Midnight Museum (2023)

Midnight Mess

I am going to start out by saying this drama is a hot mess in almost every way. Going into it, I overall enjoyed it. Searching for the missing artifacts was fun and interesting and I enjoyed the cameos from other GMMTV actors. But the sudden departure from that into some weird religious/sci-fi/fantasy combo really didn't work for me. The ending was rushed and I would say unsatisfying in some ways. The farther I got into it, the more obvious the plot holes, underdeveloped or abandoned plotlines, repetitiveness, lack of world building and character development became. I really wanted to like this drama. The trailer made it seem so entertaining, but I found myself disappointed in it. It's one saving grace is its actors who clearly gave their all and managed to keep me invested.

For me, Midnight Museum felt like two stories that were smashed together and nominally linked. The first part, as shown in the trailer, revolves around stolen cursed artifacts and the search for them. This was the most entertaining part of the drama for me. It wasn't perfect, the main story didn't seem to progress much due the episodic nature focusing on a single cursed object each episode, but for the most part, it worked well. The second part is where it lost me as it takes a sudden religious/sci-fi turn introducing gods, the four horsemen, the concept of a multiverse, the ability to communicate with people from the past, and more. These episodes also have a weird combination of excess dialogue with characters monologuing to try to explain the unexplainable and a fair amount of action. It's like the writers decided to suddenly make this a much deeper drama than it was initially and failed completely. In the end, none of it was properly explored or explained.

Besides the story itself, the pacing was also a mess. The pacing with the first half or so of the drama was okay. A bit slow at times, but not awful. It kept moving and I was still invested in the story. The second half is, again, where the issue was for me with another weird combination of being simultaneously too fast and too slow. As a whole, it felt rushed, but there were numerous scenes that felt incredibly slow. There was also the issue of repetitiveness, namely in that Dome ended up unconscious every single episode and Khatha repeatedly got his ass handed to him, and the predictability of the characters who all acted exactly as one would expect them to.

And speaking of characters, the lack of character development in this drama was shocking. The only character with any kind of progression I felt was Anthika and even hers was pretty nominal. Frankly, some of the side characters early on were better developed than the main ones. I did enjoy the bromance between Dome and Khatha which stayed just this side of romance. It definitely had the potential to go there and if there's a season 2, I could see them going that route. However, as the main characters, they just weren't particularly strong. The side characters just existed. They didn't add to the story in a meaningful way and the lack of background and opportunity to really get to know them meant that I wasn't invested in them and didn't feel much of anything regardless of what happened to them. That being said, I did like them, I just needed and wanted more.

While the characters were a bit of disappointment, the actors were not. This was a strong cast that was unfortunately underutilized. Gun is an incredible actor and his ability to portray multiple characters, while not surprising in the slightest, was fantastic to watch. I was not familiar with Tor prior to Midnight Museum, but I was also impressed with his acting. He absolutely held his own alongside Gun, he was expressive in all the right ways and I overall enjoyed his performance. He and Gun had great chemistry. The supporting cast also performed well aside from Tay whose performance I found underwhelming. Of the guest actors, Nanon stood out far above everyone else. I know he's a talented actor, but I haven't seen him portray multiple characters within a single drama before and he absolutely nailed it.

The production value was hit or miss. The museum was huge, but we only get to see a very small portion of it, and it felt far too empty. The CGI was good at times and painfully fake at others. It didn't help that a few of the actors didn't seem either familiar or comfortable acting with nothing which made the CGI for those scenes that much more awkward. I don't normally mention costuming, but leaving Dome wearing the grey tracksuit for a large part of the drama was just weird. And the women were often dressed in completely unpractical clothing for what they were doing. That being said, Anthika's dress at the auction was gorgeous and both Khathka's and Triphob's clothing were generally hits. I enjoyed the soundtrack for the most part. Other than a few moments, I didn't find it distracting but rather complementary, appropriate for what was going on in each scene.

Midnight Museum had the potential to be an absolute masterpiece. It's a true shame that it failed so hard to live up to that potential. Frankly, I should rate it lower than I did, but it was just entertaining enough to keep it at a 7. It's worth watching once, but no more and even then just for the first half and the acting. The ending, leaving it open to a second season, was disappointing and unnecessary. I honestly cannot picture a positive outcome for a second season.

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