How Folklore wasted every ounce of it's potential

I think we can all agree that out of the captivating catalouge of horror films and TV shows from every nook and cranny of this backwoods eldritch monstrosity we live on called Earth, Asia definetely has the darkest, creepiest, eeriest, most unique, most experimental and, objectively speaking, the best offerings. Sure, Europe may have given birth to genre and America popularized it, but, compared to them, Asian horror, no matter the country of origin, feels like it exists in a completely separate reality, rarely relying on a lot of the cliches and tropes we've come to expect from more western offerings. From unconventional mindfucks that will make you wonder are you secretly having a fever dream (Hausu, Tokyo Gore Police) to downright existential philosophical treatises on a wide array of subjects (The Ring, The Grudge, Pulse, The Wailing, Dark water), from titles that may not be deep, but will certainly pay your nightamares a visit for a good long while after watching them (Shutter, One missed call) to dumb, but relatively entertaining schlock (Teke-Teke, The Slit-Mouthed Woman), it's geniunenly hard to find a piece Asian horror film or television that doesn't bring some joy to an old rotten horrorhead such as myself. Atleast that's what I thought until I watched HBO's attempt to dip it's toes into the blackened yurei infested waters, an anthology series simply entitled Folklore (2018-2022).

Now, on surface, the concept behind Folklore isn't half that bad. Conceptualized and created by Singaporean filmmaker Eric Khoo (whose works I'm not familiar with as of the time of writing this review), each episode is based on an array of superstitions, urban legends, myths and magical practices from across the Asian continent, with each installment being helmed by a director and writer(s) from the country of the legend's origin. It's a great way to introduce non-Asian viewers to the wide and colorful palette of Asian cultures and traditions, whilst also feeding into the inane fascination people have with the dark, macabre and mysterious. The first season featured 6 episodes originating from Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea and was, apparently, a decent enough hit for HBO to renew it for a second season, which would also be it's last. Now, as someone with a keen interest in Asian cultures and histories (particularly those of Japan) and an avid folklore and mythology enthusiast in general, it didn't take much to convince me to finally give it a watch. Sadly, however, the actual show was, as you'll see, rather poorly executed in pretty much all aspects, and even when it managed to churn out a decent or even a halfway decent episode, I still wouldn't overexaggerate by calling it anything more than fun or watchable. But, on the bright side, it DID make me want to do a bit of a deep dive into certain subjects I hadn't heard about (for example, the Thai cannibalistic ghosts or phi-pobs), providing me with an opportunity to learn a bit more about the weird, wild and oftentimes messed up world of the Asian superstitions.

Given the nature of this series, I will be applying a more experimental format than I usually do in these reviews, that being, I'll review each episode as it's own individual entity with it's own set of positives and negatives (spoiler alert, it'll mostly be the latter) and examining what made the episode itself work (or what didn't work with it). I plan on doing this with any anthology series I watch in the future, so I hope that my readers enjoy this format. Ok, with all of that introduction out of the way, let's get to discussing the actual show.

(1) S1E1: A Mother's Love

One of the telling signs of a bad anthology series is when the first episode is ok at best, but, still remains the only relatively well executed one out of the bunch. Written and directed by Joko Anwar (whom you might recognize as the man behind the geniunely fantastic 2017 horror flick Satan's Slaves), the episode tackles the well-known Indodesian myth of the Wewe Gombel (reffered to in the episode just as Wewe), which, according to the book Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An anthropolgical perspective by Gregory Forth, is an ...ugly, shrivelled old woman, tall and thin, with loose hanging hair and breasts hanging to the ground. The malevolent beings are further described as abducting people, especially children, whom they carry away under their pendulous paps and hide in some ‘sequestered nook'.

Right off the bat, there are a few objectively good things about this episode. When it comes to the technical aspects (cinematography, editing and directing overall) the episode is actually well executed. Sure, it's nothing groundbreaking, spectacular or particularly memorable, but, for a small domestic horror story, it's executed on a well enough level and it never feels cheap, tacky or amateurish, despite the low budget. The writing may be very much derivative of the far superior The Babadook (2014) and there certainly are moments, characters and storylines in it that feel pointless, contrived or, even, unintentionally comedic, but, honestly, compared to the rest of the show and some geniunely terrible episodes that will eventually come out of it, it's certainly solid and I do appreciate how faithfully it recreates the actual legend of the creature, which is something that always pleases my little black folklore loving heart, as some pieces of media either based on or inspired by their native cultures do tend to misrepresent these stories (*cough, cough* Mavka: The Forest Song *cough, cough*). The little we actually see of the Wewe also shows off some relatively impressive practical creature effects, which long time readers of this blog will recognize as being one of my sweet spots when it comes to the visual monster and paranormal horror media. It does seem like European and Asian countries are far more wiling to use makeup and practical vfx as opposed to CGI when it comes to designing monsters and villains for their movies and shows, which might be why I'm gravitating towards their offerings more and more in recent years.

However, that's about as much praise as I can give to this episode, as everything else is, well, you'll see in a bit.

Whilst I did give the episode's writing some mild praise earlier, I'd be lying if I'd call it particularly good. It's on the same level as the early to mid-2000's horror films like The Boogeyman (2005) or Darkness Falls (2003). Definetely entertaining, memorable and fun to watch, especially with a group of friends, but not something worth seeking out or something that would end up on one of those 1000 movies you must see before you die type of lists. The biggest example of the writer's confounding decisions can be shown through the character of the paranormal investigator Rohmat Setiadi (played semi-decently by Arswendi Bening Swara, who also starred in the affrorementioned Satan's Slaves). Apart from simply being an exposition machine put there to seemingly visually represent the research montage that shows up in every paranormal horror movie (and is a part most audiences hate, but, I personally really enjoy seeing, being a bit of a worldbuilding geek), he literally has no other role in the plot whatsover, thus making every scene featuring him feel extremely forced and inorganic, mostly because, well, he isn't remotely interesting as a character, and I'm saying that as someone who absolutely adores the fictional trope of researching, investingating and/or combating the paranormal (as I've pointed out in many, many reviews prior to this one haha).

