wELL.
I frakking hate this show.

First PMO (Patented Minority Opinion) of 2023, apparently. Starting the year out strong, I see.

What a gigantic waste of time. And the colour grading and lighting! Simply atrocious! Pray tell, why does your show look like the washed out remains of a sad, tired, desaturated ash heap? Even the pink? Why is it so draining to watch and leeched of all life and colour??! Hideous.

No, I will not be elaborating any farther on my special distastes towards this disgarceful mess. May it burn with the fire of a thousand righteous suns.

Instant Endosolistration List, this AND Season 2/Part 2, which I will quite emphatically and obviously NOT be watching.

Good riddance!

Episode 5 & 6 were my fav episodes. I think I cried in these two episodes. Especially the story of yohan and his bro was heartwrenching. Like you said, Cha Eunwoo acted his pant off. He was fabulous and I ended up crying. His desperation to save his brother, his usual cockiness and composure all gone, he was just a lost younger bro, trying to save his loved one. At the end, when he had to kill his bro, you could see he was a broken man behind all the smiles. Even his crackling voice added to the scene. Another scene which made me sad was when they killed the fiancé of Miho's friend. The ending was shocking. The school girl twist was awesome! I can't wait to see more of Gungtan. Kim Nam Gil, Lee Dahee, Cha Eunwoo & Sung Joon all acted well in their parts but personally, Yohan was my fav character in season 1 and the last two episodes made me love him and sympathies with him more. Eunwoo got a chance to show his range - from fun loving, cocky, happy go lucky bright young fellow to action star to broken man. I want to see how our trio will deal in the next season

As always, thank you for your recap!

I have to say after completing s1, I find the show underwhelming.
I was surprised that even with a lot of creepy demon-fighting action, the episodes have extended periods that are rather dull and dragged out. It's strange since I was initially fairly excited about Kim Nam Gil and Go Doo Shim. I find both actors phenomenal, but here in The Island, the acting overall seems kind of flat, bland, and all around a bit lackluster. I have a hard time relating to any of the characters.

I'm really hoping that s2 will give me more reason to watch other than just Cha Eun Woo's earrings. I am interested to see what they end up doing with the story as well as the prophecy. Here's hoping for a better season 2.

Tough crowd out here lol I actually enjoyed it. I think they’re doing a decent job fitting in all aspects of the story in 12 episodes. I do wish they had just done 16 so they could go further into the story. I think the actors are doing a really good job at portraying the characters. Miho is my fav but I didn’t like how they randomly made her infatuated with Van… it felt unnecessary this early on like they could’ve waited until part 2 for that. Yohan is cute and I think Cha Eunwoo really proved himself with this drama. Gungtan is pure evil and I think sungjoon did an amazing job at portraying that. Okay byeeeee

Thanks for the great recap and your thoughts @solstices! I am actually baffled by the low ratings and ultra negative reviews. This show started off as a cute, comedy, horror and continues to be dark with a little less humour in its latter episodes, but still retains heartwarming and cute moments. One thing that has remained consistent throughout is that it continues to not take itself too seriously. It’s light and funny but so fast and cool. I am particularly enjoying the musical score. I listened to that ending score on repeat lolll. The overall vibes remind me of early 2000s grunge rock and horror anime/manga…(inuyasha and demon slayer anyone?)…I like it…a lot. And the actors all unsurprisingly deliver. AND the story seems to still be setting premise so i expect more answers next season. Soooo, I am enjoying every bit? Anyway, I’ve already marked my calendar and looking forward to Feb 2023!

Well, I will be watching S2 of the drama, but don't ask em what.

These two episodes have been bad, at least to me. We have so many unanswered questions (why MiHo has her bangs, who dresses her with those bermudas an high boots, why does a Catholic priest change his earrings every day, how is it that there are so many violent deaths in Jeju and we haven't seen a single police officer...).

I have to complain about the writing (and the editing, acting and directing, but let's focus): we don't know why things happen now or why things happened before. Whatever happens on the screen feels random, and you can't tell if it's been an hour, a day, a week or a month between scenes. The pathing is bad, the timing is awful.

Regarding the acting, not even KNG is good here, and this says a lot.

And well, at least we finally got two lines from SJ. It only took six episodes.

This drama is bad but I am still watching. My own 2023 Sisymess.

