Review of The Witch / 마녀

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m watching.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

Because I have said time, I have been really on top of my television game recently as well. I’ve had so many shows I’ve wanted to watch throughout the years but never got around to, and there are always new shows popping up that I feel like I need to watch quickly.

I’ve learned how to pace myself, which is why this review of The Witch is coming out a bit later than when the final episode aired. I watched all of the episodes as they aired on Viki, but went on an extended trip to California towards the end, hence why this review is out later than usual.

I wanted to watch this series originally solely because Jin-young was in it. I’ve been on a bit of a kick lately for nostalgic memories of the mid-2010s, and Jin-young fits that because he was in GOT7. I watched a lot of K-pop back then, and still sometimes do return to the music of my teenage years, but dramas have been an easier outlet as of late.

Now I’m realizing that I am rambling a bit, so let’s get into the review! I know introductions can get quite long, and they’re not often what you’re here for.

Lee Dong-jin becomes obsessed with a former classmate, who has a reputation of potentially being a witch.

The title of the series (which translates directly into English as “Witch”) comes from the fixation of the male lead. We learn early on that the male lead, Lee Dong-jin, observes a young woman his year at school named Park Mi-jeong. Wherever Mi-jeong goes, chaos and death follows her.

It not only leads to tragedy in her personal and familial life, but whispers float around the school and town that whenever you get near her, you’re going to die. A lot of her classmates pass away after approaching her, especially male ones, and the other students don’t want to get near her at all because of this.

Dong-jin watches all of this silently, but never approaches her outright. As we see something happen in her daily life, she one day disappears. Dong-jin felt for her and her predicament, and as time passes and they become adults, he reflects on his former classmate.

It doesn’t help that one day, while on the subway, he spots her. So begins the rabbit hole of research, as well as his ways of testing how exactly one can get near this woman without dying. Mi-jeong has lived such a lonely life, and not many people have shown an interest in her the way that Dong-jin does.

Somewhere along the way this does turn into a romance (as it’s the typical Korean drama in that sense), which I am kind of disappointed by. I love it when dramas realize they don’t need to be fully committing to the romantic bits. The two of them have careers by the time we see them grown up, and this could have been completely platonic and I would have been fine with it.

My reasoning here is that we could still see them grow as characters and people, delving deeper into the lore, by not having them have to date and be romantic partners. In fact, I would personally find it more powerful of a story if they didn’t have a romance. It’s also odd to me that so many men/boys are lusting for Mi-jeong throughout her story (that end up dead).

All of this said, I did find the first few episodes compelling, but by the time we got to the final episodes, I thought the show was getting a little repetitive. They did introduce new content and points that had us on the tip of our toes, but in the end I think that six episodes might’ve been enough to tell this story properly.

Overall Thoughts

I touched on it a little about how I thought the series was a bit repetitive, which was a major drag for me. While I did end up finishing the show, I thought there was going to be a point where I didn’t get to finish it. Episodes seven and eight were hard to get through, which was surprising as I thought the show was pretty decent until that point.

Anyways, this is a compelling storyline overall. That’s what also made me want to watch the show (beyond the fact that Jin-young is in it), and although I felt like there are some major plot holes, especially towards the end when everything starts to get a little more crazier.

I would say I’m satisfied with how things went! I don’t know if I would watch this series again. Only time will tell on that one I think.

I’d say go watch this one if you haven’t already and are interested. Or if you are watching it right now, I hope you enjoy it!

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