The other weakpoint of the episode is the acting.

The review of the episode on the largely reliable website The Horror DNA (which I'll link here), calls the acting perfectly adequate, however, I'd strongly disagree with that sentiment. Now, again, with the exception of (joining us for a third time at this point) Satan's Slaves and the addmitedley not objectively good, but incredibly fun Lady Terminator (Pembalasan Ratu Pantai Selatan), I don't have much exposure to Indonesian cinema and TV, so I don't really have the knowledge as to what the standards are for acting over there, however, speaking purely from my perspective as a westerner and a critic with two years of experiance under his belt, I thought it was rather melodramatic. The whole episode mostly sits on the shoulders of Marissa Anita (whose works I'm not familiar with in the slightest) who plays the depressed single mother Marni who accidentally stumbled upon the taken victims of the Wewe, before eventually being driven insane by the entity itself and almost loosing her son to it's boney fingers. Whilst her performance wasn't by any means terrible (I've seen movies and shows with acting that was way worse than this), I still found it rather melodramatic and even though it weared into overacting territory at points. Imagine if the infamous If you're that hungry, why don't you go and eat shit? line from The Babadook was a person and you'd essentially get the vibe I felt from the whole performance.

Overall, whilst the first episode was indeed the best out of the whole bunch, it's still really not worth your time, unless you like having fun with cringy, but memorable horror content. If you want to see this director pull off something that's actually worth your time and money, go seek out Satan's Slaves, it's on par with some of the best titles in Asian horror.

(2) S1E2: Tatami

As I mentioned in the intro, I am very much a massive fanboy of everything and anything related to Japan. It's culture, it's history and yes, even it's film and TV industry. So, after the slight dissapointment I've felt in regards to the first episode, I was ready to be absolutely blown away by the second installment. Boy, oh boy did the dissapoinment catch me off guard this time. Directed by Takumi Saiotoh (whom most will recognize from his acting efforts in such titles as Shin Godzilla, Ace Attorney, Shin Ultraman, the Japanese remake of Cube and Re: Born amongst others) and written by Masato Tanno (primarily known as the assistant director of the highly influential titles like Ichi the Killer and Gozu and has even had some previous anthology horror experaince with the Masters of horror episode Imprint) and Tomoki Kanzawa.

So, what exactly is tatami? A dark forbidden ritual long since forgotten by time? An evil spirit perhaps? Well, according to a very brief description in the book Holiday Symbols and Customs: A Guide to the Legend and Lore Behind the Traditions, Rituals, Foods, Games, Animals, and Other Symbols and Activities Associated with Holidays and Holy Days, Feasts and Fasts, and Other Celebrations, Covering Ancient, Calendar, Religious, Historic, Folkloric, National, Promotional, and Sporting Events, as Observed in the United States and Around the World it's a (*drumroll*)... straw mat, oftentimes used to furnish the inside of a kamakura (or Snow Hut), especially during the event known as the Kamakura Mitsuri festival. On New Years Day (Oshogatsu), the Japanese are also known to perform a ritualistic cleaning in order to appease a minor deity known as The Kitchen God, after said deity leaves the home in order to file a report on the family's behaviour throught the year. Amongst the many acitivities performed on that day one of the more notable ones is replacement of all tatami mats within the home with new ones. In his rather simplistically titled book Japan, the Croatian mathematician, transaltor and poet Vladimir Devidé describes it as a two meter wide straw mattrace covered with a covering or hasura made from a specific type of herbs, with it's edges being covered with thin strings of fabric.

It might seem a bit jaring to go from an episode about a childnapping demon to an episode about a haunted straw mat, however, there is a darker, more supernatural side to the tatami's history and place within Japanese culture. To quote Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experiance in the Japanese Death Legends by Michiko Iwasaka and Barre Toelken: Most Japanese avoid wearing shoes or zori while inside a house because of the tatami on the floor. Of course, on practical grounds it is cleaner for the house and kinder to the woven straw mats; but this custom also has to do with funerals, where only the corpse wears shoes or sandals, along with the bearers who carry the coffin out of the house at the conclusion of the ceremony. The episode also seems to portray the tatami as a sort of an equivalent of the onryo, or vengeful and murderous spirits of those who died in a grip of a powerful rage (a concept that's been a subject of multiple classic and modern Japanese ghost stories, however, most audiences will probably be familiar with it's portrayal in the Ju-On film franchise and their godawful American remakes). Combining tatami with the onryo does indeed create the unfortunate issue of making this episode feel like a Japanese remake of one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies, Death Bed: The Bed that Eats (1977), which it made it really hard for me to take it seriously (trust me, I tried, and failed, having absolutely died of laughter, having the pause and rewind the episode a few times, especially at the ending.

Throught it's long relationship with the Japanese the tatami mats had seen not just joy and familial bonds, but also a plentiful of violent deaths (with some of the oldest recorded ones dating back to as far as the period of feudal Japan) and betrayals, so it's interesting to see it be used as the main subject matter for a horror piece, however, as you'll see for yourselves, sadly, the episode doesn't live up to any of the hype built up by pre-existing folkloric, historical and cultural context.

So, first of all, let's, once again, get the good stuff out of the way.