Hum.... Our genius priest is trying to save Mi-Ho or to kill her? He put her in danger twice intentionally and thoughtfully...

I don't really care about Mi-Ho and Johan, they're useless.

I'm more curious about our 2 half demons and their past, relationship, etc. But we had to wait for the 6th episode to see them together and now there is a break...

The story, the pacing, the editing, etc are meh. Killing a character we just met doesn't have any impact whether the brother or the future husband.

Well, nothing worked in the show. The mythology was a mess. Kim Nam gil was wasted - does brooding black clothed persona works? - yes it does , but does it elevates the show to something more than a mess - No. One thing is sure - CEW has improved. He is no longer green and wooden. I feel bad for Lee Da Hee - two back to back shows with atrocious wardrobe and boring characters.
Here again those horrible white boots make multiple appearances- are they sponsored product? She should just throw those things out.

I haven't seen these episodes yet nor even read the recap, but the comments perversely tempt me to keep watching just to see the anatomy of a trainwreck laid bare. On the other hand, if I stop now, I won't have to see the bangs-bermuda-shorts-and-boots combo again (at least in this drama; who knows what sartorial horrors will crop up in other shows). Decisions, decisions.

I'm really not getting the hate for this drama. At all.

Personally I love the visual style, with its dark muted colors and stark lighting. It really makes the setting of Jeju Island seem like this wild, haunted place that's practically a character itself. I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and the world they've created, even if we've gotten more questions then answers at this point. And I think the characters are awesome and flawed in interesting ways, and the actors are portraying them well and have great onscreen chemistry.

Pus, it's really fun! After 2022 being the year of chronically dropped and disappointing dramas for me, personally, I'm glad my first watch of 2023 turned out to be something I'm enjoying this much! Excited for the next half :)

Meh, this drama was watchable, but also forgettable.
The first two episodes were campy and sorta fun. But after that, it was less campy. It's like a movie where the writers didn't flesh out the characters and/or stories enough. Don't know if more episodes would have helped.

Unfortunately, I'm not connecting with any of the characters.
It's crazy how the friend's husband and Yo Han's brother were introduced and killed all in one/two episodes. I felt bad for their loved ones, sure. But there was no deep, emotional impact.

I really groaned when it came to the flashback of the young brothers and their ordeal with their adopted parents.

There was one time (last week?), I noticed Yo Han's hand was shaking and he hid it. And with the fact that he put Mi Ho in danger multiple times, I wonder if he is secretly sinister. On the other hand, he did save her this time.

I'll still watch the next season to finish the story. It's only 6 episodes~ But I'm not expecting to be amazed by it.

woah omg i didn't know people were not enjoying this show at all and wtf was I the only one who found out through this post that it resumes in feb??? wtf is this a new trend? break shows into 2 parts? omfg im so tired of shows doing that.

aside from that i'm enjoying the show so far even tho most of the plot is predictable but I'm confused as to why Kim Nam Gil has so little screen time despite being a main character (where tf does he go 90% of the time??) and i wasnt expecting a plot twist at all till i found out this show only had 12eps.
I wasn't bothered about the side plots in todays eps (sorry I couldn't feel anything between yohan & his brother you just introduced him to me) but CTJ should just stick with villain roles as he does a fantastic job with them & Soojin's husband was sad but cmon did you really expect to be happy when you're best friends with the woman literal demons are trying to kill?

Reading these comments (as a person who is slowly making her way through this show—still on episode 3) makes me want to keep watching anyway. I know that @sicarius, and @leetennant, and @ezal and I hardly ever agree on dramas. @ezal and I are are more aligned typically. So when @sicarius hates something, I probably will like it. Although, I’ve not ever thought kdramas do a great job integrating Western religions with Eastern and make it make sense, but because it’s fantasy I can look the other way. And in this case I can run faster and get more euphoric and lean into its ridiculousness a little more. I just remembered that I need to watch Into the darkness soon, which this thread reminds me every time I read it. I have nothing earth-shattering to add, but it seems that those who read the webtoon are coming to this show in a completely different place than those that haven’t. And I’m just happy a kdrama is getting some notice on the Western front. And #imhereforthepretty

This is dumb. Why am I doing this 😂😂😂. Okay.

