3/5 stars
Lead cast: Kim Hyun-joo, Park Hee-soon, Park Byung-eun, Ryu Kyung-soo
Swigging a makgeolli (Korean rice wine) bottle, an old man mutters to himself while traipsing through a wintry field. Panic suddenly seizes him and he collapses to the earth, gripping his own throat as he breathes his last, his terror-filled eyes gazing at the gravesite ominously looming over him from the blue mountains beyond.
What horrible secrets could be buried there?
This is the hugely atmospheric opening of the six-part horror thriller The Bequeathed, Netflix’s first Korean drama of the year.
12 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in January 2024
12 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in January 2024
Before long, more bodies begin to drop and as Seo-ha, Sung-joon and Sang-min try to identify the killer, they are compelled to delve into the mystery surrounding the gravesite.
The show’s bleak and evocative countryside setting immediately calls to mind a few landmarks of Korean cinema.
These similarities lay out The Bequeathed’s intentions. This is a grim and stylised journey into the countryside and its swept-under-the-rug horrors. Later in the opening episode we are shown the tiny village that serves as the setting for the series from afar, tightly enveloped by the suffocating nearby hills.
Another of the show’s K-cinema building blocks is creator Yeon himself, as the foul-mouthed, alcoholic uncle, and the wealth of parasitic characters, which are reminiscent of Yeon’s dark indie animation The Fake, which was later adapted as the drama Save Me 2.
Yeon may not be the director but his DNA is all over this series. The grim locations, hopeless characters and unforgiving society are all hallmarks of his work.
The Bequeathed draws us in quickly with its atmosphere but the mystery of its central premise soon loses its lustre. Viewers looking for full-on supernatural horror – despite early reports, this is not a zombie series – may be wise to readjust their expectations.
This is more in the vein of a serial killer thriller, with the usual neon lights swapped out for the brown hues of mud and dirt.
A lot of time is devoted to the investigation and particularly the frosty interactions between the detectives, whose positions have reversed over the course of their years on the force, thanks to a terrible incident that befell them a few years earlier.
The show loses its way around the halfway point, when the action slows down and the reveals don’t offer the most exciting new nuggets of information.
It does come back strongly near the finale, when the show’s big secret is laid bare and the main characters are thrust into a tense and twisted set piece involving a kiln.
Given the short episodes and the meandering midsection, one wonders if the story would have been better suited to being a feature film.
The year 2024 looks to be a big one for Yeon as he is also scheduled to return as a director in March with the Korean adaptation of the popular Japanese manga Parasyte, while the second season of Hellbound is currently in post-production.
The Bequeathed will start streaming on Netflix on January 19.