Interesting premise and great acting; awkward characters and flawed story

The story itself had a very interesting start, opening up with a gruesome case with a mysterious perpetrator, with all clues pointing to the main lead as the culprit. The drama did a great job of peeling apart the layers of this event, starting off by presenting us with a colorful cast of villagers and close friends of the ML, but slowly melts off their facades to reveal the gruesome truths of that night and the evils within them. I have to give Kudos to the actors/actresses as they did a great job of playing the roles of innocent, friendly villagers at the start, to transforming into some of the most hatable, blood-boiling characters I have seen on the small screen.

Along with the acting, I also thought the pacing was pretty good for a 14 episode drama. While there were moments that could have been sped up here and there, the writers did a good job of revealing the truth piece by piece throughout the story, keeping me invested without making the truth easy to guess until the final episodes. The atmosphere of the setting was creepy and keeps us at the edge of our seats. Dark lighting and multiple camera angles of the same scenes kept suspense up and truths hidden. These were a few of the things I liked about this work and kept me watching until the end. Now for the negatives.

The main character was not interesting... I think his acting was fine, but he didnt have much to work with. He doesn't really have any standout moments for me throughout the story. The ML gets trounced on over and over and over again the whole show, and while this did drew pity from me and made me root for him, I don't think the resolutions the main character reached in the latter parts of the show are satisfying in comparison. In moments where he is supposed to stand out, like when he approaches the people who framed him, the lines are neither memorablr nor impactful. This mostly ammounts to something along the lines of "Don't you feel sorry to (victim name)?" or "why did you do it? which gets pretty old when you see this sequence repeatedly for each person who framed him (which happens to be almost every character). I think this ended up making the main character a kind person with a really uninteresting personality that could've been much more interesting if they had either more badass in his scenes like the second main lead, or made him a more flawed complex character. As he is, it feel like he doesn't add too much to the story other than being a plot device for finding the truths of the murders.

Go Bo Kyeol, while she acted well, I felt like her character was not fleshed out well enough to be worth including in the story. It seemed a little awkward how they spent the premise developing her as this superstar who was the only one to stay by the MLs side at the start, but then stopped really developing her as a character until later, where she is revealed to be some psychopath mastermind who had planned out for the ML to be put in prkson. I don't think they explained her backstory well enough for me to fully accept that she went from having a simple, albeit jealous c
Highschiol girl crush for the ML. to becoming a sociopath lover of the ML, framing him and happily visiting him in prison for 10 years. Even when her truths are revealed to the ML, the resolution for her seemed forced and really unnecessary for the overall story.

I also think there were too many plot holes for me to really ignore throughtout the drama. I think it was weird seeing how conveniently easy it was for witnesses throughout the story to clearly recall small details from events from over 10 years ago, like the details of a random car crash they saw and the exact voice of the killer they heard over a 2g cellphone. But sure, let's say they did recall these events because they were so traumatic; why was it so easy for this to become credible evidence for the police? Especially considering these same police had brushed off other, more concrete evidence from the day of the incident, like DNA samples on the clothing of the victim. This drama is about a case from over 10 years ago, which in real life would be almost impossible to solve, so I understand that these plotholes would exist for the convenience of the story.. .but they did make the story significantly less immersive for me.

Overall, I think the premise and buildup of the drama were interesting enough for me to push along and finish it, but the negatives of this drama did exist and made me give it a lower score than I would otherwise. In the long list of Korean thriller mystery dramas that exist where Signal stands at the top, I probably wouldn't recommend this to others. But if you especially like the cast and have time to spend this was overall entertaining. 6.5/10

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