Not recommended

I was interested in Qu Jingjing's other work after watching and enjoying Mr Bad (she was really cool and sophisticated in it, from what I have seen so far), and saw this recent movie under her profile. Now this was probably a mistake, but I'll get into why:

This is one of those films that China makes available for free on youtube (because it can't harm domestic consumption since youtube is banned), so it's pretty easy to check out. Unfortunately, that meant that a lot of the music was removed, or at least it seems like it has been removed, because the film goes silent at times (especially during action sequences), coupled with some terribly awkward layering of the voices over the now-silent film, very obviously done after the film was completed. I imagine at moments like this, action/suspense music would have been playing in the Chinese release version. For music, that makes it a 0, but I guess I'll have to put it as 1.

As for the plot, granted that I got annoyed with the audio issues (and the fact that the mouths weren't matching the sound....) and skipped a lot, it is just an anti-terrorism action movie. None of the following is a spoiler, because it's in the synopsis of the cn Douban (豆瓣) page: terrorists commit crimes and murders, terrorists invade China's 'territorial waters', terrorists plan to detonate a nuclear bomb along a fault-line so the leads must protect the people living on the coasts, etc. The terrorists in the film are foreigners, typically appearing middle-eastern, but just in general, they are foreign and speak english. The plot didn't grip me in any way, though I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed the earlier action sequences if they weren't so awkwardly silent, and the special effects were of poor quality. 1.5 stars.

To quote a reviewer on the overall quality: "小儿科级别的反恐力作，愚蠢，幼稚，肤浅，生硬，对人类审美和智商的严重侮辱。" (-Douban page for 深海危机 ).

Now, if anyone had any doubt about the purpose of this film and missed the 'territorial waters' reference in the synopsis, it ends with a dedication to the PLA for safeguarding national security. TLDR: it's a bad quality propaganda film, and I wouldn't recommend it.

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Interesting sci-fi, BUT.

I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who has never read the manga, watched the animes or played the game. Gantz isn't 'bad' but it's not great. It's pretty unique and well-made, but it doesn't really GO anywhere. IMO, the plot does not advance enough. Without spoilers, the plot is basically: be summoned, battle an enemy, people die, those who survive go back, and then are summoned, battle another enemy, etc (the process repeats 3x). I wouldn't call this a fatal flaw, though, since this might be what some people are looking for, and the sci-fi elements are pretty cool and the aliens are different from what you see in western media. I just feel like it was very repetitive and a lack of deeper character development meant that when characters were killed I wasn't particularly bothered by it. More specifically, I just finished Alice in Borderland, which properly developed characters and therefore deaths were extremely painful and gut-wrenching to watch, so by comparison Gantz fell short here IMO. Still, Gantz isn't 'bad' in this respect.

However, when it comes to the presentation of female characters, Gantz is god-awful.

The focus on the MC's perverted desires at the start & the way he treats women is uncomfortable, but that wasn't the worst part. The presentation of female characters is just the epitome of 'male-gaze'. That is the one thing in this movie that I absolutely hated, and meant it had very little re-watch value to me. Female characters in this movie only existed for the men, only really talked to or about the men, and only existed to further the character development/storylines of the men. Definitely would not pass the Mako-Mori test in any way, shape, or form haha. It's a pity that a promising sci-fi movie (/movie series) couldn't develop the characters properly. If they were going to make the presentation of female characters so offensively bad they might as well have just made it a male-only cast. If you can get over that and are fine with female characters being mostly just delicate and tearful and/or only existing to advance the plotlines of the male main characters (eg. profess their love for them, rely on them, save them, do/say X to improve their self-worth), then I would say give it a go. It's not great but it's interesting sci-fi

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Big budget kdrama with an identity crisis and terrible soundtrack

Here's the thing. The webtoon is REALLY good, so this had a lot to live up to. I thought the casting was good for what they were going for, and the actors performed really well. I was really happy with changes they made too - eg. adding the firefighter character, changing characters' personalities, etc. Naturally, the source material for the story was also good. The special effects were excellent for a kdrama.

Story, cast and acting: 8.5.

However, the music/OST/soundtrack choices single-handedly ruined this for me. You could not pay me to rewatch this. I do not even understand WHY these choices were made. It was like self-sabotage. Why would you do this to an amazing drama based on a cult classic webtoon?! It was literally a guaranteed success. How did you mess this up???? Subjectively, I like the songs. Hell, I have listened to these songs myself. But objectively? The soundtrack is not at all suitable for Sweet Home. It's literal 'hypebeast' / clubbing / gaming montage music.

They repeatedly used Warriors by Imagine Dragons in almost every episode.
Fighting a terrifying monster? Warriors.
Nearly dying? Warriors.
Walking through the corridors in fear? Warriors.
Tragic death of a beloved character (that REALLY needed a sad OST)? Warriors!

Warriors, warriors, warriors. I am sick of a song I used to like now. It just wasn't suitable, but they used it to death probably because the license cost an extortionate amount. It just messed up the atmosphere and vibe of the whole show. I.e. You should be feeling sad - someone just died brutally - but you're struggling to feel anything about it because 'AS A CHILDDD you would wait! And WATCH FROM FAR AWAYYYY... !' hype League battle music is blasting in your ears during their death scene. The music choices just cheapened the whole show, which is genuinely unfortunate given how much effort was otherwise put into this. Never before have I had such respect for OST/music choices in shows and movies. I didn't realise it had such a huge effect until now. And this isn't just me - it's such a hugely common criticism on Korean and English discussion boards for this kdrama (see below, credit in brackets). WHY did they do this???!?!?!

EN examples: "Can't wait to laugh my ass off at a scene that's meant to make me sad", "Editor must be a huge league of legends fan, which is where this song should have stayed", "The song made me laugh at every scene they had such good graphics but the music f!cked the whole action scene" (-r*ddit)
KR examples: "...어울리지 않고 몰입을 떨어뜨린다..." (-데일리안), "하아... #이매진드래곤스 의 #워리어스 나올때마다 폭소터졌고 손가락 없어지는줄... 개민망." (-필쏘굿).

This drama had the potential to be terrifying and disturbing and deeply emotional but it just sort of fell flat. Like it's GOOD (bar the song choices, please stop, never do this again), but it seemed to suffer an identity crisis. The show didn't focus as much on the monsters. I'm not sure if that was to save on special effects budget or what, but it was a missed opportunity IMO and consequently led to a sort of slice-of-life vibe with too much comedy, before suddenly switching things up in the last two episodes.

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