A través de la oscuridad (2022)

They say in order to figure out what goes through a person's mind who do heinous things to other people is to think like them.

Wow!!! The screenwriter was so on point about how a criminal mind's behavior works. The uncanny thing about the characters who committed certain crimes all had the characteristics of being a true narcissistic psychopath.

This drama isn't for the faint of heart. It did have A LOT of disturbing scenes in it. You most definitely will have to take a break from watching these episodes. I just dove right in and binged the whole thing. I didn't know it was going to be so intense.

I wonder what went through the actors minds who portrayed the criminals when they decided to take on such a strong role. Having to do retakes of doing and saying disturbing things until the director was satisfied had to have taken a toll on their mind set. If not....

This drama was very dark. It did have specs of comedy in it which I welcomed wholeheartedly but I wish there would've been a little bit more to lighten the mood.

The whole cast represented themselves in a way that always amazes me. I liked the chemistry. It wasn't as strong as I'm use to but it was slightly there.

I'm also glad that this was only a 12 episode series. It could've been less because some of the criminal scenes were really drawn out by being too wordy.

It was good. I got to see a different side from the main male character but as for me....this is something I will not watch again.

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Watch only if you understand what exactly the drama is about

Through the darkness is about the person eho became the first profiler of SK. Its based on his experiences, so if you are here to watch some kind of major plot twist this is not your drama. Feel free to not watch it rather than calling it a boring drama.
All the cases, as far as ik were real cases.
And the acting, woahhhh, i mean be it the offenders or the main team all of them did such a good job. You will actually feel that nauseousness when you come across some acts done by the myrderers/rapists.
The drama is a door for you to know how the mind works of a murderer.
THE DRAMA IS PHENOMENAL WITH BRILLIANT ACTING. YOU ARE MISSING OUT ON A GREAT DRAMA JUST BCOS YOU ARE "FAN" OF MAJOR PLOT TWISTS IN A THRILLER DRAMA AND FIND THIS SLOW.

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A realistic deep dive into the process of criminal profiling

"Through the Darkness" is a slow unravelling of the mind - the twisted criminal one and the righteous one. There are few chase scenes to give you thrills and no hidden culprits, instead the narrative delves deep into the criminal profiling scene in South Korea and the hard work that goes into it.

The drama portrays all the nitty-gritty details that happen backstage - the long hours of gruelling and repetitive data analysis, hundreds of interviews with convicts, research etc. This kind of job puts a psychological strain on the characters and Kim Nam Gil perfectly portrays the consequences of empathizing too much with killers.

The setting is realistic and feels lived in - the atmosphere of the early 2000s is omnipresent and every shot is devoid of so-called artificial "cleanliness". Every scene is immersive as well as beautifully acted.

The director and writer's approach to the minds of serial killers is outstanding and praise-worthy. At first, the viewers are shown flashbacks of their childhood as well as given the opportunity to understand their motives. Little by little the explanations dry out, the flashbacks disappear, and we learn close to nothing about their family if it isn't relevant to their arrest. "Through the Darkness" takes a relevant stand: in the end, there were victims and the motives of the killers do not matter, their horrible childhoods do not matter, their stories do not matter. They are all the same anyway.

What matters are the people left behind and the drama sticks that landing with Song Ha Young's last interrogation.

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Brilliant

This a show for a more mature audience, who enjoy a more realistic take on police cases as the cases might take a really long time to solve and the arrest isn't always directly made my the lead characters. The suspense in this show comes from exploring the human mind of murderers and the experiences the ML goes through due to digging into these monsters' minds, not gore or jump-scares.

I liked that this show wasn't predictable and cliche like most dramas, the plot overall didn't move in a predictable way like usual, sometimes things might drag on for a long time and seem to build up to a cliched stand-off but unexpectedly, come to an end quickly before that. This seemed really realistic for me, as in real life, things rarely build up suspense layer by layer and come to a dramatic end, sometimes things that last long might come to a very quick and easy end at surprising times.

The time-skips were done very naturally and gave time for the characters and cases to develop in a natural way.

For people like me, who have watched plenty of shows about profiles before, some of the things they pointed about the criminals' psychology might've seemed obvious when they explained them to other police , but it fit very well for the time period the show was based on - profiling was completely new to Korea back then.

The acting was fantastic, both by the main leads and the criminals. For a plot that could've easily seemed boring and flat for many people for the lack of the usual dramatics shown in police shows, the subtle intensity (even for really reserved characters like the ML and FL) in which the actors delivered their lines and scenes kept the show captivating and let the great plot shine.

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This series is uncomfortable and heavy to watch so..

