isaac

this was good for a standard death game series, and by good i mean it was mediocre but still entertaining because of the deaths and waiting for the mafia reveals and subsequent crashouts. however, all of the fun i had despite the flaws gets overshadowed by the ending which i’ll talk about later.

first i have to talk about the characters. there’s nothing wrong with sticking to stereotypes—especially in the mafia/werewolf death game genre where the same kind of characters can be found in every installment—but they didn’t really take the chance to explore any of them, especially jun hee who’s backstory was hinted at and yet we didn’t get more than the same flashback scene twice which was disappointing. despite yoon soo being the main character and us as the viewers experiencing everything from her perspective, seeing all these crazy hallucinations with her, i struggled to even remember her name because she wasn’t all that memorable. the supporting cast, especially cha woo min and ahn ji ho, definitely outperformed her even despite their antagonistic roles in the show. there wasn’t a single emotional scene in these twelve episodes that even made me tear up (and im a VERY easy crier) which means there weren’t any characters i felt even remotely connected too. the actions of the characters themselves are also incredibly disappointing as everyone is so… questionable, especially during the final two days. the only person who was playing the mafia game properly was somi as she was manipulative and managed to turn the attention away from herself for most of the game, which i was hoping from cha woo min’s character so seeing him stick to his stereotype was disappointing.

now for the worst part of this drama, the ending… i don’t have anything new to add to the conversation that hasn’t been better worded by others who’ve written reviews, but it was completely unnecessary to add in the plot twist of se eun’s parents keeping all the students in a constant mafia game loop as revenge for them being the cause of their daughter’s suicide. i would’ve been perfectly fine with this show being a genuine ghost story or if the kids were in some kind of limbo/purgatory for what had happened to se eun, i honestly think the latter would’ve been a better twist than a virtual world. it made no sense for EVERY kid, including yoon soo who was literally friends with se eun and didn’t even know about the bullying, to be forced into the punishment because half of them couldn’t even be classified as bystanders as they literally didn’t know she was being bullied. as for the bullying itself i was expecting something much worse from how eun ha and so mi were acting when they learned this was connected to their dead classmate, but a shitty deep fake just left me disappointed honestly. the ending really ruined the feelings i had to this show prior to the last twenty or so minutes because i genuinely enjoyed it even though it wasn’t the best up until the ending.