Last night, it got foggy. You could barely see the next house. Street lamps became a suggestion of halos. The city glowed like something submerged in the depths. This is the perfect weather, I thought. I’ve got to watch some more “Gyeongseong Creature”. Atmosphere begets atmosphere. I left the shade up, the fog my company as that opening theme hit and the inky black illustrations set the series’ thick, threatening, otherworldly mood.
It’s the last days of World War II. Japan is pulling out of Manchuria, retreating to Korea. They burn the evidence of a horrific human experiment. Piles of bodies go up in flame. Their own soldiers are sacrificed. And there’s something that must not be allowed out.
We cut to Gyeongseong, years later. A man named Tae Sang (Park Seo Joon) is being tortured, accused of having an affair with a Japanese general’s wife. Tae Sang introduces himself to us as a wealthy scoundrel, but the torture is a show and Tae Sang’s narration is never entirely reliable.
Kang Eun Kyung’s writing is smart and winding. We’re meant to make inferences. General Ishikawa’s anger at an issue as private as his wife’s alleged affair allows him to dismiss everyone else from the room. Now Ishikawa can have a more private conversation. Tae Sang must find Ishikawa’s missing mistress, a courtesan named Myeong Ja. He has until the cherry blossoms fall, or Ishikawa will seize Tae Sang’s opulent pawn shop and send the Korean man off to war.
It’s never stated outright, but this tells us Ishikawa is protective of the missing courtesan. He’d sooner lose face to his subordinates than make Myeong Ja a target. The city catches on quickly that Ishikawa is dangling Tae Sang over the fire, but most remain unsure why exactly this is.
Two sleuths are in the city on their own missing persons investigation. Chae Ok (Han So Hee) and her father are professionals at this sort of thing, and their paths quickly cross with Tae Sang. The first fight scene is a moment of poetry, a meeting between Tae Sang and Chae Ok as they size each other up as obstacles. The fight choreo isn’t as tight or deliberate as something like “Bloodhounds”. Here, we have a fight that flows like the choreographer’s taking the way movements feel out for a spin. If the choreography were words, they would roll off the tongue like a rhythm. It works beautifully, with the choreo both clear and artful. Han So Hee is quickly becoming one of the most creatively choreographed action stars, and her performance as a whole is dynamic.
All investigations lead to the same place: Ongseong Hospital. What the Japanese military is doing there with human test subjects is unspeakable, and what they bring into our world as a result is violent and vicious.
If you can’t tell, there’s a lot thrown into “Gyeongseong Creature”. You’ve got a cosmic horror plot on a gothic horror foundation, with beautiful action, quality drama, and incredibly tense atmosphere. The set and costume design are so elevated that they go past feeling historically real, and start to feel real within the presentation of a fairy tale. The historical treatment of the Japanese genocide of Manchuria and Korea are real, and much of the most staggeringly horrific visuals are based in reality. This is tied to a cinematic horror with strong elements of pulp that pointedly comment on enduring that experience. And then there’s a layer of clearly marked comedy that is really well performed by Park Seo Joon. His scoundrel-ness carries into all these other layers effectively. And then there’s a layer of love-at-first-sight romance over the top of it as Tae Sang falls for Chae Ok.
It’s so much that it really shouldn’t work, that some of these elements should undercut the others too much. And yet…this is a hell of a show. Those elements function together somehow. Jung Dong Yoon’s direction is intoxicating. Much of what we see is necessarily dark and gloomy both in visual tone and subject matter, but so much of Gyeongseong itself is bursting with color. There’s a stark difference in how we see the two worlds of the city and the hospital. Where Korea still survives, among its people, we’re given wide shots of the city streets, deep shots of its pathways, in one scene we see a chase refracted through windows, in another tilt shift conveys the lingering emotion of a set piece. But the vibrant and sumptuous turns dark and saturated where Korea is being choked out, among its imprisoned people in the hospital. Tracking shots of dead ends abound. Windows and vents, smalls squares of hope, of escape, look so small and impossible, a promise those captive won’t be able to achieve, the supernatural horror housed in constricting visuals of the historic.