I don't usually leave reviews so bare with me haha. This series is uncomfortable and heavy to watch so this should be a trigger warning. I can't watch it in one sitting because my mind needs a time out by how serious the topics are. Please take care of your mental health! If you need to take a rest then please do so.
So, anyways, the acting of every actors and actresses are commendable. That's my most favorite part. Kim Nam Gil's performance is great as always! I also appreciate the performance of the actors playing criminals. Imagine having to read the script, memorize and deliver those lines?...The acting is really good and will made you really hate them.
I also liked the good balance of storytelling from the perspective of anyone involved. Crime shows like this shouldn't be centered around the criminals because that's hella problematic. Like *ehem* "Dahmer" *ehem*. Please excuse me for squeezing this in lol.

Overall, this series is worth watching.

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opened my eyes

....to the fact that I should stop forcing myself to complete mediocre shows just because I am halfway through them. That's the biggest epiphany I had whilst watching this.

Now let's come around to this show. There were a few mind-blowing things. I started this on the assumption that it is an adaptation of Mindhunter. Only found out towards the end that it is based on the book by Korea's first criminal profiler. And the fact that Kim Nam Gil was in Pandora. Damn! I just couldn't make the connection. He's done a really stellar job of acting here.

The cases were gruesome. The criminals were scary (and I even found one very pitiful ...eeekss). I was wishing for a 'normal' criminal...as in someone who doesn't have wild eyes and crazy behaviour from the get go...And there the person appeared. So yes, the show covered a range of cases and types of criminals.

Loved seeing the Behavioural Analysis Team camaraderie and growth.

Anyway, this is a great show. Would love a second season.

And I finally dumped all the other boring shows that I was forcing myself to watch. Life's too short.

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The darkness of people

This Drama is something else, it makes you afraid if people and it shows the real darkness behind those cases . It also shows the struggle of exacting a new form of investigation in Korea.

The most bone chilling thing about this whole show is that every one of those cases is real, it really happend. And the dedication to the detail to the accuracy from those cases to the show is amazing.

The casting is absolutely awesome and the actors are world-class.

The main character is so good portrait i worried do much about him, his empathic nature makes him an awesome investigator but at the same time he does not only sees the darkness of those murdered he makes it his own. And seeing that almost making him lose his mind is hurting to watch.

I would always recommend this shoe, if you can stomach it.

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You are not timid and looking for a good drama series?

This drama not only won 4 awards at the 2022 SBS Drama Awards - December 31, 2022, it also received an 8.8 vote on mydramalist, a very excellent score.

The screenwriter managed to compile a story that is coherent and captivating. The music and cinematograph support is cool, making the audience immersed in exploring the thoughts of a serial killer.

Like the perpetrator of the Red Cap Case, Cho Kang-Moo, who strangled and stripped his victim. Cho Kang-Moo has a scary memory, of his father stripping his mother naked after torturing her.

Song Ha-Youn (Kim Nam-Gil) is often stunned to hear answers that are boring. Among them are the answers to the reasons for a serial killer who takes great care of his health:

I want to live longer

So that more people I kill

Heavy applause is certainly aimed at the 2 main actors Kim Nam-Gil as Song Ha-Youn and Jin Sun-Kyu as Kook Young-Soo. I wish the main character wasn't Kim Nam-Gil would it be this good?

Mmm…..when you see Kim Nam-Gil's acting in the Korean drama "Island" (I and II), who seems to be walking alone through the lonely long endless hallway.

As well as his role as Song Ha-Youn who has a unique personality, it seems that we have to agree with the decision of the SBS Drama Awards to award him the Grand Prize. The same award that Kim Nam-Gil also received in 2019.

The next review can be read here: https://www.maria-g-soemitro.com/2023/03/through-the-darkness-review-drama-korea.html

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A very interesting series that perfectly mixes Korean police history and a good thriller.

The story revolves around the 1990s, where the citizens of Seoul were gripped with a paralyzing fear after a series of brutal attacks and murders occurred. The habits of striking randomly made it impossible for the detectives to predict the criminals next move.
Aware of the American F.B.I. and its successful use of criminal profilers to identify serial killers, Gook Young Soo recruits Song Ha Young, a quiet, reserved, incredibly perceptive former detective for his team. Gook believes using this new psychological method will give the police an edge in capturing these killers.

Well I'll be honest, the first episode wasn't amazing in the sense that, me as a viewer, I wasn't captivated by the story. The first episode is supposed to do this to make the viewer want to find out more, but the show lacked in this as it was too slow for me. That's why I had only seen the first episode, and paused this series until I resumed it weeks/months later because I was bored.

Now, I want to establish that the series separates itself from other thrillers for several reasons.

First of all, its pacing, we discover a lot of detective work (door to door, documentation and archiving ... etc.) so it gives a more realistic impression of really observing what is surely the daily life of the police at that time, and that may be redundant. I have to say that the show is really about two episodes long for each killer in average, with the full story, starting with the POV of the killer and his victims, the police work, the arrest, and the aftermath - when they're in jail. It's really quite a process, and sometimes the show made us jump months or even years forward to showcase the realism and the time it takes for investigations to be solved.

