Mysterious Summer (2014)

It's hard to review each individual story since there are total of fifteen of them, and if I went through all it would be ridiculous. So I'm going to give an overall review of the basics, and just tell you that if you like creepy stuff, this is for you. If you like the Twilight Zone, this is definitely for you.

Each episode tells a different story of different people living in Beijing, from romance to horror to supernatural to just getting chills down your spine. It's skin-tingling and you want to look away, but for some reason I kept clicking "next episode" just to see how the writers and directors and wonderful actors would make my skin crawl again.

Each set of actors did extremely well, from musicians to psychopaths to people who have been consumed with greed, fear, or the thirst for knowledge. Since we only spend about 25-30 minutes with each story, it's hard to establish the depth of each character but Mysterious Summer somehow manages to go into what has caused each protagonist to do what they did. The antagonists are left purposefully ambiguous, to increase the mysteriousness and overall creepiness of the more horror/supernatural genres.

Of course, some stories are better than others, but a bad episode or two doesn't detract from the overall quality of the show.

And of course, each episode came with it's own music, which upped the ante or made me peek through my fingers waiting for something to jump out. It was thrilling.

Overall, a good watch if you're looking for a strange mix of psychological, romance, horror, supernatural, and clever acting (Furukawa Yuki is in it... who doesn't love that guy?)

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A Macabre Anthology of Sci-Fi Shorts

I really enjoyed this one. It’s a dated, macabre collection of short sci-fi stories with mild horror or thriller undertones, similar to Tales from the Darkside or The Twilight Zone. The Chinese drama Strange Notes is also a good comparison for those more familiar with it. Each episode tells a different story centered on an odd or mysterious occurrence, and although the same person introduces each one, they function as standalone watches.

That said, the main caveat is that it’s difficult to find online with English subtitles. It’s available on iQIYI, but a handful of episodes weren’t translated, and most of the translated ones rely on poorly done AI subs. For me, though, this didn’t detract from the experience, and overall it made for an enjoyable watch.

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