I said I wouldn’t. But here is that not exhaustive list of reasons why I loathe this show and want to set it on fire anyway:

1. I need you to understand that my issues with the CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DIRECTING (broad, general terms) of this show, as I briefly mention in comment one of this thread, are not purely a personal taste in style thing.
No, this is objectively, badly shot, lit, coloured, paced, edited and styled. At some point the quality of film techniques becomes a fact, and not something to debate subjectives over:
This show is tonally confused, and aesthetically terrible.

- The internal scenes look like noir. The external scenes look like pastoral weekenders with a funeral filter over them. The actions scenes are all standard horror.
- When the audience needs to be able to see what is going on, they can’t. That is BAD lighting. Not a specific kind of lighting technique. Not a stylistic choice. Not a contextual choice. That’s just bad lighting.
- There’s a difference between using a dark colour grading palette (see: Adamas), and desaturating your shots so much, that your characters are the same pallid tone, hue, and shade as your trees, your sky, your mountains, your 56th abandoned warehouse, and your demons, all in one; all a bleak, dreary value of grey.
I have news for you: horror elements in your show do not mean everything needs to look like a bedraggled sock, and everything is washed in darkness.
Compare, if you will: Sell Your Haunted House, where the main character also wore predominantly only black, and the genre was also fantasy horror, but the colour grading was vibrant and pleasing to watch, the horror elements using red and blue lighting, or setting contextual colour cues, to bring them to life, even when they were in the dark and or about dark things.
- The shots are not framed well, or even prettily. There was one shot in the entire 6 episodes I thought actually looked nice. There’s no sense of directing style in this show.
There’s not balance or character to how this show is shot. It’s just darkness, nonsense melo, action, and cgi.
Compare: White Christmas, that has a very limited colour palette, due to the setting, but where every shot counts for building the story, the characters, the themes, and the psychological noir tone.
Or: Adamas, that had a fairly moody urban gothic palette and tone, but built this up with lots of broad shots, symbolic framing and details, parallel narrative arcs and more.
- This is just an objectively bad example of anything it is trying to do visually here.

2. COSTUME DESIGN AND STYLING.

Costume design is an underrated aspect of television, imo. Costume design is not just “put our pretty actors in pretty branded clothes”. You should not be styling your characters according to the ACTORS or CAST; you should be styling them according to the CHARACTERS, who the characters are, their place in...

I'm trying to wrap my brains around how this production managed to convince THE Kim Nam Gil to come on board. The dialogues are comical and I'm really fed up with the number of times I have to witness the very dark and handsome Van rescue Miho, as much as I am fed up watching her flip her hair. I am going back to TTD for a second rewatch to erase this out of whatever remaining braincells I have left after ep 6.

The pacing on this show is so awful. There are the elements of a good show, but we need so much more time to get to know and care about these characters. There are tragedies and backstory and backstabbing all over the place, but they haven't given us the room to get attached to these people, so that we really feel the impact. I wish there were like two more episodes of monster of the week to allow for team building and attachment (including time with Mi-ho's friend) and then about four episodes to cover all the stuff that happened in the last two episodes.

The comments are hilarious. i didn't think it was that bad. It is a little stilted, but I really don't hate it as much as some do. I do not think it comes even close to Sisyphus in terms of nonsense, so that comment really made me laugh. I'll watch season 2.

Damn, I missed all the fun((( It seems that at this point we just have to accept this drama as yet another failed webtoon adaptation and either drop it or hate-watch for evulz till the end. Granted, it's not so BAD to require real hate - from me, at least - but the strong disappointment is enough too.

This week's episodes went under the motto of "info dump" - almost all the questions that drove me insane before were answered, followed by tons of answers I don't recall asking))) Yohan's brother storyline was as tragic as it was sudden - pretty sure we'd care more if it was introduced earlier (no, Italian demon blabbering vaguely about our Father Hallyu's dark past doesn't count!), just like we'd probably care more about Miho's friend and her husband-to-never-be. I did laugh when Van suddenly got hit with "I'll tell you everything" mood after denying poor girl (and us) ANY info for so long, but it got even funnier when granny gave EVEN MORE info... The only thing she forgot to tell is how to awake Miho's powers - how convenient to add more drama and drag the story till the Season 2))) At least now we know the desired endgame - Miho awakens, seals all the demons and purifies Van in process. One thing that Gungtan mentioned had me suspicious - he said that being around Miho weakens him (his demon half, I suppose). Does that mean that even without her awakening and other grand exorcisms she can "cure" Can just by being close? That would've explain why his powers started to decline drastically since Ep1. Poor Yohan's hyung if so, he literally died for no reason then (they could've keep him locked nearby and wait for her "good vibes" to work). Or her presence affects Van more since he wasn't possessed in a natural way (by demon corrupting his soul) so it's easier to separate his human and non-human sides?

