The Cursed (2020)

Thrilling. Unsettling to some extent. Additionally to an enthralling story you get great acting.

"The Cursed" puts Korean shamanism at the center of events. Shamans play their role again and again in KDramas - even if they are only indirectly present in the form of yellow adhesive talismans in red Hanja writing for fertility, luck, prosperity, etc. But in "The Cursed" they actively determine what happens. The shamans are distinguished by their spirit conection and/or have inherited their practice. To this day, Muism or Sindo - the shaman religion - is firmly rooted in everyday life as the oldest popular belief system.

So you inevitably have to deal with magical rituals, shamanistic practices and (in this case) evil spirits who quickly possess people or e.g.. rather curse them. It is quite somber and frightening considering that mere human ability has little to counter these forces and practices.

Viewer ratings have more than doubled over the course of the TVseries. For South Korean audiences, the KDrama obviously struck a chord. For me it was an intense drama. Thrilling. Unsettling to some extent. Generally, I would recommend it, if you are open to face another realm besides our rational reality. Additionally to an enthralling story you get great acting. (No romance, though...)

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This actually started out amazing. The story was very interesting, though not scary, and it quickly became clear who the main characters were up against. By the time that Jin Hee was kidnapped, the drama went downhill really fast, to the point that I didn't want to watch the rest of the episodes and was not curious about the ending at all. Jin Hee and her husband don't act like a married couple, but more like distant acquaintances who just happen to share an apartment. He wasn't losing his mind when he heard that his wife was kidnapped.
The kidnappers had been doing this whole kidnap-beat-kill routine for a while, but they magically forgot to take away Jin Hee's bag which contained her cell-phone with the tracking app. That was so outrageous that it just put me off everything. The kidnappers kill everyone they kidnap but they let the private investigator go for some reason?? And didn't anticipate that he'd go and rat them out to the police?
Shaman Jin Kyung went down very easily, for a powerful shaman. The whole crumpled, twisted body thing was creepy the first time but it just made me bored the second time. Sung Dong Il did a good job in the first half of the show, but somehow I just couldn't continue to see him as an evil guy towards the end. And what is up with that end? All that So Jin can do is curse and kill folk, so how the heck did she manage to somehow unite the Inugami in her own body and drag it out of the Forest app? I don't even know what happened in the last episode and I am not the least bit curious.
I also wonder how Chairman could kill people after looking at their picture once, but he didn't do it immediately with So Jin? Why does he lose his energy when he does it? how come his power is different from So Jin's?
Too many potholes and such a lost potential. The acting was good though.

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