Visually, this is quite stunningly beautiful, in a deeply satisfying way. Ahhh the color. Every single scene was a jewel: they could have made the whole thing silent (and kept the orchestral part of the soundtrack, which I also loved) and I would still probably have watched all 16 episodes. The storyline switches between the ghost hotel's current incarnation in present-day Seoul and monster-of-the-week-style tales of its residents as its new young non-ghostly manager adjusts to his job, and historical flashbacks to the story of the immortal, 1000-year-old owner Jang Man-wol and how she got the curse which ties her to the hotel. She was a great character, wonderfully played by IU - I had never heard of her before this, but she was marvelous, and so was her wardrobe, which must have filled a warehouse. I loved both the flashbacks and the ghosts and unlike some reviewers, I liked the ML, who grew on me, and in fact all of the cast. And it was so very good in parts, especially the flashbacks. I'm sad that it's finished and out of my queue.

But the storyline was undeniably patchy and messed up: there were too many arcs, which felt rushed, badly paced and not sufficiently filled out, and the end fell very flat for me, as did both of the romances. I felt similarly about The Master's Sun - that it started so well and could have been absolutely brilliant - so I'm super curious now about the Hong sisters' writing process: how much is pre-outlined, how much is done on the fly as it's filmed? Because it feels like they just started pantsing it at some point because they were out of time. If anyone is reading this who has better Korean than me (not hard) and can link to any interviews with them, that would be great. Anyway. In short, could have been a 10, but it gets an 8. Still definitely worth watching though.