Miho herself continues to be... just there. She reacts to things and usually does it in a convincing way that makes logical sense, but that's it. Her being a walking plot device doesn't help. I wish show was longer (and better) so we can flesh out the dramatically juicy dilemma of her trying to use her powers when she just doesn't know how. Or her complicated feelings to Van despite not remembering a thing about whatever relationship he and Wonjung had back then. Or how it feels to be THE chosen one. Ok, maybe without the last one, we've seen enough of that)))

Yohan, while still being fleshed out the most, went the dumb route this week. Multiple times. Not that shocking considering his age and how close to home things hit (CEW did well here, imo), but wow, Miho has not 1, but 2 supernatural bodyguards - and both suck at their job, poor girl! How did Gungtan know about hyung's identity before everyone else though? Or how everyone in this drama knows things they didn't witness and no one had time to tell them about?

Yeomji's dark alliances didn't shock me - she was sus since the beginning, esp her bipolar...

LOL at the comments here. And yes, I am also the type to get peevish and actually watch this show more because I do not share the opinion of the majority. LoI! I do not find this show that bad though sure, it is also not that compelling so I watch it while doing my chores.

On the introduction of new characters to explain some back stories, then killing them off - did not find that strange as episodic shows/serial do this all the time. 'Supernatural' comes to mind as an example. So I am surprised it was a sore point for some. Maybe the trick that worked for me is that I did not take this very seriously in the first place, the premise is already ludicrous so no high expectations.

Thank goodness the Sicario account wrote that rant so I didn’t have to! Lol. It was well written and boy, do I know how much of a commitment it took to get all that out. Point is, I agree with most of the interpretation.

The first two episodes completely deceived me into thinking this would be a dark, moody, but captivating story. Nope. It’s a dark, moody mess.

There’s a couple serious miscasts here, but to be fair some of the actors are irretrievably hamstrung by the writing, the lighting, (or more precisely the lack of it), and the choppy editing.

I caught on to Lee Da Hee and her dang hair nonsense in episode one and the fact that the director didn’t see it as a major distracting issue baffles me. Also, her constant and non-sensical wardrobe changes were ridiculous because there was zero logic to most of them. Sadly, I didn’t feel she brought any diversity of expression or sincere emotion to her role. To me, LDH may lack the acting experience necessary for this role.

Next, CEW’s characterization as a K-pop priest (though I think the webtoon character was probably drawn like this). CEW improves in each subsequent production he’s in and I see real growth here, especially in the scenes with his brother. That was another serious problem for me. Write in his long-lost brother and kill him off 10 minutes later. It’s almost as if the director and writer couldn’t decide if they wanted an episodic TV show or the gradual reveal of a centuries old saga and we got a congealed mix of the two.

Lastly, Kim Nam-Gil’s potential contributions being squandered into heavy sighs and CGI-exaggerated runs and jumps and flips pains me. Even though I found the action scenes the best part of this show, KNG deserves more. Shame on the writer (again!) for not tweaking the script to allow for more definition of the lead’s personalities/motivations. I think it would have helped and made for a better transition from webtoon to the small screen. None of the personalities have any depth. They’re all two dimensional.

It’s okay, it’s watchable I guess, but it’s certainly not memorable because even a lay person can easily see the potential this story had and how sad it is that this is the translation we got.

What a tragic waste of talent and budget. Who knows, they could absolutely redeem themselves in part two, but I think the stage has been set.

Binged and enjoyed from start to finish. Not great but engaging with good looking leads. Just my kind of easy campy horror with random LOL moments. Kim Nam Gil's acting skills sort of wasted here though. Lee Da Hee's fashion drool worthy as always in all her shows. Cha Eun Woo oh so good looking eye candy. Wishing Choi Tae Joon didn't die and continues to show up in S2.