This review may contain spoilers
Started promising, ended up disappointing me
Honestly, this drama is so overhyped.I was trying. I was trying so hard to keep my hopes up. I was optimistic. I wanted this to be good so bad. But it still ended up being slightly more than average thing. I will finish writing this review and then hopefully forget about this just like the writers of this series forgot how to write a decent story.
The writting is terrible. Especially when it comes to the romance part. Kamin and Jade's relationship comes out of nowhere, the progress is questionable and it's so unnatural. Especially since the romance is forced in scenes where it's so unnecessary and/or unfitting. I literally couldn't care less about them as a couple, because the series totally failed to sell it to me as a viewer. For the first time I had issues believing JoongDunk their love. And I believe their love irl. The writing here was so bad that it made JD romance uninteresting.
You blink and suddenly they are together. Jade is way too whipped, pushing the intimacy everywhere (including medical examiner's office or literal crime scene), which just feels out of place. Way too many times are Kamin and Jade way too busy flirting instead of focusing on the murders (the plot manages to conveniently forget that Kamin got 7 days to solve the case). It makes it feel like the romance is in the way of the murder mystery, to which I just desperatly wanted to get back to, but had to sit through Jade and Kamin's tenth couple moment.
But to be fair, JoongDunk have incredible chemistry and if you separate the scenes from the plot, they are lovely, cute and enjoyable moments. If only they weren't happening while kids were being murdered on daily basis.
That brings me to the murder mystery part of this story.
It started really good. The Truth or Dare thing worked, we had 7 kids and wondered, who of them killed their friend Fai. I was hooked. Then came letters and more deaths and it was awesome. The deaths were creative and chilling (especially Bell's, I needed a few minutes to recover, I was shaking and it really gotten to me). Slowly uncovering the truth worked at the start too.
But then we lost focus. We got lot of unnecessary romance (I did not expect to yell "skip the flirting and give me the murders" at my screen during a JoongDunk drama, but here I was, doing exactly that), for some reason focused on a drug dealer way too much (we could've linked it to Phut way more easily than with two eps worth of bs) and we got AouBoom for some reason (and don't get me wrong, I love AouBoom, but what was that, they were so unnecessary here, especially in the last ep where they just straight up third-wheeled).
The plot also seemed to want me to turn my brain off with that, because a lot of plot holes and issues started popping out. Let me name a few here:
1) Why was Time totally forgotten during the initial investigation? He was the most sus during the first interrogation and Kamin with Jade didn't talk to him at all.
2) When Jay didn't come home in the evening (the night he saw Kla's death), Jade nor Kamin were alarmed and went to sleep calmly, even though they were aware he (Jay) could be the next target.
3) Jade and Kamin never saw Fai's body nor never wanted to (despite doing so with other victims). Phut gave them the "autopsy" results in EP 2, yet later when they were looking into the ketamine, they had to visit Phut again to let him run tox screen (even though he supposedly did that, since he told them about the other meds in her body).
4) Kamin being suspended but then the drama acts like if that never happened, he just keeps investigating.
5) They haven't found the secret cameras in victim's places until the plot allowed them to.
6) The whole idea of Champ's plan being orchestrating Fai's rape to make her his girlfriend. ... ... What?
7) The biggest mystery of this series being if Jay was or wasn't shot and him being quite chill despite being shot. My guy was acting as if that was nothing but a bruise and Kamin with Jade taking it so calmly as if GSW was a minor inconvenience,
8) Them saving Champ (who somehow survived despite losing a limb) and leaving Fai behind (even though she was just stabbed in her shoulder blade and should have been way more okay than Champ).
9) Phut somehow survivng despite standing right next to a bomb when it went off.
I could go on and on.
The final big reveal wasn't really revealing, since I figured out the killers (yes, both of them) by episode 5. Never felt this awful for using my brain, because it made me enjoy the ending even less.
The last issue is the production.
The audio engineer took a vacation and their 5 year old child took over. That's the only way I could explain the sound issues. Sometimes the audio is so quiet you need to boost up your volume to 200% to be able to hear what the characters are saying. Another time the audio is so boosted it blasts off your roof. Sometimes the characters sound like they are underwater.
The director was probably very tired and done with their job because the consistency was inconsistent. As I mentioned above, throughout the plot, there is a lot of issues. But the inconsistency was even within the scenes. I understand that there are multiple shots, but director should be able to make sure that people's hands are not rapidly changing postitions each cut.
The cameraman also had their issues, because why were completely static shots shaking as if there was an earthquake?
CGI was also low quality, but honestly, that wouldn't be a problem if the rest was good. Sometimes the budget is not there for flawless CGI and that's fine.
The acting was carrying this all. JoongDunk are amazing (though Dunk did struggle with the English lines a bit) and their chemistry is undeniable. I totally adored Ohm and can't wait to see more of him. Sing and Pahn absolutelly killed it in the last episode and were honestly the highlight of this series. The other actors did a great job too, which is admirable, since they were given such a terrible script to work with.
If this wasn't a JoongDunk series, I'm pretty sure the overall MDL score would be definitely lower.
I watched Goddess Bless Your From Death along with this and let me tell you, that was a good murder mystery. Not this. I am very disappointed.
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