The episode is still great on a purely technical level, especially when it comes to direction and cinematography, with such positives mostly shining bright within the opening minutes of the episode, begginning with a textual explanation of the episode's subject (a trick that hasn't been pulled in any other episode of the show) being shown to to the audience over footage of an unkown individual making a tatami mat. Whilst many usually harp on both of these, I actually don't mind it here, as it not only does a great job at introducing the viewer to the central theme and premise of the episode (in a cliche manner sure, but atleast it doesn't rely on a buttload of expository dialoge like the first episode) and the way the scene of making the mat is shot did make me feel atleast a bit uneasy and I can certainly say that this is the closest this horror show ever got to actually being scary for me. We then transition to some rather enchanting rural Japanese landscape scenery, with an eerie sense of the macabre slowly begginning to build up as the details we are shown begin feeling more abandonned and human. Once we actually enter the house the episode is centered on, with the whole sequence actually reminding quite a lot of an iconic sequence from one of my favorite films of all time, the Gluttony scene from Seven (1995). The dirty, dingy and underlit apartment covered with occult and esoterical imagery may not be an outright terrifying setting for a scene, however, it does make the viewer quite quesy and uneasy on the basic human level. This strong starting off point made me feel like the actual episode was going to be geniunely scary and I was fully onboard with that. Could I have been any more wrong? Given that I watched all 8 episodes hoping for something good to come out of it, probably yes.

This time, however, I am very much likely to forgive the faults of the episode's writing, as the writers had little to no prior experiance in what's an incredibly demanding and pressure heavy aspect of filmmaking. However, despite that, as we have seen a plentiful of times in the past, just because it's someone's first crack at something, this doesn't equate to that something being geniunely bad. Sure, we also get the rather unfortunate examples of the opposite, such as Spiderman: Lotus (2023), however, as a motivational coach I recently heard speak said: The word FAIL is merely an acronim for First Attempt At Learning, so I truly do hope that future writing efforts of the people involved lead to something better in the future, as the idea behind this story is, honestly, rather genious and stands out amongst the holey maloey of J-horror (and I say that as a crazy J-horror fanatic). However, judging this episode from a writing standpoint purely as an objective critic, it's not nearly as imaginative, creative or atleast batshit insane as the premise would promise, feeling more like an incredibly boring and painfully melodramatic family drama. Yes, I'm aware J-horror oftentimes blends together themes of traditional family values with elements of a social melodrama and supernatural horror (the prime examples being the afforementioned Ju-On, Ring and Dark Water), but usually the human drama element of these films usually tied into the supernatural one (and vice versa) and the writer's did a great job at making the viewer care equally as much about the characters and their struggles even before they come across their hostile neighborhood yurei. In Tatami, however, the drama takes center stage, with the supernatural elements not becoming relevant until the very end, making the, addmitedley unintentionally hillarious final sequence, extremely random and quite jarring. It doesn't help that the actual drama that's, supposedly, at the core of the story isn't all that interesting, leaving me bored to tears in ways only CSI: Cyber (2015-2016) was able to do prior to this when it comes to TV shows.

Despite the episode being directed by a seasoned actor, the performances in it aren't good either. Kazuki Katamura's (known for his roles in the Kill Bill duology, Godzilla: Final Wars, the live-action adaptation of Parasyte and The Great Yokai War: Guardians) character is interesting on paper, sure, however, in execution he is equally as bad as the incredibly bland performance might suggest. Now, I won't pretend I'm overly familiar with Katamura's filmography, however, from what I have seen he isn't a bad actor, but here he gives an incredibly bland, drab and colorless performance. I'm fighting a strong urge as to not call him a plank of wood, however, that's pretty much exactly how his performance felt here, no matter how much of a better job did he pull off in other titles. Misuzu Kanno (whose works I'm, again, not particularly familiar with) plays his death and mute elderly mother and, again, for as potentially interesting as that character sounds, it's almost half as boring, with the only credit I can give her being that she atleast has a few mildly entertaining and memorable moments thrown in here and there, thus making her atleast a tad bit superior to the lead.

Despite an original concept and being overall great on a technical level, I didn't particularly care for this one either, and I can't really reccomend anything out of this episode past the first two minutes (unless you put it on mute and just enjoy the visuals) and I say that as a huge fan of Japanese culture, history and film industry.

(3) S1E3: Nobody

This was another episode that really got my hopes up thanks mostly in regards to it's main subject, that being one of the scariest mythical creatures to come out of any culture (and, if it wasn't already clear, I the more disturbing something is, the more I love it), the Pontianak. I was going to provide a very detailed explanation of the being myself, however, I don't think I could cover the subject any better than Theresa Bane's remarkable book Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology:

In the folklore of Indonesia and Malaya there is a vampiric demon known as a pontianak. When a woman dies in childbirth, as a virgin, or as the victim of a pontianak attack, she will then transform into this type of vampire unless specific 117 Pontianak burial rites are followed. Glass beads must be placed in the corpse’s mouth, an egg in each armpit, and needles driven into the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. A pontianak can pass as a human woman except for a hole in the back of its neck and smelling exactly like the tropically sweet frangipani flower. It will also announce its presence with a call that sounds like a crying baby. At night, it leaves its home in a banana tree and shape- shifts into a bird. Then the pontianak flies out looking for prey. Although any person will do, it truly prefers the blood of infants and pregnant women as it is filled with hatred for never having been a mother itself. When it finds a suitable target, the pontianak then changes back into its human guise and detaches its head from its body, dangling its organs beneath as it flies back to where it saw its prey. If it can, it will rip the unborn child right out of the mother’s body, eating it on the spot. The pontianak has a unique fear among vampirekind. It will flee in terror from anyone who manages to pull a hair out of its head. Also if a nail can be placed into the hole in the back of the neck, it will change into a beautiful woman and remain that way until someone pulls the nail back out. It is fortunate to know that the pontianak has these weaknesses, because there is no known method for destroying one.

Okey dokey, now that we've gotten the obligatory culutural context part out of the way, let's get to discussing the actual episode.

Well, first of all, one thing of note is that this is the first and only episode of the show to be directed by it's creator, with the writer's role being taken on by the celebrated Singaporean-American author Amanda Lee Koe (whose works I'm not familiar with as of the time of writing this review, althought, I wouldn't mind giving them a read, despite not being fond of her screenwriting present in this particular episode). So, everything I just said, quoted and described might lead one to believe that it's one of the better episodes of the show? Well, whoever believed that was dead wrong because it's easily one of the worst, if not the worst, to come out of the entire series. The only thing geniunely worth the appraisal would be the exceptionally well handled practical and make-up effects on the creature, which would have some creep factor to it if the sound it made wasn't one of the goofiest things you've ever heard in your entire earthly life. See? I can't even talk about the only aspect of it I enjoyed without outright hating on it.

