Nine Puzzles

Unfortunately, it really shows that this is a Disney+ production.

Lack of clues and details to build theories:
Over the course of 9 episodes, there’s not a single hint that makes the viewer want to come up with theories or even guess who the villain might be.
Do you think the death of the main character’s parents has anything to do with the story? Nope.
Do you think the classical music theme matters? Not at all.
Do you think the fact that the main character lacks some social skills plays a role? Nope.
What about the male lead being stuck in the same position for 10 years because of an unsolved case — think that’s important? Nope.
Basically, any detail you think might be connected to the murders before episode 9 becomes totally irrelevant, because for 9 whole episodes, they only give you one suspect.
And surprise — in episode 10, they tell you that nope, he’s not the antagonist after all. So all your theories are basically pointless. Only if you watch a lot of K-dramas like this, you probably caught the phrase “construction company” and maybe figured out where the story’s heading.

Cast:
The producers of this K-drama clearly have no idea how to make the most of their cast’s potential. Honestly, if any other actors had done this show, it wouldn’t have made a difference — they use so little of the actors’ range that it feels like they never even watched their past performances, whether lead or supporting.

The antagonist:
The antagonist in this story apparently has super strength or psychic powers or something, because there’s no explanation or detail about how they kill. People just show up dead, and that’s it. The only death that’s actually interesting isn’t even caused by the antagonist — it’s done by a side character.And the worst death is the final one — Puzzle 8 — because you literally have to use your imagination to make any sense of how the body ended up way up there with no help at all.

P.S. For some reason, in the episodes around the second murder, there’s this weird POV shot of the main character’s hand gripping the car keys. I have no idea what they were going for with that scene — it’s just odd, and to make it weirder, they only use that POV once. Just that one scene.

Read More

A High Quality Mystery With A Unique Female Lead

My 4 categories are Acting/Cast, Writing, Direction/SFX/Music, Entertainment Value.

I typically don’t like detective dramas. They tend to be very cliché and/or formulaic. I decided to watch this one because I was reading comments about viewers liking the "crazy" female lead (it's rare to see those types of female leads) and I like Son Seok Gu (손석구) who plays the male lead.

Acting/Cast: I liked the leads a lot. The other police officers and characters were fine. I didn’t like the psychiatrists. I don’t like Park Kyu Young (박규영) as an actress. She always plays the same roles…emotionless, stoic. I don’t like any actor that only plays those types of roles. As for the other psychiatrist, I like the actor from other things I’ve seen him in, but this character’s delivery felt a little cheesy. 6.5/10

Writing: This is a well-written drama. I like the unconventional female lead. She’s very much intentionally a Sherlock type character. I don’t really like Sherlock too much, but I thought this association was endearing and cute (her outfits and behavior). The mystery plot is engaging, although, I loosely figured it out pretty early on. I was hoping I wasn’t right because it’s such a cliché… Fortunately, this predictability didn’t completely ruin the drama for me, and this is because the ending is impactful. I liked the enemies to partners aspect between the leads and the focus on their dynamic for most of the drama. However, the biggest issue I had with this drama is the change towards the end (episode 10). The focus is no longer on the dynamic between the two leads, but shifts to the serial killer. Now, the strong, well-established personality of the female lead is abandoned for 2 episodes or so. It also feels like the relationship building between the leads is a waste because they aren’t working together on anything. It’s actually dumb. They’re both figuring everything out at the same time, but through different means and not as partners. So why does it even matter that the male lead has to learn to trust her? Anyway, I read that people either hate or love the ending. For me, the ending saved this drama. It was actually kind of beautiful in a macabre way, which is what the writers were going for. They also set it up for a season 2, which could work because the relationship between the leads felt unfulfilled in the end. Just don’t do a repeat of Queen of Mystery 1 & 2 please. Queen of Mystery is a good detective drama, but the slow burn romance never comes to a conclusion. There’s no romance in Nine Puzzles (although I think there potentially could be), but I’m talking about the bond that the leads are developing. If they keep splitting up and doing investigations alone, then what good is this bond? 6.5/10

