The Price of Confession

Addicting but the last 2 episodes make it lose its spark

Binge worthy crime thriller

We have the suspense and solid plot points, good acting and cinematography to make someone sit and watch episode after episode but it loses all the suspense it builds up by simply revealing the culprits in the 11th episode. We didn't have a well planned reveal, it was like writers were like 'oh we are at the second last episode? let's reveal the killers and end it'. Making a random side character the real killer is getting boring now. I was suspecting the prison doctor at one point because how he was highlighted. I think we could have subtlety hinted at the real criminals.

Even the reasons also felt too dumb, killing someone cause they won't apologize? I get the message but for the buildup it had it was boring. Even the prosecutor's reason for being so fixated on An YunSu felt too simple.

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Why was this digital release only?

Let me start off by saying that despite the prior shooting behind the scenes mess, the leading ladies delivered excellent performances. KGE and JDY truly understood the assignment. Special kudos to Jeon Do Yeon, since this drama is something out of her comfort zone. While the plot was ordinary for me because I’ve watched a lot of dramas in this genre. The clear highlight was the acting. The writing was somewhat predictable. However, my biggest issue with this drama is actually connected to the way it was released. I’m tired of Netflix dropping ALL the episodes at once for series that clearly need to be digested slowly. They don’t even do this for their most popular shows. The saddest part is that if you don’t tune in within the first week, SNS spoils the series for you.

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this is a messy review !!!

Overall I really did enjoy this kdrama but there are a few things that i wish could have been different. The main thing i wish could have been different was the whole plot twist on who actually did it. I feel like it was kinda lacking considering the reason behind all of it was totally stupid (though maybe there was something i was missing) another thing i really would have liked to see was them playing around with the idea that Mo eun was able to escape and keep tabs on An yun su. This really made her "witch" image a lot stronger than what it was and honestly made her a bit more scary. Another minor thing that was bugging me is, where is the baby!! i found myself wondering this for a lot of the show because it felt like she was always being passed off to someone. I totally understand that An yun su is busy doing as she does but its like if your baby is a big motive and reason behind what you do why isnt she present more (again i understand yun su is busy) Other than these few things the drama was awesome and im glad i found it when i needed something hooking and long to binge !!

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Painted in Clichés: The Art of A Promising Start that Drops in Quality

A good summary of my experience watching KDramas. A promising start to a show that gradually drops in quality and deteriorates into a convoluted and contrived plot.

Although the show has a very good cast, it is a fairly clichéd programme that offers nothing fresh and instead uses the usual - often annoying - tropes: An innocent and morally upright main character who is desperate but gets drawn into the world of crime, a dark and mysterious second main character with a dual identity and a background that shows her inherent good side, a cop/lawyer who doesn't do his job well, and the main culprit behind the plot who is part of the institution that serves the law. Then of course there's all the prison shenanigans with bullies and all the other usual aspects.

Even though I can suspend my beliefs for a fictional show, at some point there were too many circumstantial encounters and incidents to move the plot forward. Not a compelling writing for a thriller in my opinion.

The music is decent and fits the overall atmosphere of the series; the cinematography is good, especially in the dark and gritty first episodes; the characters are well portrayed by the actors, except for the melodramatic and sometimes over-the-top performance of Mo Eun.

While the beginning of the series provides enjoyable viewing, it fails to maintain this level until the end.

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The Price of Confession – From Masterful Suspense to Premium Trash

The Price of Confession starts as a razor-sharp thriller and ends as a chaotic mess.
The first five episodes are genuinely outstanding, anchored by Kim Go-eun’s terrifying, magnetic performance as Mo Eun — a character who could have become a global icon of villainy.

In the hands of directors like Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), Christopher Nolan, or even M. Night Shyamalan, Mo Eun could’ve been an international hit.
But the show never has the courage to let her be purely evil.

After episode 6, the plot collapses: random subplots, new characters dropped from the sky, sentimental detours, and the most ridiculous murder motive imaginable — someone was killed because they didn’t apologize.
That’s not thriller writing. That’s narrative panic.

Like many K-thrillers, the show becomes obsessed with redemption, morality, and “justice,” sacrificing tension for melodrama and cultural comfort.
What began as something bold dissolves into mediocrity.

Kim Go-eun is phenomenal.
The series around her is not.

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The Price of Confession

Overall, this was a solid and well-made series. The cinematography was strong and effective, and the cast delivered consistently high-quality performances—there’s little to criticize when it comes to acting.