Whilst the first and second episodes weren't exactly well put together either, they atleast had a so bad it's good or so cringe it's fun type of charm to go along with it. The same could have gone for this one too, as there cetainly is a lot of goofy dialoge and cringeworthy moments scattered throught it, however, the thing that makes all of this fall apart is the change in the antagonist's backstory. Instead of it being a woman who died at childbrith, it's now presented as a vengeful spirit of a young girl who was kidnapped, raped, killed and subsequently buried by a group of grown men, only to return when her body is accidentaly discovered by a group of construction workers who, on the request of their boss, reburry the body and accidentaly remove the nail that keeps the spirit at bay from her neck. I've looked at a large number of other sources (The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, Encyclopedia of haunted places,The Everything Vampire Book; From Vlad the Impaler to the Vampire Lestat, a History of Vampires in Literature, Film and Legend by Barb Karg, Arjean Spaite and Rick Sutherland, Vampires: A Legend That Never Dies by Viktoria Faust, The Vampire Encyclopedia by Matthew Bunson, Book of the Vampire by Nigel Suckling and The Vampire Book; The Legends, the Lore, The Allure by Sally Regan) and none of them seemed to reference this particular interpretation of the creature. Now, of course, it wouldn't be the first time an element of folklore was changed for the sake of poetic licence (for example Andrzej Szapkowski's The Witcher series of books changed dopplegangers from being simply phantom doubles of a person to short grey-skinned goblin-esque creatures able to take on any shape they desire) and I do have my own personal stance regarding this practice in all manner of fictional media that I won't get into (one of my favorite YouTubers, Overly Sarcastic Productions, did a video that adressed this topic very well, so I'll link it up here if you're curious), but this might be the first time I've seen something like this get geniunenly misrepresented by a culture it originates from. Folklore misrepresentation aside, as I've said at the start, yeah, this episode arguably had some of the worst writing in the show (don't worry, there's a bigger offender coming right after it), which is a surprise, given how the episode was penned by a celeberated author. On the other hand, Stephen King wrote the screenplay for Sleepwalkers (1992), which remains one of the worst horror films I've ever seen to date, so I guess one's talent in one field of something, doesn't translate as well into the others. The scenes which are supposed to feel scary and suspenseful are scary and suspenseful on paper (for example, the bathroom scene), but the cartoonish dialoge (especially with the protagonist, the shaman and human antagonist), one-note characters and the plethora of cliches delt with through unimaginative means, make the whole episode feel very boring, empty and soulless and, again, even the scenes with some hillarity to them (like the banishment scene), are kinda ruined when you remember the unnecesarily messed up context behind the events of the episode. As far as the characters are concerned, they're all very one-note and I can easily describe them in a few words. The spineless father, the sleazy boss, the superstitious security guard. To be fair, they were atleast shown to have some character, with the rest of the cast being dull husks of wood placed there to either react to whatever is happening on screen or simply say one or two incredibly generic lines.

Is the acting good?

It's very much on par with the writing if I'm honest. No performance in this entire episode was good, just a lot of cringe enducing overacting that began getting on my nerves the futher it went on, with little to no nuance or style to it, with the worst offenders being Li Wenqiang, Louis Wo Luoyi and Dayang Nur Balqis, who play the afforementioned father, boss and security guard respectively. I tried looking up movie and TV titles they starred in other than Folklore, however, nothing familiar came up, therefore, I don't really have any comparasins to make. As I've made it very clear, I don't really have much, if any, knowledge of the Singaporean film industry so the standards for acting and style of it over there can be quite different from what my dull European brain is used to, however, I truly hope that it's not the case because, I'd definetely love to see more films out of that specific part of Asia (mostly as I'm given to understand that there are a few other far better executed adaptations of the pontianak myth). Again, maybe it's just a case of me not being familiar with the particular filmmaking style of that specific country, but, I walked out of the episode feeling rather let down by this aspect amongst others.

Despite their glaring flaws, the previous two episodes were atleast executed well on a technical level. So, was that the case here? As I've made it very obvious, no. It's not that the episode looks ugly or anything (heck, I'd love to visit the jungle some of the scenes were filmed in), but visually it's flat, unimpressive, unimaginative and, overall, just kinda boring and not memorable in any way. It feels very much like a studio film or an episode of a CW show (speaking off, I really should give Two sentence horror stories a watch some day, even though I hear it's pretty bad), instead of a major HBO production that the whole show is supposed to be. Again, it's definetely not the weakest episode when it comes to the technical aspects behind it, but, it's up there with the worst ones for sure.

Whilst you can certainly have loads of goofy fun with the lack of quality present in the previous two episodes, this one just kinda kills all of the unintentional hillarity it could with the introduction of child rape and murder into the story. I'm not squemish or prudish when it comes to NSFW and controversial subjects, but I draw the line at the visceral portrayal of subjects like this being used to add some schock given how there's little to no actual scares or tension to be found within the product itself (it's kinda like the infamous and memed to death analog horror webseries The Painter, except not as graphic in terms of sex, gore and overall edge). Watch it only if you truly feel like you can sit through the whole thing.