Direction/SFX/Music: This is a very high quality drama regarding the writing and the production value, such as the drama Death’s Game. I think that’s what ultimately made this drama work for me when I typically don’t like detective dramas. I felt like I was watching a Hollywood style movie (a good one, I mean...I know Hollywood is terrible these days). 8.5/10

Entertainment Value: I was really into this drama until episode 10; I had gotten through those episodes pretty quick. Then, I was turned off by the change in direction. However, the final episode was good and gave meaning to the drama as a whole. This also kept the predictability of the drama from alienating me, leaving me with positive feelings about the drama. 7/10

Overall, I gave this drama a 7/10. A score or 6 or higher is in my ‘would recommend’ zone. I don’t know if I would recommend this to someone who loves the detective genre because it is predictable. But, I’d recommend it if you want to watch a good story with interesting character writing and a high production value. This drama made me interested in criminal profiling. I actually bought an introductory college textbook on the subject.

Read More

Nine Puzzles had the pieces—cast, genre, emotion—but forgot how to build the full picture!

People keep saying that Nine Puzzles is predictable. And having guessed the culprits far earlier than I expected, I won’t contradict that. But as bad as “a predictable thriller” might sound, it honestly doesn’t bother me. For me, a thriller is more than its shock value. Every thriller owes you a story—not just a surprise.

At first glance, Nine Puzzles is exactly what one would expect a K-thriller to be—gritty, fast-paced, and emotionally charged. But grit needs to give way to complexities, not chaos; pace should build toward coherence, not convenience; and emotion should facilitate depth and arcs—not just burrows. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the characters driving it.

The female lead in Nine Puzzles is different. She’s traumatised, guarded, locked inside a persona—and doesn’t even really know who she is. Or maybe, she does, but is terrified of who she’ll find if she actually looks. And that’s what made her interesting—she felt like a living metaphor for a kind of sweet, quiet juxtaposition kdramas usually reserve for male characters.

But here’s the thing—a protagonist still needs to feel like a person. And somehow, the drama forgets that. She can’t just know something suddenly because it’s episode nine. Growth isn’t scheduled. It has to make sense.

And the male lead? He doesn’t even have a personality to begin with—let alone something interesting to unravel. Honestly, it’s lucky that the actors are as capable and competent as they are. Without them, Nine Puzzles would’ve crumbled far earlier.

Sadly, that same pattern continues in how Nine Puzzles treats the rest of its cast—and it casts actors who are genuinely well-regarded in the industry. Even the cameos are from big names. But the drama fails to provide these actors with something—anything—to do. No matter how talented you are, you can’t bring to life what was never written. At some point, it stops feeling exciting and starts feeling like flexing. Just having actors exist on screen isn’t enough.

But it’s not like Nine Puzzles is all bad—it has its merits. Ones that I can't seem to remember, no matter how hard I try. But what is unforgettable are the performances. Every actor did a phenomenal job, but for me, Park Gyu Young stole the show. It was my first time watching her in this kind of role, and it only goes to prove the range she possesses. I’d also like to mention Kim Sung Kyun as Team Leader Yang Jeong Ho—he got a meaty role, and sunk his teeth right into it. It was a pleasure to watch him. Which is exactly what, makes the rest of it so frustrating, because performances this good deserved better.

Honestly, I have my fair share of bad Korean thrillers but witnessing something with all this potential crash so hard is disappointing. Nine Puzzles isn’t as substantial or deep and complex as it—or rather its creators—seem to think. Honestly, Nine Puzzles is a perfect example of wasted potential, both in terms of substance and style.