Secondly, I would say it's really a series that was focused on showing how the Korean police integrated profilers and how they helped, it's a long process again, with many backlashes coming from superiors or colleagues who at that time didn't see why profiling a killer could help them solve cases. So there are a lot thrilling moments, I wouldn't lie, but it's really a series that focuses on the police and historical aspect of such an approach.
It reminds me of models, in the fashion industry, runway models are chosen for their very thin, almost characterless features and bodies to showcase the clothes. Well here, I would say the actors were good in their roles but ultimately they were more part of a bigger picture where the story was more important than the characters.

And lately the show hasn't been overly focused on drama, like no big shenanigans from superiors or rich, no backstabbing between friends or colleagues, no revenge, no love dramas, no overly character strong and intelligent. All these elements that are generally part of drama thrillers in Korean, here have been set aside to focus on realism and tell the story - a little fictionalized - of profilers in the police.

I would like to mention, also, that all the actors did a good job of bringing their characters to life, especially actor Kim Nam Gil who played the main role of Song Ha Young, showing how much this kind of profession - profiling - weighs on these people, and that it requires a certain mind, composure and discipline, and above all intelligence.

So I recommend sticking with the show after the first episode, I believe the story is very well written - the characters and the story, especially from a detective perspective, and despiste the sometimes slow pacing, realism cover that well.
It's really a series to see, and I must say that I really enjoyed it, the killers were real monsters, not romanticized, who often committed the worst crimes.

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One of the best thriller K drama I have ever watched.

There is an American series based on the same concept but I have not watched it. Why? Because I thought it would be boring..And I thought the same about the korean drama. I started it as an afterthought because I had nothing to watch. What started as a pure pasttime ended as one of my fav drama of all time. To tell the truth, since I am starting to miss it so I am thinking about watching the American one (though I forgot its name and now have to search the entire internet for it). If I have to speak about Kim Nam Gil performance, It was phenomenal. His character is an introvert person which he definitely portrayed well and if i may go overboard since I like him, it was fantastic. His character was the best at pissing people off and he did that well. Moreover, as the story goes on, as he deals with more these lunatics living in this world, u get to see the progressive deterioration of his mental balance. The exploding of the accumulated stress, anxiety and guilt brought with each cases was perfectly written and executed at the right time. Moreover, the other characters also did well in their role and the acting was also perfect each in their villain or heroic character. The serial killer actors were so good at their character portrayal that it had me wondered if it did not affect them mentally afterwards ( which i hope did not happen). In overall, this drama is a must-watch and cannot remain on ur plan to watch list.

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Mid drama review

I am writing this review just to keep mind clear and I have to wait for 25 days for next episode so let's start this
Kim nam Gil my very first drama of his ,am impressed by the way of his acting in this drama like he is definitely an introvert, intuitive and closed
As a person who feel too much I can relate to him upto certain extent if I was in a police force i think i would've quitted that way before i expected.there were certain aspects of his acting i like very much his subtle acting doesn't talk too much but shows in action,his chemistry between the FL and other male lead was impeccable.
Jin seon kyu - at some point of this drama i thought he is gonna die but he didn't am glad.
His acting is actually good and his chemistry with detective song is so good
Coming to his role in this drama,this drama has a dynamic of one person talks more and one person talks less but his idea of behavioral analysis in this drama made me think of how psychological aspects effect in finding a suspect and have a common point .
Am very thankful he was their to add some comedic view into this drama , so I am expecting they won't kill him off at some point ofthis drama of they kill him i think am coming after this writer
Kim so jin
Am happy that am liking her because i hated her at first but when I got to know her background story it felt it's all justified by the way she is acting u see if a woman becoming a head of special crime division in 2000s is hard,and I like how song nam Gil is the only one who corrects when someone says hey lady or young lady
I think song ha young and her have very similar personality when it comes to case solving but song ha young feels it in a different level when it comes to his feelings where as her has a very good logic which helps them to maintain a dynamic and space for debate I loved it
Where as rest of the team
I like they added young blood like ryeoun am impressed i was kinda waiting for him to be in a good role and he got it here am so happy for him .
Story i felt they're actually happened in Korea and some of them seemed very similar to a recent case of how a culprit got out because he was drunk at that time (am not going to details)
And love the way they showed how profiling got importance
All in all am very excited for the next episodes as well as sad I have to wait for 25 days
I recommend this drama to everyone just watch it u will love it if u like crime dramas it's very rare to find a criminal profiling dramas these days
Overall loved it especially song ha young charecter I will watch this just to know what gonna happen to him .

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