(4) S1E4: Pob

The lack of quality of this blunder should be apparent by the fact that, whenever I think about the show and what the potentially worst episode of the whole thing might be, I can't decide, but not wheater you should live or die (I had to get that Scissors Sisters reference in atleast one of my reviews I suppose), but which episode of this godforsaken mess of a show is worse, Nobody or Pob. What surprises me even more is that Pob gained generally favourable reviews from critics and audiences. Am I missing something? Was it secretly a work of genious way beyond my mortal comprehension? Could be. On the bright side, as I mentioned in the intro, it did get me interested enough to research the history and culture behind the main subject of this episode: the pob, or, how it's more commonly known as, the phi-pob, which, according to the already cited The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, is merely a ravenous liver-eating evil spirit, which I can honestly say isn't too far off from how it's portrayed in the actual episode. Even the more comedic elements of not just the episode, but also the portrayal of the creature within it all make sense, given how the legend is apparently a popular subject of Thair horror-comedies. So, in a way, purely for the authenticity, I do have a much more favourable outlook on this episode than I did on the previous one.

Aside from that aspect though, I'm sorry to say that this is yet another dissappointment.

The episode is supposed to be an allegory for the condescending and negative treatment of the Thai people by foreigners, especially Americans. Now, of course, I do find this subject fascinating and would definetely love to delve into further research of this topic, and I believe that using the strange and supernatural to discuss real-world issues is one of the best ways to approach such touching subject matter. The problem Pob has is that it's about as suptle about it as a bag of bricks. Now, sure, not every piece of media that used this technique was suptle about the way they approached it (in fact most very much aren't), but, the entirety of this episode revolves around it, whilst in other cases you are atleast offered up a wider narrative which weaves the philosophy within itself, thus offering a uniquely entertaining and educational experaince all at once, without compromising either and thus leaving the entirety of the audience both engaged during the runtime and entertained after finishing it. Pob pretty much revolves around just how much the title creature hated an American tourist who woke up when he tried to feast on him, and then proceeded with a tedious convo that takes up half of the episode, only to then get killed by the entity for no apparent reason (sure, he was enraged, but he felt that way for the entirety of the convo before abruptly ending it). Now sure, I love a good talky philosophical piece as much as the next guy, but the way the pob describes his encounter with his victim sounds and feels less like To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) with ghosts or even a confession of a killer, and more like an R/AITA post. Now sure, Pob isn't the only poorly written character either, and, whilst I could talk about how the actual protagonist of the episode (proffesional bloger Manop) is about as interesting and unique as yeast, his storyline is so unimportant to the overall narrative and themes of the episode that I would have entirely forgotten about it if it wasn't a framing device they kept cutting back to. Our second lead is an American named John Conrad, who, so we're told, had recently moved to Thailand. If you recall the last paragraph, I mentioned how the human antagonist of that episode was very cartoonishly evil and assholish. Well, whilst I would never say that John is as much as of a piece of human garbage like Louis Wo Luoyi's character was in Nobody, but, he's still very much an annoying jerk whose death you root for. And that's where the main problem lies with his character. I'm not saying you can't write an unsympathetic antagonist, but, the way his character was written made him feel less like the embodyment of condescenion and smug superiority and more like a keyboard warrior that complains about how everything he doesn't like is woke in his spare time. Was I happy that he died? Yep. Was that the point? Yes. But does that make him an interesting antagonist? Not in the slightest, which is sad given how he's the only human character in the whole episode that we actually get to know, with the rest of them (Manop and the nameless street gang members) just being there to peddle the plot along. As I mentioned at the start of the paragraph, I thought the inclusion of comedic elements within the story was an interesting send off to pob's usual role in Thai cinema and it was a bit refershing to see an episode of the show that didn't take itself fully seriously (even though I'm not a fan of comedies). However, the problem with that is that the script's idea of a joke just wasn't funny to me, with most of it boiling down to stereotypes and a few haha fat xenophobe says/does something stupid moments and lines. Again, I know why this was done and I understand why Pen-ek Ratanarung (whose works I'm not very familiar with, but apparently they do have a soft spot in the hearts of both critics and audiences) choose this specific way to portray this character, but, it's far removed from being good social commmentary that it's trying to be.

The acting doesn't redeem it either, as it's been a trend with this series, it really feels like they went out of their way to purposefully hire terrible actors (I guess there was no budget left for involving more talented names into the game). Once again, I'll skip Nuttapon Sawadsee who plays Manop, as he has little to no bearing on the plot and focus on the two major stars. Parama Wutthikornditsakul plays the titluar evil spirit and, whilst he does have some mildly entertaining cringey moments sprinkled throught (for example, the scene of his and Manop's first encounter and the entirety of his conversation with John Conrad), but his performance can barely be called that because, for the majority of the episode, he just sits and blankly stares at whoever is talking to him. Sure, it makes sense with Conrad because not only does he explain that he doesn't speak English, but also because that man can't shut his piehole up for two seconds (if you recall the talking disembodied head scene in the first Scary Movie, yeah, he's pretty much that but not undead), but he does so with pretty much every encounter he has with a living individual that isn't Manop. He puts so little effort into this performance (the man looks like he's holding in a fart for the majority of the episode and it doesn't help that he looks like me on the toilet seat in the scene where he sits on the back of a moving car) that it would have been barely memorable if he just didn't look so bloody histerical throught the whole thing. Finally, there's Thomas Burton van Blarcom, who plays the main human antagonist of the episode. Given how he's an American actor, there was a higher chance that I've seen some of his other roles. Turns out that I've been bamboozled as he only starred in one other role in yet another anthology offering from HBO Asia, that being Food Lore (2019-...), which I haven't seen but it does sound like an interesting send off to Asian culture, so color me intrigued. Not to mention that a few of the actors that have appeared on this show had also starred in Food Lore, so I feel like it'll give me another opportunity to see if I can judge their acting skills on a more fair and balanced basis. Ok, enough ranting about a show I haven't seen, let's get back to complaining about John Conrad. Van Blarcom's performance is very much uneven as far as antagonists go. There's villains like William Afton from the FNAF universe or Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris' Hannibal series and it's subsequent film and TV adaptations (I do realize comparing a random asswipe to two literall psychopaths is a stretch, but hear me out). They're characters whom you just love to hate purely because they have interesting backstories and/or a lot of charisma and charm to them. Conrad just doesn't have any of that magnetic pull engaging antagonists should have and feels more like a not particularly entertaining neighborhood wacko rather than a formidable foe. He isn't even as sleazy and assholish as the human antagonist of the last episode, doesn't have many memorable or entertaining moments and just isn't a character about whose psychologycal profile I'd be curious to learn more about. He isn't simply a bad villain. He's a bad AND boring villain.

