The Devil (2023)

㊙️ The Most Evil Deal ⚔ °7.4° °VG°

Revenant; definition: A person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead.

“People around you will die. People you don't like or wish would disappear will die. Evil spirits are said to grow by fulfilling a person's desires.” The folklore prof looked very serious when he said this. (He must be insane!)

Next thing, the guy who scammed their family hung himself.

Let's get this out of the way: There's too many unexplained things out there for all of them to be a coincidence. Whether it's supernatural or super dimensional (perhaps there's no difference between the two) any fair-minded person who looks at the evidence would agree that there's quite possibly, even probably, more to our existence than this 3D plane.

Lost time, memory lapses, purchases she doesn't remember, things she doesn't remember saying or doing… Ku San Young is increasingly confused and disturbed. Is it multiple personalities? D.I.D? Drugs? Nope. It's possession. Most cultures in the world have lore, myth and/or downright belief that possession exists. There's psychologists, and other highly educated people who do - because they've seen it, like Dr. Richard Gallagher, Ivy League grad, board-certified psychiatrist and Columbia/New York Medical College professor.

San Young doesn't deserve this. She's not an evil person. An evil spirit shouldn't want to hang out with her, right? Sure, she was thinking about killing herself, but she pulled back. The scammer took everything. Her mother is impossible to deal with... She /didn't/ jump, though. The woman on the /other/ side of the road did. And then the evil spirit left the woman across the road and latched onto her. Now, Su Young can see spirits. This weird folklore professor is texting her, talking to her, and saying all kinds of weird things to her, like: Everybody around Su Young is going to die. Another thing he says is that doors are the passageways between worlds. If someone knocks at the door, make sure you know who it is before you open it.

® is a 2023 release that is rated 89 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 12 70-minute episodes. What a creeptastic opening. Watch the opening credits. They are short in length and tall in imagination. To get right to the point, ® is good, but not great. Its greatest failure is that the characters don't completely possess its audience. We remain on the outside and never fully bond with the protags. Don't wait around for love: They just tease us. Perhaps they are looking at a S2? Nothing has been announced.

Furthermore, ® is scary, but it's much sadder than merely scary. It's loosely tied, with many fine working elements that come together to make an interesting, imminently watchable show that leaves one feeling quite morose along with the sense that it could have been better. Ep12 runs into problems - Stupid people, stupid actions, stupid plot turns. It's mostly confined to 2 scenes. They recover.

The show can get pretty creepy. It isn't on the level of some of the darkest Hollywood stuff, but it has bona fide chills. There's many deaths. The primary evil spirit is a child ghost. The ghost's backstory is horrifying. Anyone who finds child abuse to be a particular trigger may want to avoid ®: It took a toll on me. Child sacrifice is/was not as uncommon as we would like to believe. Child abuse is/was not uncommon at all. There were many moments when the show weighed heavily on me. The plain, oft repeated & proven fact is that a group of people can talk themselves into any action, no matter how heinous.

There's more good than bad to ®. We've got an all-star cast. Kim Tae Ri (Mr. Sunshine-9, Twenty-Five Twenty-One, Space Sweepers-7.6) is FL Ku San Young. She's fantastic. Young is a little woman who casts a big shadow. It's a shame she kills herself in ep1. Wait… that was the woman on the /other/ side of the bridge. Young caught herself in time. But her mom blew the money. They're wiped out. That didn't change. Yang Hye Ji (Sweet Home-8.4, Wonderful World-7.8, When the Weather Is Fine-9) portrays her BFF, Baek SeMi, who is put-off and often hurt, even, by the recent changes in Young's personality. Ye Soo Jung (Mine-8, Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7) has a guest role as Kim Seok Ran, San Young's paternal grandmother. She's a fantastic actress.

Park Ji Young (Save Me, The Red Sleeve) plays Yoon Kyeong Moon, San Young's mother. As of ep5, I'm not in love with her performance, but she is a beautiful woman. She has to play a person who has been through severe trauma. Her backstory is rough. (We will see, I thought to myself early on). In the final analysis, her part drags the show down. She's annoying and she does irritating things.

