WingedBean

I think the start of this was great. The idea feels different. While it does remind you of previous Netflix shows in the supernatural/horror realm, the idea is different enough to stand out on its own.

What I Liked/Enjoyed
🧸👻The Ggeomeoksali - Regardless of differing opinions on the story itself, I think we can all agree that the Ggeomeoksali was the MVP of this entire show. I saw someone refer to it as a Joseon labubu, and I laugh every time I remember that. I missed him when he disappeared in the latter episodes

🧸👻Gu Cheon as a character - I think most stories would portray someone with his backstory as brooding and depressed. I like that he wasn't that. While he clearly has his burdens to carry, he is actually quite funny. He's rude, dismissive, lazy, and complains about just about everything. He'll do what needs to be done, but you will sure as all heck hear him complaining about it throughout. His attitude brings in an unexpected comedy to this story

🧸👻Saeng Gang - While I do feel like the story could have used her and her abilities (both archery and shamanic powers) better, I feel like she was a decent female character. They didn't write her perfectly, but they didn't make her a constant liability to the ML. She could hold her own, and I love that.

I've seen some say that she was a bitch, I think that, like Gu Cheon, she had a chip on her shoulder. She was guarded and angry, all with good reason. Despite dressing like a court maid, she was also a noble and a princess. Given the time period, initially, she acted in the same way most noble ladies did towards commoners. She also obviously changes for the better later. We shouldn't ignore that

🧸👻The relationship btwn Saeng Gang and Gu Cheon - I quite enjoyed their banter, and they generally worked quite well together. The story did seem to subtly push a blooming romance between them, though. Not sure how I quite feel about that, but I'm leaning towards not being a fan of it. I enjoyed them quite a lot as reluctant to willing partners. The ending does hint at a possible 2nd season, so I'd have appreciated it if the (very subtle) romantic vibes had been left out of this one

🧸👻 - Cinematography - The drama is beautiful to look at. Especially when we're in the human realm. It's filmed beautifully. However, when we cross over to the shostly realm, things get a bit shaky. It's still generally well done, but the 'higher ghosts' with their tendrils looked rather off sometimes.

What I Didn't Like/Found Confusing/Could've Been Done Better

👻🧸The King should've been on the poster - This is less of a drama problem and more of a marketing problem (read lie). The majority of this story is not even about Gu Cheon. It's about the king, then his daughter (Seang Gang), and then Gu Cheon. I went into the plot expecting the story to be about a ghost slayer and the lady who could hear ghosts.

I expected the story to revolve around them. Their partnership as they worked to set the palace free from whatever malevolent force was plaguing it. Instead, the story largely revolves around the king. While I understand what the marketing team was trying to do, with this being Nam Joo Hyuk's 1st role since the military, the expectations were so not what I found on the ground.

👻🧸 The plot felt like it was trying to do too much, and it couldn't figure out how to tie it all together nicely. To make everything blend and work well together.

What starts as a supernatural drama suddenly reveals hidden layers of class issues, political machinations, succession battles, and wells of lies. If done well, all this could have come together cohesively to make a beautiful, intriguing, and deeply disturbing story. In fact, right before the story of the most favoured concubine concluded, I found myself immersed in the utter horribleness of palace life - regardless of status.

However, as the story unfolds, because the forces behind all these evil deeds are largely one-dimensional or do not have enough depth, the story falls flat. Every reveal is surprising, but it doesn't linger enough to make you feel or mean something. They tell you something, then quickly move on to the next thing.
They disregard it or bury it; thus, when they eventually try to tie things up in the end, it all feels a little meh

👻🧸The story doesn't use its villains well enough
a. 🤴🏻The emperor is there to be prideful, insecure(?), angry, dismissive, and a barrier to what needs to be done. He spends so much time being frustrating for unknown reasons that when the truth behind his actions is revealed, I find that I no longer care. When they try to give him a little depth, make him human, and perhaps make him more understandable to the audience, I no longer care to see it.

He is also very inconsistent as a character. It's like they didn't know whether to make him pure evil or make him nuanced. He spends most of the story bulldozing people, murdering, and generally being evil. Then they decide he's a loving father and a good king. Then he's evil again

A good example is perhaps the situation with the random pesitlence villagers: He comes across them, gets them some help, and even changes his plans to go back to the palace and set preventative measures. Then he almost dies. After being saved and waking up 1st thing he does is to send soldiers to obliterate the village. I miss the logic as to why this happened. Was a scene cut or something? Or was the plot just using this incident to find a way to make the crown prince more powerful? A way to make him an akgwi?

b.👸🏻The Queen Dowager - She was a great villain, but they used her up too soon and cast her aside. Then she comes back with a crooked face (a stroke maybe), and she never regains the presence that she had in the beginning 4 episodes. Her greed for the throne also seemed rather shallow. All this drama and evil deeds were driven by the fact that someone who she considered a 'mudblood' dared sit on the throne. 1st world problems, my guy. 1st world problems (only this time it's nobles' problems?)

c.👵🏻Saeng Gang's grandmother - Now she was a true surprise villain. But again, rather than the story using her well enough, we find out about her atrocious actions and never see her again. As I said above, the story loves to give you a surprise reveal. A jumpscare, if you may, about how horrible and evilactual humans beings can be - worse than even the spirits they feared -and then does nothing about it. In the end, she simply scurries off into the night. Very anticlimactic

d. 👴🏻 Price Iksang - Used well enough, he could have been another great villain. However, he only pops in when the plot needs him to and largely hides behind a shaman whose origins and story the audience knows nothing about.

👻🧸Missing Logic - the Princess
I mentioned the lack of logic and inconsistency with the king's character. Another character who sometimes evades logic is the princess. She comes to the palace hating her father, then midway through, she wants to save him. My question is, why? It doesn't seem to be for the sake of the country, at least in my opinion.

The girl never really thought about the realm like that. Aside from that one incident in the village, the commoners were never on her mind. So why did she suddenly change her tune? Because she remembered the emperor patting her head once when she was a kid? Based on all the anger she was carrying, that seems like too light a reason for her to care about keeping him alive

👻🧸I never found the story scary - Netflix advertises this as scary and horror. I was neither scared nor did I find elements in the plot horrifying. The only part I felt came close to what was advertised was in the final episode, where the ghost prince yanked off an arm and ate it. But they didn't even show that in full, so..., impact not felt.

🧸👻Final Thoughts👻🧸
I feel like storytelling let down this project. The idea was truly great. The greed, lies, and selfishness of humans being bigger and worse than the actual supernatural is pretty great. Unfortunately, the idea is not well supported. Not by the characters nor by the logic of some of the happenings. Had the people working on this taken the time to flesh out their characters, the villains especially, and all the ties that bound them, I think we could have gotten a story that matched the hype of this drama, the actors, and the quality of production.