The series truly lives up to its title, clearly showing the cost of a murder confession and how far its consequences can extend. It also highlights how the person in charge of the case develops a strong bias against the suspect, a bias that ultimately turns Yoon-soo’s entire life upside down.

It makes you wonder what might have happened if Yoon-soo had never met Moo-yoon in prison. At the same time, the story raises questions about how everything aligned so perfectly for Moo-yoon’s plan to move forward. Although the chances of his plans succeeding were realistically low, he somehow managed to control events from within prison.

The character development was especially compelling. Moo-yoon begins as a lively, hopeful person, but the death of his family leaves him deeply traumatized, gradually turning him into someone driven solely by revenge. In contrast, the bold and fearless Soo-yoon transforms into a more cautious character, choosing survival and staying with her daughter over seeking revenge for her husband’s death.

The lawyer’s wife was another striking character—a truly disturbed individual who hid her violent nature behind a smiling face and the respectable social status she and her husband maintained.

However, the motive behind the woman and her husband’s involvement in the murder seems quite weak. The only perspective that somewhat justifies it is the woman’s disturbed mind driving her to kill and the husband’s instability in accepting his wife’s condition.

In the end, I enjoyed watching the series, but I cannot consider it flawless.

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A muddled story that is elevated by Kim Go Eun's incredible performance

About 10 minutes into the first episode, I wondered if 12 episodes would be too long for this drama, and it turned out I was right. I think 8 episodes would've been perfect and allowed for a tighter story, but I can't even complain about the excess episodes because it gave us more time to watch Kim Go Eun's absolutely phenomenal performance.

The story itself starts out pretty strong and there are lots of twists and turns, but the it starts dragging around the middle and then kind of fizzles out by the end. The central mystery around who killed Yun-Su's husband has maybe one of the most unsatisfying reveals I've ever seen. The subplot around the vengeful grandfather (with really distracting old man makeup) is unnecessary and not particularly interesting. The cops and prison guards are so incompetent it's laughable and there's a lot of suspension of disbelief that's required to watch this show.

And yet, I was riveted for all 12 episodes because Kim Go Eun is just that good in this. The entire cast is very good, but make no mistake, this is the Kim Go Eun show. She is SO compelling, not just as a terrifying detached murderer hell-bent on revenge, but also as the kind-hearted doctor who is devastated by the injustice that caused the deaths of her sister and father. Every time she's onscreen, it's almost impossible to look away from her. I wouldn't really consider myself a fan of hers (her dramas have been mostly misses for me but I did love her in Tune in For Love) but I have been dying for her to take on a darker, gritty role ever since I saw her as Luna in The King: Eternal Monarch and I'm so glad to finally see it happen.

Say what you want about Netflix's influence on the kdrama industry, but I'm so glad they have popularized these darker, female-led thrillers that we've seen more of in recent years because imagine if Kim Go Eun got stuck doing mediocre romcoms for the rest of her career when she has THIS kind of acting range??

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a reminder of how scary humans can be

this review will contain spoilers 👏

I had this drama on my plan to watch but didn’t get to it until I needed to play something whilst I was working. it wasn’t until episode 5 that really got me interested

when we start out the story we see two narratives in play one of lawyer baek and yoon soo
we start to wonder which one is the truth? is it that of the lawyer saying she killed her husband or yoonsoo narrative that someone masked killed him

frankly I believed that this would your typical story of main female protagonist that gets abused and kills her husband then finds a way to dodge jail
but I was wrong

this drama also tells us how strong of a story the so called lawyers and police officer can tell the public and how easily we the public are swayed by such words of confirmation from authorities that plan to run with a side of one story that seems the most likely

it once again shows how weak and easy the justice system is, how many people have been accused wrongly by such “authorities”, how once again this so called justice of a system fails many people more than it can save and serve its justice that it is intended for

at first I kinda believed that yoon soo did kill her husband. then comes out 2nd key player Moeun
I don’t remember if she mentioned specifically why she helped yoon soo and why she did that but I really thought she might have been the main villain of this story in the beginning

later we find out that the family she killed was the family of the son who abused her little sister and made her jump

as the ball of yarn starts to unravel itself by the final episodes I can’t help but feel it started to get rather overwhelming because of the characters introduced which caused the final revelation to be rather underwhelming which a lot of shows whether western or Asian suffer from (some example are why she chose to film herself and go on livestream and the grandpa being rather random)