Oh Jung Se (It's Okay to Not Be Okay-9, Queen of Tears) plays ML Yeom Hae Sang. He's been following Professor Ku KangMo/San Young's father's career (Jin Seon Kyu of Space Sweepers-7.6, Kingdom-8.3) for a long time. The legend, Na Byung Hee, is his grandmother and CEO of Joonghyun Capital. Her first credit is from 1977. I've seen her in No Gain, No Love-7.4, Inspector Koo-8.4, Start-up-8, Hospital Playlist-9, Saimdang, Light’s Diary-8.5, & Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds-7.2, and I've just been watching since 2020. She can play the sweet grandmother, the frustrated mother, or the queen b!+ch. She's fabulous. In ® she acts possessed, or at a minimum, oppressed. Never seen her like this before - She's really dug into her evil.

Both police officer roles, and the actors that portray them, are underutilized. That isn't about screen time. There's something missing from their character arcs. Kim Won-Hae (Black-9, Signal-8.6, and so many more) plays officer Seo Mun-Chun. He's terrific in every role. In ®, though he is a cop and deals with facts, his personal history is such that he knows there are supernatural phenomena out there. On one level he knows, on another level he refuses to accept it. This creates a lot of tension in him as well as an obsession with strange suicide cases and other unexplained phenomenon. Its only result is that it has garnered him the moniker ‘Detective Shaman’. He happens to be friends with folklore professor Yeom Hae Sang. Hong Kyung (Weak Hero Class 1, DP-8.4) is the other ML, Lee Hong Sae, a young detective. He had the highest score of his year on the exam. He's partnered with officer Seo Mun-Chun. Everything his senior says and does make some uncomfortable. This partner will say things like ‘As a detective he's supposed to be easing the grudges of the Dead.’ How can anybody say that in this age of science & globalism, he wonders? “Do you want to come with us?" He's asked by Professor Yeom. “No thanks,” is his clipped reply. “I'll conduct a more rational investigation.” The viewer is “in” on the inside joke and the over-the-top irony weighing down this statement.

The screenwriter is the highly talented Kim Eun Hee (Signal-8.6, Kingdom-8.3), and the directors are Lee Jung Rim (V.I.P) & Kim Jae Hong (Through the Darkness, Flex X Cop-8.5).

The main theme is: The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil + Money doesn't solve every problem. What is done for money (and food) in the show rivals documented dark histories and many horrifying conspiracy theories about what still goes on today. The realm of hungry ghosts is one of the Six Paths in Buddhism, we learn. Being hungry and thirsty, hungry ghosts always covet, and their realm was created by human desires. This basic template loosely shows up in anime, and the classic Chinese work, Journey to the West (A Korean Odyssey-7.2 is based on it). It isn't completely unlike Dante's Inferno, either. Someone's been sprucing up on their folklore.

There are a few amusing scenes. Our FL and the professor are conducting their own investigation while the police are rationally investigating “the facts”. They are working from completely different angles. Yet they still end up at the same places at the same time. It's probably the best element of the show.

Will you like this? ® is a show for fans of the horror and supernatural genre. It happens to be my least favorite genre- probably because Hwood's stuff tends to be so evil feeling, but I still like a good scare every now and then. I thought The Ring, for instance, was very well done. In my estimation, the good outweighs the bad, but ® is not on the watching level of The Cursed 8.3, The Wailing-8.8, or even Uncanny Counter S1 (S2 is horrible). Hopefully this provides some light in the darkness.


In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:

Modern Day -
A Witch's Love 7.8,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
My Mister 9.5,

🎎 -
My Only Love Song 8.7 ~ excellent comedy,
Mr. Queen 8.5,
My Sassy Girl 8.5,
Saimdang 8.5,
The King's Affection 8.3,
Mr. Sunshine 9

⚡/🚀 -
Glitch-8,
Mystic Pop-up Bar-8.2,
Hotel del Luna-8.4,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Missing: The Other Side-8.3,
Flower of Evil 8.9,
Mother-8.8,
The Man from Nowhere 8.9,
Black 9,
Squid Game 8.4,
Kingdom 8.3,
Sweet Home 8.4

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