Review of Gyeongsong Creature / 경성크리처, Season One

I will have to admit: there was a good chunk of time where I kept hearing about Gyeongsong Creature and didn’t feel like watching it. Every time I opened my social media feed, there was someone talking about it.

When I opened up my Netflix account to watch something new, there it was in my recommended, right in the first slot.

So you’re probably wondering how I ended up sitting down to write this review. Granted, running a blog where a chunk of my reviews come from Korean dramas might be one way, but it was actually the fact I realized this was set in the colonial period. As a graduate student, a good chunk of my thesis is on colonial Korean women’s literature, so anything from this time period has me coming into it hot and fast.

I watched this drama over the course of two nights. The first night I literally ended up watching like six episodes in a row before I realized this wasn’t healthy.

Then the next night, after my break, I came to the revelation it was only ten episodes, which left me scratching my head—especially with that ending! We need a season two.

Let’s get into the review then, shall we?

Two people team up to break into the Japanese army’s hospital, where a monster awaits them.

We begin this series with some pretty deep setup; if you don’t like gore or violence, this certainly is not the average Korean drama. Lots of random people end up getting speared by a monster in some pretty ugly ways.

The opening scenes establish that the Japanese Army, probably Unit 731, is experimenting on people inside of a hospital in Seoul. Their newest experiment is they unleash a vial into a bowl of water, then feed a prisoner it while in the cell. Turns out there’s a specific parasite in the water that turns the one woman into a monster with tentacles, and it kills anyone who even gets close to the cell.

We then pivot to outside of the hospital’s walls, where pawn shop owner Jang Tae-sang is running a covert spy ring out of his shop. He has some of the best treasures in the land, but if you approach him for information, he can find it or has it already.

When a woman goes missing, he starts stepping in and realizing that something is deeply wrong at the hospital. There are whispers of prisoners being held there, and she might be there, too. That said, he then crosses paths with a father-daughter duo that are also looking for the girl’s mother, and the father’s husband. They have a hunch she might be at the hospital.

They end up teaming up, and with the help of Tae-sang’s wealthy journalist friend, they venture into the hospital. They realize something is wrong after everyone is evacuated and the hospital doesn’t allow anyone to enter after their visit, so the entire group prepares to venture deep into the lair of the Japanese army.

And so they do, and eventually they will also come face to face with the monster that is lurking on the lower levels. There’s also the deplorable head of the Japanese army here, who, by the end of the series, you’re probably going to want to punch in the face all by yourself.

That said, this show reminded me of The Host but a lot less well written than that movie was. It’s like comparing apples to oranges; Bong Joon-ho is leagues up on this show even in the mid-2000s. The romance element in this drama was seriously strange and out of nowhere at times, and I seriously was not convinced these two had feelings for each other.

Maybe the chemistry was just seriously off, but the main characters also had major plot armor. They should’ve gotten way more hurt by the monster, which outsmarts everyone except for them. Lots of plot holes going on here.

Overall Thoughts

While I’m glad I watched this drama, especially considering it was only ten episodes (aka: less time invested in what there was to offer), I found certain aspects kind of weird. Again: the romance felt like something that should not have been considered at all with the writing of this one.

I do think the history behind this is very fascinating, which is why I ended up watching the series to begin with. Unit 731 did seriously screwed up things to a lot of Asians and prisoners, which is a dark shadow over recent history—a lot of those guys got away with it, too, and the US even recruited some of the members of the unit.

At the same time, this is set in 1945. Japan is in a losing battle, and is right about to pull out of Korea by the time this drama is set. These feels like a last stand in a way, even if the characters aren’t acknowledging that Japan is going to fall to the Allies and come under the American occupation.

Maybe in a perfect world this drama could be better, but the writing just wasn’t there yet. If you enjoyed it, then great! Neither of us are wrong; taste is so subjective at the end of the day.

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