+ years ago included, rates mediocre shows way too high compared to other websites.
5/10, dropped after 7 and a half episodes cause I just can't be bothered spending my free time on this any longer.
If I watched this show 4 or 5 years ago I would be impressed and would've probably given it a 9 or something. After all, "serious" shows with a dark undertone are somewhat rare in the kdrama landscape yet they're my absolute favorite thing to watch. Shows like Stranger and Signal tick all my boxes: Serious, investigative, no random forced love tropes, some subtle humor between the characters at times without ruining the seriousness, etc etc. Through the Darkness follows this pattern, so I should adore this show right? Right?
Well, here's where my problems with it come in. This show is essentially a way, way worse Mindhunter. Where Mindhunter is one of the best shows ever made, masterfully painting real world killers on your screen, showing how the earliest forms of profiling took form, how the agents came to certain conclusion, Through the Darkness also attempts to do this exact formula, and misses the mark on literally all of these points.
The killers are just your typical edgy skinny dudes who are angry and evil, the start of profiling in Korea apparently boils down to "I know you're smart, here's an American book, let's catch baddies", and the way the "genius" profiler comes to conclusions during cases in this show is just straight up laughable cause he always just magically solves the case cause he's just so smart.
I tried loving this, I really did. The first couple episodes I thought this was on track to be my next big kdrama love, but it then rapidly dawned on me that this was just laughable. I know comparing it to a show like Mindhunter which has a budget so big that even Netflix didn't wanna invest in it anymore, and a genius director like Fincher is maybe a bit harsh, but while watching this show it's clear how much inspiration they took from it, yet executed things you don't even need a huge budget for so annoyingly bad, that I just can't recommend this show.
If you like darker kdramas I guess you could give it a shot and see for yourself, the vast majority of other reviewers did seem to like it, but I will take the liberty to say that the average reviewer on this website, me 3+ years ago included, rates mediocre shows way too high compared to other websites.
5/10, dropped after 7 and a half episodes cause I just can't be bothered spending my free time on this any longer.
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