the acting from jeon doyeon and Kim goeun did not disappoint at all
I saw some comments saying how the killers motive wasn’t a motive at all and I very much disagree because as much as this is fiction this part does happen in reality
if you have ever seen any true crime stories or cases you would be very shocked to hear how many of the killers motives were rather petty
I’ve heard some stories from social media in news
such as a South Korean man sexually assaulted a random women simply because he didn’t like how she looked at him, crazy right?
people just don’t realize how scary we as a human kind can be and how just small words and the simplest stuff can be such a trigger to many people and they resort to violence

such as the wife snapping and killed yoon soo husband simply because yoon soo husband told a lie and the wife’s husband had to suffer at work due to his boss believing yoon soo husband lie

many people don’t realize just how scary pent up emotions especially frustration and negative emotions and how that can be a ticking time bomb
so I would just say it is possible for a killer to have a very petty and emotional reason to kill someone over the simplest thing as well as we also suffer from mental problems which can be a very big deciding factor on how the person will act in that moment without realizing it

overall it wasn’t bad, it was rather interesting but the 2nd half does fall short like many kdramas nowadays. the acting from the main female leads were great and it’s a rather slow story that pick up eventually



with the amount of dramas I’ve watched within like last year such as law and the city, speed and love,typhoon family and this , Thailand is really getting its spotlight lol it’s so popular

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She did not, in fact, kill 3 more....

I went in with no spoilers, no trailer; completely blind. Now I'm disappointed.

I seriously want to know why writers have a vendetta against writing villainous characters as morally bad. I was being strung along expecting Mo Eun to be the morally black counter to a morally white protagonist, but of course they had to erase that with a sad backstory. I decided to watch this because I wanted to watch a show with a genuine female sociopath/psychopath, but they were too wimpy to actually go ahead with it. Mo Eun's actress was amazing and killed the cold scenes she was in! It's such a shame her talents were wasted on this character. Why did they have to give her a backstory that felt completely unnecessary to her character? And if I'm honest, it felt like a retcon to her character up until that point; how does a woman that could brutally kill two people and then sit right next to them on a couch have a redemption arc? This isn't Killing Eve, unfortunately. Villanelle was a character that I think embodies what I wanted from Mo Eun to be. A killer that lacks empathy, has a chilling persona, and knows to manipulate people to her advantage. But she just HAD to be a misunderstood woman that was secretly kind yet somehow threw away any semblance of her previous personality in favor of coming across as soulless. Also, if she is sooo intelligent and planned out her revenge by going as far as faking her death and stealing another identity, how come she failed so badly at killing all three of her targets? Was it really that hard? I still don't understand how she even got caught in the first place since she killed them in the comfort of their own home and with no one else around.

As for the MC whose name I forgot, I think she was written quite boringly. She just felt like a character that needed to be there to boost Mo Eun's existence. Because let's face it; Mo Eun was the selling point of the show. The MC was just a damsel for a good portion of the story and I felt like there was very little notable about her. Far more is known about Mo Eun than her. She barely even seemed that shaken up about her husband's death from my point of view. She was just being jerked around by different manipulators throughout the entire story. Then she suddenly grows intelligence for the finale to somehow expose the true villain. She also named her daughter Sop, which I'm sure means something lovely in Korean, but as an English speaker it's hard to take seriously. Her daughter was literally just an NPC with no personality, no nothing. She wasn't at all interesting like the daughter from Flower of Evil was. At least that girl had a personality. Sop was just a blank slate needed to give the MC a motivation for everything that she does in the story.

The lawyers were alright, I guess. The prosecutor was saved by his good actor and realization of his bias he had. Not that that makes him a well-written character, but at least I liked how they showed the inherent biases people can have in those situations. Even I thought the MC didn't seem that shaken up about her husband's death, so I'm a little guilty too. The ex-boxer lawyer was literally just a devoted guy that felt like the equivalent of the golden retriever archetype except nonromantically. I did like his acting, though. His nose really was distracting.

Now the thing that tore this story down DRASTICALLY was the absolutely ATROCIOUS villains. The other lawyer guy and his wife have to be some of the worst villains I have seen in a HOT MINUTE. First off, they are not scary in the slightest. Second, they have barely any relevancy up until the reveal. And third but most certainly not least, they have the single worst motivation for the crimes they committed. They seriously bludgened a guy because he was a little RUDE!? Then they framed his innocent widow for the crime and fundamentally planning to orphan their young child. Because the guy didn't say "sorry." Like, does this author think they're writing Hannibal Lecter??? At least Hannibal killing people for being rude wasn't his only motivation since he was a true sociopath and hunted people when he felt the urge. But these guys? They had no prior reason to do what they did! They were just a regular couple that suddenly were masterminding an elaborate cover up that they would've gotten away with if it weren't for those meddling writers-oops, I mean inTelLigENt protagonist. They really should've just stuck with Mo Eun being the killer and created a thrilling cat and mouse chase between the leading ladies. But of course, we can't have nice things in Dramaland.

