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Monstrous had an intriguing and simple premise that was aided by a properly eerie gray atmosphere. Yet it stumbled on developing characters through flashbacks and relying too heavily on stock thriller tropes at the end.
YouTuber Jung Gi Hun is called in by a couple of monks to aid them with a cursed Buddha aka a Gwibul. The governor of a mountain province dug too deeply and excavated the statue, uncovering its eyes and possibly releasing an evil into the world. The governor decides to use the statue as a money maker by attracting tourists. A black rain falls along with hail in the shape of skulls portending an ominous future for the town.
Monstrous harkened back to horror movies from the past even including homages to The Birds and The Mist. The reverse of Medusa, the stone Buddha turned people into the monsters lurking within themselves. If you are averse to zombies like me, you may be unnerved, as these humans affected by the malevolent statue looked and acted very much like zombies.
Long, useless, repetitive flashbacks were used to engender sympathy and understanding of the characters in lieu of better character building. The flashbacks actually made one of the characters less sympathetic, regardless of how much they tormented this person. The FL was useless for 5 ½ episodes. There was only one rule for dealing with the Gwibul and person by person who knew this fell right into its trap. It wouldn’t be a Kdrama without a bully and Kwak Dong Yeon reveled as the gang leader who manipulated the situation to his benefit as the townspeople abandoned reason and humanity in search of safety.
This drama could easily have been a movie if they cut the fat out of its script. As little as they developed the characters, they could have just culled it into a 2-hour film. Koo Kyo Hwan spent an episode stuck in a parking lot twiddling his thumbs. Shin Hyun Been spent most of her scenes quivering in the past-over and over and over. The chief of patrols and her son were thinly drawn, with the flashbacks not doing much to fill out their characters. This drama would have been a 7.5 for me until the final episode when characters did stupid things to pad the episode and stretched my patience too thin. For the most part, this was an entertaining, if incredibly average drama. Worth a look if you enjoy the genre or the writers (Yeon Sang Ho &/or Ryu Yong Jae), or actors, and keep your expectations low.
15 October 2026
Trigger warnings: I don’t care what they called them, there were zombies. Gore. Cursing-I’ve seen enough Kdramas to know they sanitized the cursing on Tubi. Lol. Smoking. Big spider. Death of a child.
YouTuber Jung Gi Hun is called in by a couple of monks to aid them with a cursed Buddha aka a Gwibul. The governor of a mountain province dug too deeply and excavated the statue, uncovering its eyes and possibly releasing an evil into the world. The governor decides to use the statue as a money maker by attracting tourists. A black rain falls along with hail in the shape of skulls portending an ominous future for the town.
Monstrous harkened back to horror movies from the past even including homages to The Birds and The Mist. The reverse of Medusa, the stone Buddha turned people into the monsters lurking within themselves. If you are averse to zombies like me, you may be unnerved, as these humans affected by the malevolent statue looked and acted very much like zombies.
Long, useless, repetitive flashbacks were used to engender sympathy and understanding of the characters in lieu of better character building. The flashbacks actually made one of the characters less sympathetic, regardless of how much they tormented this person. The FL was useless for 5 ½ episodes. There was only one rule for dealing with the Gwibul and person by person who knew this fell right into its trap. It wouldn’t be a Kdrama without a bully and Kwak Dong Yeon reveled as the gang leader who manipulated the situation to his benefit as the townspeople abandoned reason and humanity in search of safety.
This drama could easily have been a movie if they cut the fat out of its script. As little as they developed the characters, they could have just culled it into a 2-hour film. Koo Kyo Hwan spent an episode stuck in a parking lot twiddling his thumbs. Shin Hyun Been spent most of her scenes quivering in the past-over and over and over. The chief of patrols and her son were thinly drawn, with the flashbacks not doing much to fill out their characters. This drama would have been a 7.5 for me until the final episode when characters did stupid things to pad the episode and stretched my patience too thin. For the most part, this was an entertaining, if incredibly average drama. Worth a look if you enjoy the genre or the writers (Yeon Sang Ho &/or Ryu Yong Jae), or actors, and keep your expectations low.
15 October 2026
Trigger warnings: I don’t care what they called them, there were zombies. Gore. Cursing-I’ve seen enough Kdramas to know they sanitized the cursing on Tubi. Lol. Smoking. Big spider. Death of a child.
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