Read More

WTF

Imagine writing a good mystery, with clues, and likable detectives, chasing a serial killer
And then make it all crash in the end by
-Not revealing how the culprit did these things and got away, magic? teleportation? The how dunnit is the meat of the genre, the audience speculates who is the culprit based on who could have realistically committed the crime and avoid detection, and then you just don't explain it at all???
-Making both mcs act like idiots and literally do what SK wants them to.
-Having SK whose motive and backstory is so bland and so illogical that you wish there was none at all. Seriously, I've never seen a SK antagonist who would make me feel nothing but irritation. There are awesome serial killers whose power and skill you admire. There are tragic serial killers, with whom you empathize. There are despicable serial killers, whom you love to hate. The culprit here is none of that. They were trying to go for empathy angle, but it failed because of how stupid it all was.

Imagine having this quirky yet annoying female lead with superior fashion sense, who is at the same time portrayed as capable and genius profiler, with possible psychopathic personality..... only to have her act like a lost child in the end and ultimately account to nothing. She failed as a profiler too, her profile of the killer was completely off. She did nothing substantial for the investigation, in fact she made things worse by doing what SK wanted her to. And thus, her entire character feels like a red herring, a walking, talking red herring who easily takes 2/3 of the screentime only to crash and burn.
Seriously, you can't write a quirky genius character and then turn them into useless idiot, we tolerate such characters because they are geniuses, without the genius and capable part, who tf would put up with shenanigans of FL, or any other detective you may know from crime dramas (examples: Monk, Sherlock...)? In fact entire profiling team was useless and it seemed they are there just to waste resources.

What a waste of good acting and good cinematography. I am mad.
You know, I will still give it a fairly high rating because non ironically, the work the actors and director put into this drama is outstanding, but what can they do when the writing department failed?

Read More

Cheesy, convenient, Predictable, as if it came out of a webtoon, too comical, too themed


The poster and character organization really gives it away too
Even detective Conan wasn’t this childish
It’s also a bit, ironic or hypocritical, do ppl refuse money to sell their property, gain a lot of money, and face death? When they aren’t really selling their “land”? They can just move to a different neighborhood, I mean underselling is the only “fear”
And I’m being generous with my rating

When a man does it, he’s the “punisher”, seeking justice law can’t achieve, protector of the weak

when a woman does it, she’s being too emotional and needs to let it go, move on from the hate in her heart, seek forgiveness and “live with it”, but she can’t because she’s a sensitive creature so she kill’s herself in the worst possible pain?



Also the two cops were super dumb, “why was she standing there for 30mins?”
The answer is the was, you idiots spent 30mins looking at her in the past and didn’t reach her current destination
“I wanted to save him”? The murders that killed ppl? Why did they kill ppl when they’re building homes? Cuz they’re still sucking ppl dry? Buying 1m+ properties to show wealth? Everyone is crazy

Read More

Sluggish pace but an engaging whodunnit mystery

A slow paced murder mystery thriller, Nine Puzzles is a smart concept with a very good execution, even though the pacing might be inconsistent for many.

The drama balances multiple layers of mystery, from cryptic puzzle pieces and reflection clues to complex interpersonal relationships that intertwines with the serial murders. The setting is tense, with every character under radar and suspicion falling all over everyone.

What begins as a whodunnit quickly evolves into something more thematic. The show explores the consequences of institutional failure and what happens when someone decides to punish those systems in the most literal way. But what keeps the show human is how it focuses on the fallout: guilt, loyalty, memory, and how trauma shapes who we become.

The cast, whether it be leads or the supporting, every character was portrayed as they should be. The fascinating aspect of the drama is it plays with the memory, like you will connect the dots towards the final episodes from your recollection of the initial episodes. Overall, the emotional layers to this murder mystery is well written, although the pacing was too sluggish and draggy. But nonetheless, it will keep you hooked until you know the perpetrator behind all of these.

My Rating : 3.5/5

Read More

All the Pieces Are There, But the Picture Doesn’t Fit

Nine Puzzles is a thriller drama written by the same mind behind Tunnel, which naturally set my expectations high—especially since I’m a huge fan of the genre. With leads like Kim Da Mi and Son Suk Ku, and an ensemble cast full of familiar K-drama faces, it truly felt like the Avengers had assembled.