A lot of the story just felt like throwing in things in order to get from point A to point B:
"We need a reason for Mo Eun to depend on the MC" - Make her incompetent at fulfilling her thought-out revenge plan!
"We need a way to mislead the prosecutor's initial investigation" - Make her somehow pass the lie detector test by saying she's killed 3+ people despite her NOT having done that in the story! Yes, I am *still* hung up on this!!!
"We need a reason for Mo Eun to be suspected as the hooded figure that stalked the MC" Make a nice doctor discreetly keep her in the nurse's ward for an extended period of time when the cameras are COINCIDENTALLY malfunctioning!
"We need a way for Mo Eun to suspiciously contact the MC despite being in prison and having no connections" - Make her become the savior a gullible girl that is getting out of prison the NEXT DAY!
"We need the MC to get away from her house that is out of range of her tracker" - Make her have a nice police lady that is ignorant to her suspicious behavior!
"We need a reason to redeem Mo Eun despite her murdering two people and planning to murder a teenager" - Make said teenager a scummy rapist that doesn't seem to give a fuck about his dead parents and just hops on Valorant all day!
"We need an intermediate between the MC and the secret antagonists or how else will we make her exposing them plausible" - Make the dead teenager have an obsessive grandpa that will kidnap a child as a hostage and willing to commit murder and not suspicious over the prosecutor that brought him a literal murder tape yet decided NOT to report it to the police! Yeah, that makes perfect sense!
"We need a reason for Mo Eun to have her new identity without painting her as a bad person in order to redeem her" - Mo Eun coincidentally had an extremely ill best friend that allowed herself to die in a car and have her remains desecrated in order to aid Mo Eun in committing murder!
"We now have an issue of needing new villains since we wimped out on Mo Eun being one! What ever will we do?!?!?!" - You see that lawyer guy and his wife with literally one scene? Yeah, make them the killers! They suddenly have a relation to the MC's husband that she didn't know about and they killed him brutally over a slightly rude encounter! Then they gloat about it and feel no shame despite being normal people beforehand! Makes the utmost sense to me!
.....Now you see, I could keep going, but even I'm getting tired of listing all these moments of plot convenience/ineptitude.....

The positives?
- Mo Eun's actress and INITIAL characterization.
- Production was nice and the show looked visually appealing. I liked the camera shots at times and the way it would zoom in on Mo Eun's face was eerie.
- Earlier episodes; especially the first one's setup. Premise was very good.
- Music was pretty good except for when certain songs would feel a little too dramatic for the story.


I feel bad for only listing a few positives, but it's very hard for me to think of any, and I finished this show literally yesterday. I just couldn't stand how they threw in things like pointless drama with the friend and one-dimensional law enforcement left and right without it feeling substantial. I'm honestly sad about how cookie-cutter this story became since I love psychological thrillers! I just hope there will be writers in the future that can create Kdrama characters with moral ambiguity with pride and not be afraid to go through with it!

Final statement: not worth your time; don't watch.

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the acting was great

I was waiting for the series the moment I saw it coming soon on Netflix and just got around to watch it. I'm a bit disappointed. I guess it might just be personal preference but honestly if it wasn't for the acting I would have rated it lower. the actors were incredible and the plot was promising but for some reason I couldn't get into it. I normally don't mind if a series is slow paced but for some reason I couldn't get absorbed by it.

conclusion: the acting was incredible., the plot had so much potential but the slow-paced script felt like they were just dragging out theories to fill up 12 episodes,

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Reason behind the killing is annoying..

Overall, it was a solid drama, the acting was top-notch, and every character fit seamlessly into the story. But the motive behind the murder? Total nonsense. I get that the killer wasn’t exactly sane, but they really should’ve crafted a more compelling reason. I appreciate that they tried to avoid the cliché 'she’s just a psychopath' angle, but still, the explanation felt weak. If the motive had actually made sense, this could’ve easily been a 10/10.

I feel like the apology was an excuse from them cause if truly they went to court then they should have gotten a court order asking the painter to apologise instead of bombing him with unnecessary calls.. I also loved that the witch also unalived herself cause what will be her reason for living??

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