"Through the Darkness" is a slow unravelling of the mind - the twisted criminal one and the righteous one. There are few chase scenes to give you thrills and no hidden culprits, instead the narrative delves deep into the criminal profiling scene in South Korea and the hard work that goes into it.

The drama portrays all the nitty-gritty details that happen backstage - the long hours of gruelling and repetitive data analysis, hundreds of interviews with convicts, research etc. This kind of job puts a psychological strain on the characters and Kim Nam Gil perfectly portrays the consequences of empathizing too much with killers.

The setting is realistic and feels lived in - the atmosphere of the early 2000s is omnipresent and every shot is devoid of so-called artificial "cleanliness". Every scene is immersive as well as beautifully acted.

The director and writer's approach to the minds of serial killers is outstanding and praise-worthy. At first, the viewers are shown flashbacks of their childhood as well as given the opportunity to understand their motives. Little by little the explanations dry out, the flashbacks disappear, and we learn close to nothing about their family if it isn't relevant to their arrest. "Through the Darkness" takes a relevant stand: in the end, there were victims and the motives of the killers do not matter, their horrible childhoods do not matter, their stories do not matter. They are all the same anyway.

What matters are the people left behind and the drama sticks that landing with Song Ha Young's last interrogation.