Finally, there's the directing, which many critics praised as being unique and atmospheric and I can see why, as I like, like many other online critics apparently, seem to have a fondness for black and white era of horror and science fiction films and shows that this episode seems to be trying to evoke. However, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. In Ed Wood (1994), Tim Burton uses black and white to immerse the audience within the world of not just Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), but the B movie cinematic landscape of the 50s and 60s as a whole, as well as into Wood's psychology and quirks that made him one of the most stand out figures in the Hollywood crowd of the time. In The Lighthouse (2019), Robert Eggers uses the lack of color to present the viewers with a feeling of pure emptyness and melancholy experianced by both our characters and the uncanny events brought on the Eldritch horror that dwells within said lighthouse. In Sin City (2005), Frank Miller uses the lack of color to ewoke the style of the source material, however, chooses to also feature color but only at times when it's inclusion makes sense narrative wise and has some deeper meaning or symbolism within the plot itself. And then you have Pob, where the lack of color has no significant meaning or deeper symbolism. It's merely a stylistic choice by the director because he though the whole thing would simply look cool, to which he suceeds in some regard, as there are a few genieunely beautiful, almost film noir-esque, shots of an unnamed city. So, what exactly is the problem with the way the episode was directed? Well, in the afforementioned examples of black and white movies and shows, the lack of color actually has a point to it, whilst in Pob, it's merely a stylistic choice without any rhyme, reason or deeper meaning. From what I gathered through interviews and other online reviews, this was a deliberete choice by the episode's director and writer Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (whose works I'm not overly familiar with, but pparently he's one of the more celebrated Thai filmmakers) in order to replicate the look and feel of 60s scifi and horror films. I could have vibed with that perfectly except for the fact that literally nothing else about this episode feels like a B-movie (well except for the terrible acting and writing, but I doub't that this was an intentional choice on the director's part). It's way too dark, moody, serious and tackles themes that are far more complex that your average offering of this type. To put it bluntly, it doesn't really seem like Ratanarung had a perfectly unique vision of what mood he was trying to convey with this episode, therefore resulting in the final product feeling like a confusing, hollow mess on multiple fronts.

As far as effects go, just like A Mother's Love, this isn't an effects heavy episode, despite focusing on a supernatural creature, however, unlike the afforementioned first episode, we don't really get enough screentime of the pob's true form. We see him appear out of thin air during his first meeting with Manop, with the used effect looking quite bad and unpolished, however, I'm not sure how much of a place does supernatural horror have within Thai cinema, so I can't really be the judge on whaeater it's good for the country's standards or not. There also are a few moments where we see him take on his true demonic form which have been plastered all over the promotional material, which isn't surprisining given that they're supposed to be the scariest parts of the episode. Despite all that, I thought they were way too overly brief for me to judge them fairly, however, judging purely from the episode stilts I've managed to find, they aren't particularly impressively done nor do they redeem the episode in any way, however, again, they might be geniunely great if judged by Thai cinematic standards.

Overall, despite the episode's lack of quality, I'm interested enough to do a lot more reasearch into Thai culture and ghost lore and, from what I heard, there is an undeinabley better and more horror oriented cinematic interpretation of the phi-pob myth titled P (2005), so, if I ever get to checking it out, my dear readers will be the first to know.

(5) S1E5: Toyol

As much as I'm being critical of the series, it seems as though the creators involved really do know what gets the viewers' gears grinding with Toyol, a Malaysian offering written and directed by Ho Yuhang (whose works I'm, once again, not overly familiar with, however, he did direct a segment in the anthology horror film Visits, which is based on various myths of hungry ghosts, which I spoke of in the last paragraph, so you bet that I'll be checking that one out), being yet another return into the weird, wild and, oftentimes, chaotic, but also strangely beautiful and captivating world of Asian vampire lore. And, I have to say that, unlike the last two episodes, it's certainly refreshing to see a title that's poorly executed and full of cliches, but atleast manages to be entertaining in a vast number of ways (therfore it's certainly an improvement over Nobody). Plus, it did serve as a nice little introduction to Malaysian cinema for me and opened my eyes to yet another fascinating Asian cultural staple of whose existence I've originally had no idea of. If there was ever an episode of this show that I'd say warrants a spot on a bad movie marathon, this would definetely be a terrific pick for such an occasion.

So, what exactly is a toyol? To quote Sally Regan's previously cited work The Vampire Book: The Legends, The Lore, The Allure: While many Asian vampires feed on infants, the Toyol actually is a baby, albeit an enchanted one. Brought to life by a sorcerer, the creature resembles a small goblin. It is strong and mischievous and must be kept in a jar all day, with an offering of fresh blood each night. In return, it will do its master’s bidding—especially stealing. If a Toyol escapes, it sucks the toes of sleepers, leaving small bite marks. In the Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology Theresa Bane describes it as having green skin and red eyes, as well as actually providing a reason as to why it must be kept in a jar (which is known as a tempayan), as it's known to be quite a mischevious little trickster in it's spare time. Toyols are known to be particuclarly skilled thieves, however, unless their master or mistress explicitly tells them what to steal, it'll only take half of what it finds at it's destination. Not wanting to only focus on English language sources, I've picked up the most popular Croatian book on the subject, the previously cited Vampires: A Legend That Never Dies (Vampiri: Legenda koja ne umire) by Viktoria Faust. Despite using a different name to reffer to the creature (polong), it's pretty clear that what the author is reffering to is the same creature other sources I've cited had also brought up. However, an interesting element is brought up here that hasn't been mentioned in any of the other titles I've looked into, that being a specific ritual used to bring the being to life. According to Faust, one must first collect the blood of a deceased individual and place it in a bottle with a long neck. After this has been done, the spellcaster must chant and speak to the bottle and then burry it underneath their house for a period that can be as short as a week and as long as two. As a reward for it's deeds, the sorcerer must prick their finger and place it into the creature's mouth in order to feed it. The creature is also described as having a sort off a partner in crime known as a palesit, which has the abbility to posses human beings to do it's part of the witch or warlock's dirty work. To destroy a toyol, one must first kill it's creator and then banish the creature into oblivion by chanting prayers intended on repelling curses.