“Gyeongseong Creature” reflects reality, but it feels most real in the way fantasy horror does: elevated, visually lush, a touch precious but all the more potent for it.
It’s fair to compare “Gyeongseong Creature” to “Sweet Home” and “Stranger Things”, but so far I’m liking this more than those others. Its blend of slightly too much in the pot speaks to me because there’s always something interesting happening, always a metaphor being told, an atmosphere being built, and there’s always a little too much story for our heroes to contend with. They’re constantly catching up to have more dropped on them, which means they have to sacrifice priorities, improvise, adapt. That’s exciting and creates something exponential with the already established sense of horror tension.
Its stylized-beyond-reality set and costume design feel elevated to the degree of the sumptuous. I’ve got to say that again because it is so beautiful. Its unflinching incorporation of historical horror into the mythical so the two reflect each other feel staggering at times. It’s capable of triggering a feeling similar to what I get from Guillermo Del Toro’s Spanish-language work such as “Pan’s Labyrinth” or “The Devil’s Backbone”.
There are issues. The romance layer is over-the-top in rare moments. To me, some parts are so tense that I don’t mind a very brief moment of ridiculously cheesy slow-motion gazing, but some viewers will think it doesn’t fit and hey, they’re not wrong. I just like that kind of not fitting sometimes.
While the creature at the heart of the story is pretty weird and terrifying, and comes with added narrative layers of even more weird and terrifying that I’m sure will be investigated in the future…I would’ve preferred if more creature effects were used instead of CG. The reported budget of $54 million for the series is less than what “Stranger Things” costs for two episodes. Let me be very specific here – the design in “Gyeongseong Creature” is gobsmacking and very few things come close. I’m happy to trade out a little bit of visual effects fidelity for design this astounding, but viewer tolerances will vary.
In terms of taste, this isn’t a horror that’s going to make you jump. It’s more the kind of horror that establishes atmosphere, and pushes the questions that lurk in the back of your head through tone. There are horrific moments and these are the ones that are closer to history. The type of horror you’re getting here builds on those elements conceptually. It’s not oppressively scary so much as it keeps ratcheting up tension, thickening that atmosphere, and escalating horrific consequences.
There’s been some criticism of the show starting slow. I don’t understand this. Multiple things are always happening, many scenes leave me wanting to see just that little bit more, there’s always something on the table that the audience can infer and play with, and the shot choice is creative and surprising. I get that the approach of building tension rather than going straight for a scare isn’t what everybody wants, and the blend of lighter elements in relation to that tension might not be for everybody, but if you’re into the style or aesthetic of something like this, those elements are through the roof and carry everything else very capably.
I’ll make the Del Toro comparison again. He’s not involved in “Gyeongseong Creature”, but Western audiences are fairly well versed with his work. The man directed “Hellboy” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” back to back. These would seem so very different, but in all of his films – from the neon-drenched action of “Pacific Rim” to the uncomfortably close, anti-capitalist noir of “Nightmare Alley”, each of his films preserves all the elements you’ll find in the others. The prioritization of them is just different from one to the next – the fun of his action, the sense of loss in how nature and our myths erode, his love of slapstick, the hope of his fantasy, the despair of his absurdism. They work in combinations, and those combinations can be wildly different while still exploring the same perspective.
That is similar to how “Gyeongseong Creature” fuses so much together – its vibrant view of life even amid its sense of anger at history, its visually lyrical choreography next to cheesetastic romance, its scoundrel-driven comedy as a coping mechanism for dehumanization, its fear of constriction, immobilization between forces too strong to fight, its sense of tilting at windmills regardless, its clear love for life, its clear terror at what the living can do to it. Something like this should be imperfect, should be just a little too much because how do you take all those things and package them into something perfect without cutting out some joy it needs to show, some beauty it needs to remind you is there, some fear that can’t be told perfectly because then it would be told inaccurately. “Gyeongseong Creature” flourishes in the way our most beautiful and fearsome fairy tales do, as a messy, silly, serious insistence that we listen and even have fun with truths it would be too risky to ever forget.
“Gyeongseong Creature” is on Netflix.
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Gabriel Diego Valdez 