🔍 The Premise
The story revolves around a murder from ten years ago, and when similar killings start happening again, an investigation begins that slowly unravels the hidden truths.

✅ The Good
Visually, the show is stunning. The color grading—from the warm, chaotic yellows of the police station to the chilling blue murder scenes—adds a rich atmosphere. The profiling and crime setup sequences were thoughtfully done and kept me engaged. The music was the highlight of the drama, completely pulls you in, even after finishing it was still ringing in my head. Especially the opening scene OST, please don't skip it, it instantly sets the mood for you.

Acting-wise, no complaints. The veterans brought their A-game. Son Suk Ku continues his streak of never missing, while Kim Da Mi slipped comfortably into a role that’s well within her range.

❌ The Bad
The biggest letdown? You can guess the killer by episode 5. Worse, the protagonists hardly do anything impactful. They're never ahead, never prevent a crime, and only begin to piece things together after everything’s already been revealed. Despite the strong cast, it’s En Na who does most of the real detective work, while others just catch up.

The drama had all the right ingredients—a compelling setup, stellar cast, and top-notch production—but the plot lost its edge in the second half, missing the chance to be truly great.

🎯 Final Thoughts
Nine Puzzles is a technically polished drama with an excellent cast, but sadly, the writing doesn't quite match the ambition. If you enjoy mood-heavy thrillers and don’t mind predictable twists, it’s still a decent watch. But if you're hoping for a tight, edge-of-your-seat mystery, this one might leave you wanting more.

Read More

Interesting but not without plot holes.

So just finished watching 9 puzzles and I must say it was fun to watch. I am a fan of mystery thrillers and this one was good enough. It has enough red herrings to keep you guessing like even though you may have already guessed the killer in the beginning itself, they do provide you enough stuff to doubt yourself sometimes. So basically it was fun.

Also I always love a male and female detective pair working on solving cases, so that was good too.

But what's not fun was the FL's acting! Gosh I could hardly look at FL's facial reactions throughout the series. I think her character was supposed to be wierd and quirky, sometimes psycho vibe giving odd ball but the FL's acting was so OTT at times and sometimes, especially in the starting eps, you can hardly decipher the reactions on her face.
Idk I actually thought this is her first drama or something and just now on MDL I found out she's been acting for a long time! Anyway, imo the show would have been much better with a different FL.

The other minus would be some glaring plot holes, especially why the whole murder plot came to be. I don't want to spoil too much, but if someone has watched it already they will understand I guess... Like you should search for something where you lost it especially when you clearly know where you lost it rather than sit at your home and wait for it to find you!

Either way, I would like to watch S2.

Read More

Nine Puzzles – A Star-Studded Crime of Narrative Self-Sabotage

Some dramas stumble. Nine Puzzles tripped, faceplanted, then asked you to applaud it for bleeding artistically. It is a prime example of a show so filled with potential—so stacked with acting talent—that its failure feels not just disappointing, but infuriating. Watching it is like being promised a game of high-stakes chess and instead being handed a rigged claw machine with the words “Mystery Thriller” taped to it.

Let’s start with the good, because the cast deserves our reverence.

Kim Da-mi, in her role as profiler Yoon E-na, delivers a performance that is deliberately hard to love—sharp-edged, emotionally distant, and prickly enough to test your empathy. It’s a character designed to repel, and yet somehow, you keep watching her, curious, frustrated, intrigued. The issue is not Kim Da-mi’s delivery—it’s that the script doesn’t do the bare minimum to tell us why she is the way she is. Is she neurodivergent? A trauma survivor? A cold-blooded genius with no social skills? The show shrugs and says, “Eh.” We're left watching a complex character whose wiring is never explained.