So how well does the episode adapt this literall baby faced son of a whore? Well, it sticks to the creature's basic concept of a red eyed demonic undead baby brought to life by a sorcerer, but pretty much everything else regarding the creature had been changed to a degree. It no longer serves the spellcaster that brought it to life, but rather a shaman that comissioned the ritual to be performed (why couldn't she had just done it herself is anyone's guess). The creature no longer has green skin (now being colored blood red and actually looking like a newborn straight out of the womb) and doesn't even live in a jar, but, rather, in it's mistresses stomach, with the latter pretending to be pregnant to avoid any suspicion. And please, don't ask me about how it's able to crawl in and out of her stomach without inflicting any damage or causing any other changes to appear on the woman's body and how it's able to drink milk from the bottle telepathically, it's never explained and, honestly, it adds to the goofy charm and entertaining stupidity of the episode. Apparently it's also quite jealous of the shaman's husband and is secretly plotting to kill him (again, don't ask). It's relatively authentic to it's folkloric counterpart, albeit with some slight changes probably added by the writer in order to atleast somewhat distance himself from the source material and put his own original spin on the creature. As I said so before, I'm not the biggest fan of this being done in media, however, I do feel like he didn't overstep any boundries with how many changes he brough onboard, so, yeah, it's far from being the worst take on folklore this show has done.

Ok, with the nerd part out of the way, let's talk about the actual episode.

As I mentioned in the opening, this is the first episode in the whole series where everything was indeed executed poorly, however, it still posseses a strong so bad it's good component to it that I was, actually, legitamately entertained throught the whole thing, judging by the overall lack of humor or any potential jabs, I'm convinced that it wasn't an intentional directorial decision (as hard as that may be to believe for some people). Sure, the episode might have been really poorly executed, but, instead of leaving me miserable and thus turning the process of finishing it into a type of chore I oftentimes present myself with as a critic.

Now, for the most part, the writing in the episode itself, is actually not half that bad. Like A Mother's Love before, it posses a strange sort of cheesy early 2000's horror-esque charm to it that it does make me feel a strange sense of nostalgia for the Wild West that was that cinematic era dominated by ghosts, possesions and remakes. There's loads of moments and lines that are meant to come off as serious, but end up coming off as goofy, especially towards the end where the whole thing ends up feeling like the a prequel TV special to a soap opera. I also didn't find the first of the two exorcism scenes in the episode as intense as I believe it should have been, rather, I actually chuckled a few times as it was, in all honesty, rather goofy. However, I would like to point out that I'm not familiar with Malaysian culture and religous rites (and hadn't come across any sources that would guide me in the right direction, so perhaps the scene is accurate in it's portrayal and I, a Croatian Ukrainian with a eency weency European brain, had simply interpreted it as funny due to a lack of cultural awareness.

However, there are two major flaws I would like to point to in the actual episode. The first one being the incest ending twist. It's not that it couldn't work if the story was better written and executed (and it was the first time I geniunely laughed out loud at a serious moment in the show), but, the way it was presented has all of the hallmarks of a bad twist. It's not set up particualry well (sure, they do bring up the fact that the lead character finds the love interest/main antagonist familiar looking, but you can't really base your twist off of a single sentence, but, rather, you need to base it on a series of cleverly placed miniscule hints through both dialoge and visuals) and, due to this, again, ends up feeling very much like a schocking out of nowhere season finale revelation of a melodrama, cool on paper, but rather smelly in context. The second major flaw to me would be the fact that they pretty much got rid of what was, arguably, the most interesting part of the episode which, originally, was the narrative crux that drew the entire plot, that being the mystery of the strange series of ecological disaster that had been playing the small fishing village the story is set in. Sure, it does get a payoff in the form of the lead heeding the mysterious shaman's demands and eventually getting things back on track, however, the way said shaman brought the curse forth and how she removed it (and how it related to her ultimate goal of seducing and killing the lead with the help of the toyol) was never properly explained and the mystery ends up feeling about as cooked as the raw fish in the rivers of the village. It's an interesting aspect of the story, sure, but ends up playing little to no role in it's wider narrative context and winds up feeling just plain pointless.

As with most episodes of the show, I found the acting to be of dubious quality (with the large portion of the main cast overacting their hardest, with the actors playing the roles of the protagonist, his best friend and the two witches that brough the toyol to life being the worst offenders when it comes to this particular sin). Now, again, I'm not quite familiar with the ways of Malaysian cinema and TV industry, so maybe this simply seems like overacting to me but geniunely passes for natural performances over there. As is, however, I don't feel like any cast member did a bad job, but I wouldn't really call any of their performances spectacular neither. If any of my readers are more in tune with the topic, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it and will edit the post accordingly if I had made any mistakes.

The visual effects are, honestly, not this episodes strongsuit. Whilst the practical effects on the charred corpse of the mother and son in the opening minutes are surprisingly stunning to look at from a purely aesthetical standpoint, most of the episode does seem to rely on CGI.