Son Suk-ku brings his signature grit to Detective Han Saem—a man worn down by the job and cracked open by the discovery that someone he once respected might be a murderer. Son injects weight into every scene, carrying the emotional undercurrents the lazy script forgets to include. You see it in his eyes: the man’s been through something. Unfortunately, the script never really lets him show you what.

Park Gyu-young, however, is the late-game savior of this catastrophe. Playing the killer (yes, it’s not a spoiler anymore), her transformation from warm, nurturing psychiatrist to stone-cold executioner is a masterclass in acting. Her microexpressions, the controlled drop in vocal tone, the way she holds her body—it’s chilling, magnetic. And just when you think she’s all icicles and steel, she shifts again—this time into a woman carrying the crushing weight of guilt. She deserved a better show.

Even Kim Sung-kyun as Violent Crimes Unit 2’s Captain Yang Jung-ho brought a surprising softness to his role, showing a side of him unfamiliar to audiences used to his more comedic or tough-guy personas. But even he couldn’t escape the black hole of a script that made no sense of his character’s altruism—something even he admitted in interviews he couldn’t understand.

And now, let’s talk about the script. Or more accurately: the crime scene.

This is a mystery that commits the cardinal sin of the genre: it spoils itself before it even gets going. By episode 2, a sharp-eyed viewer is already raising an eyebrow, sensing the pattern. By episode 3, the drama practically brings out a whiteboard and starts connecting red yarn to the killer’s identity with the urgency of a bored middle-schooler doing a book report. It draws a chalk outline around the culprit, paints her in silhouette, and then—just in case you still had doubts—throws in an unmistakable feminine frame and long hair bathed in dramatic lighting. Subtlety? Never heard of her.

The so-called “thriller” element relies entirely on the assumption that the audience isn’t paying attention. There’s no misdirection. No red herrings. No artful manipulation of perspective. Instead, it’s like watching a magician start a trick by showing you the hidden card, then dramatically revealing the same card ten minutes later like it’s a mind-blowing twist. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

The killer isn’t just poorly concealed—she’s practically introduced as the killer through writing choices that scream, “It’s me!” without actually having the guts to say it out loud. And yet, bafflingly, the drama continues to treat her identity as a secret, dragging us through episode after episode of characters playing catch-up while the audience sits there, mentally checked out, waiting for the show to acknowledge what it already accidentally admitted.

Even worse? The drama doesn’t even try to throw us off the scent. There are no fake-outs, no narrative curveballs, no psychological sleight of hand. It doesn’t attempt to gaslight the audience or reframe events from an alternate angle. It simply coasts along with the weakest defense imaginable: hoping you weren’t paying attention. And when the full reveal finally comes in episode 10—of an 11-episode series, mind you—it doesn’t feel like a twist. It feels like the show finally catching up to what the rest of us knew seven episodes ago.

By that point, the only remaining mystery is “Why?” But here's the problem: once you’ve solved who the killer is so early, the “why” has to be earth-shattering. It has to redeem the narrative with emotional depth, with psychological nuance, with a reveal that recontextualizes everything. Instead, what we get is a rushed, half-hearted explanation with zero build-up, delivered too late and with too little care. And because the show never earned your investment to begin with, that final explanation lands with the emotional weight of a damp paper towel.

It’s not just frustrating—it’s insulting. The writers didn’t just underestimate the audience’s intelligence; they disregarded it completely. What could have been a tense, cerebral cat-and-mouse between profiler and killer turns into a one-sided snoozefest, where you’re not watching to uncover the mystery, but merely to endure the inevitable.

This isn’t storytelling. It’s narrative malpractice.

Let’s talk about the murders. Or rather, the complete suspension of logic required to believe any of them.

The killer in Nine Puzzles doesn’t operate like a human being. She moves like a glitched-out NPC in a stealth video game on God Mode. One minute, she’s sipping tea. The next, she’s three neighborhoods away committing a murder with the precision of a surgical strike team and the invisibility of a ghost. It’s as if she unlocked a cheat code that lets her phase through locked doors, disable every CCTV camera in Seoul, and bypass security systems like she’s Neo in The Matrix.

This isn’t criminal genius—it’s narrative laziness.

There’s no explanation offered, no groundwork laid to show how she pulls these flawless executions off. She enters secure areas with no evidence of how she got in, commits murder without leaving a trace, and escapes unnoticed despite being a known suspect in a city blanketed in surveillance tech. It’s not suspenseful—it’s absurd. If anything, the killer feels less like a real person and more like a ghostly plot device with an unlimited travel budget and access to a portal gun.

And the profiler? The one we’re told is brilliant, intuitive, uniquely capable of dissecting a criminal’s psyche? She barely does any profiling. No psychological cat-and-mouse. No mind games. No mental chess match that a good thriller lives and dies by. Her deductions are shallow, occasionally lucky, and frustratingly passive. Most of the “investigation” feels like a rehash of things we already saw, without any real insight or emotional weight added.

Meanwhile, the killer doesn’t even try to hide. The murders practically sign her name in cursive, and she strolls through the plot as if she knows she’s invincible—because the script makes sure she is. There’s no attempt at covering tracks, no manipulation of evidence, no red herrings to throw the profiler off. Just a trail of bodies and a drama that somehow thinks this counts as clever writing.

And the police? Don’t even get me started. They're reduced to exposition machines and reaction shots. No one questions the glaring holes in the investigation. No one follows leads with urgency. No one even acts like they're chasing a serial killer operating at a supernatural level of efficiency.

So when the promotional materials promised us a battle of wits—a Sherlock vs. Moriarty showdown—we expected a cerebral thriller, a clash of intellects, a high-stakes duel between two brilliant minds. What we got instead was a series of loosely connected crime scenes strung together like a sad Pinterest board of thriller clichés.

The profiler doesn’t profile.
The killer doesn’t hide.
The detectives don’t detect.

It’s Scooby-Doo—but with prettier lighting, better tailoring, and none of the fun. You keep waiting for someone to rip off a mask and say, “And I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling plot holes!”

But no one ever does. Because there is no mask. The killer’s been standing center stage the whole time, and the show simply hoped you wouldn’t notice.

By episode 11, the entire narrative collapses under the weight of its own delusions. The story doesn’t end—it just kind of gives up. Like the writers realized they’d painted themselves into a corner with invisible ink and hoped no one would point it out.

Verdict:
I am livid.

Nine Puzzles is a masterclass in wasting star-studded talent. Everyone in this cast deserved better. They fought tooth and nail to elevate a script that kept dragging them down like narrative quicksand. And the worst part? The script never cared to fix itself. Never once did it attempt to surprise us, challenge us, or even pretend it respected our intelligence.

In a genre that requires precision, Nine Puzzles was a blunt instrument.

The only mystery here is how this got greenlit in the first place.

Score: 3/10

Read More

Sympathizing with the Killer

I was very invested in this series. The pacing and writing/direction of the episodes were well done. A killer leaving puzzle pieces after each murder right up my alley. I originally thought a more linear approach would have been an excellent choice to root out the killer but in the end, I liked how it all played out. Not sure I liked the last ending or if this warrants a sequel like the ending suggest.

Sun Suk Ku and Da Mi were both good here even though Da Mi's character, Ena, was very annoying sometimes. This cast is excellent and the standouts for me were Kim Sung Kyun as Captain Yang and Park Gyu Young as Dr. Lee. Captain Yang's back story and what he was trying to accomplish broke my heart.

Episode 10 is one of the greatest episodes of TV I have watched this year. All that is revealed and all that comes b/c of those events had me reeling. Then episode 11 and Dr. Lee's coup de grace left me bawling. Seriously well written and acted. Park Gyu Young deserves any and all awards for her performance in episode 11 alone.

6/6/25

Read More