Slight tangent here, I've seen many, many, many bad low budget movies over the years and, for some reason a lot of them seem to rely quite heavily on CGI, despite it never winding up looking good or even passable. Now, of course, most of the time CGI is far more cost effective than hiring a prop maker to craft your creatures, weapons and whatnot, but when practical effects are crappy, there's atleast a strange sense of effort and pride one feels when seeing them (a good example would be the Prince Goro animatronic from the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie), but bad CGI is just that. Bad, hollow and unimpressive schlock that's unpleasant to look at and causes the eyes of hundreds who payed good money to see the final product to bleed like unprotected toes next to a public swimming pool. Thankfully, the episode isn't very effects heavy (I wonder why), however, what we do see of the title creature might just be the worst looking piece of CGI I've seen in a major production. But Kris, you might say, it's just a TV episode, of course it's not gonna be on the same level as a big budget Hollywood movie. Whilst in most cases you would be right, this is, after all, not just any TV episode, but an episode of an HBO original, a piece of media produced by a company that has proven time and time again that television can look just as grandiose and spectacular as something made for the big screen. And it's not even a geographical issue either, as Asian shows put out by one of HBO's biggest competitors, Netflix, have shown us that countries outside of the Anglophonic market can still offer up things with effects that are equally as good, or, at times, even superior than what we see offered up in more mainstream media. Did it make me chuckle? Sure. But am I glad we only got rare glimpses of the critter at hand? Definetely yes. There's also a very obviously fake lightning effect in one of the opening scenes, but, it's way too brief for me to draw some kind of a conclusion out of it.

With all of that nerding out and negativity finally out of my headspace, let's talk about the one thing I actually enjoyed about the episode. For what it's worth, I never found the directing component of the episode to be bad or even underwelhming. There was clearly a lot of effort put in to make the episode look as visually pleasing and atmospheric as possible and it definetely manages to do that on more than one occasion, clearly showing that there was passion behind this project that just doesn't reflect as well in the final product. I especially enjoyed the night shots due to their incredibly eerie vibe, howeve, I do have to give credit to whoever picked the locations for the day scenes as they do have a very rural charm that I'm very much sure the writer/director wanted to achieve with the story.

Overall, despite trying it's hardest to make me suffer, I'm happy to say that the second to last episode of the show was one of the few sprinkled throught the whole thing that geniunely made me feel like I was having a (so bad it's) good time. If you and your friends are doing a bad movie marathon and you want a short appetizer, be sure to put this episode on and enjoy it's unintentional hillarity like I did.

(6) S1E6: Mongdal

The final episode takes us to a country whose film and TV industry had taken the world by storm over the last couple of decades. Which Asian country might that be? Say it with me now. South Korea!! Now, being the contradictorian dick that I am, I've never been much of a fan of the Korean film industry. Don't get me wrong, they can certainly do some terrific (The Wailing, I Saw the Devil, Memories of Murder, Kingdom, Psychokinesis) or atleast mildly entertaining (Into the Mirror, Criminal Minds: Korea, # Alive and the remake of Life on Mars) titles in a manner of genres, however, I've rarely went out of my way to seek them out and there has been a number of times where I thought the final products were either underwelhming or good, but not worth the huge amount of praise and attention they've been getting (*cough, cough* Parasite, Train to Busan and Squid Game *cough, cough*). Why that may be you might ask? Honestly, I have no idea. I guess they just don't vibe with me in the same way I do with, say, Japanese films. Regardless, I'm very happy that a country outside of the anglophonic market has achieved such a wide amount of critical acclaim and audience appraisal equal to those of more mainstream western titles, as that's no easy feat. This particular episode was written and directed by Lee Sang-woo and, as many episodes prior to it, serves as a sort off an introduction to his particular style, as I wasn't familiar with any of his works before. I'm particularly interested in checking out his Bad Family trilogy (Mother Is a Whore, Father Is a Dog and I Am Trash), as they do seem up my alley tone and subject matter wise.

Another great plus that came out of the episode was the fact that, like with the large majority of the titles in the series, it introduced me to a new branch of a culture I've only had very tangential grasp on, that being the titular mongdal gwishin (literally translated as bachelor ghosts). Now, surprsingly, I found no titles in my library that mentioned this particular creature, so, I was forced to do my least favorite kind of research and delve deep into the depths of the internet for information. And, strangely enough, the only sources that didn't relate to the episode in question (or a similarly named traditional meal and the aptly named Korean supervillain from Marvel Comics) were an article from Gwangju News (which I'll link up here) and an article on the blog Korea JoongAng Daily (which you can read here). According to the articles, the mongdal gwishin or choggak gwishin (and their far more popular female equivalents, cheonyeo gwishin) are, in short, ghosts that died before marriage and are thus cursed to wander the mortal plain for eternity. In order to put their souls at ease, one must perform a shamanistic wedding ritual (known as a Soul Marriage or Ghost Marriage) to unite a mongdal and a cheonyeo, thus completing their journey and satisfying their mutual need for a partner and allowing the newlyweds to enter Heaven. Until such an act is performed, however, the mongdal will terrorize his family and friends, especially if there are newlyweds in one of their houses. A mongdal is described as not possesing a visible face, hiding this fact by using a strangely pale mask. The mongdals diverge into two separate subcategories, with the first described as trickster spirits who enjoy playing tricks and putting curses on mortals, purely due to the fact that they had been miserable in their mortal lives. The second type, however, reffers to a mongdal born from the soul of a man that deeply loved a specific young woman, with that love remaining urequited until his eventual death, with the spirit being sent to curse said woman. Getting rid of a mongdal is fairly easy. One must dig up the spirit's earthly body and nail the coffin shut before reburrying it and then beat a stake into the soil to make sure the ghost never returns to haunt them (seems a tad bit vampire-esque if you ask me, however, it happens).

So (say it with me now) how did the episode handle the cultural aspect that inspired it?

For the most part, it sticks to it's folkloric roots relatively well, albeit with slight changes that don't detract much from the story (for example, the mongdal shown in the episode isn't wearing a mask, but, rather, just looks merely like a pale, exhausted and emaciated human and the depiction of the cheonyeo gwishin is quite different in both its appearence and behaviour). It also deals with the concept which I haven't seen pop up in any of my sources, that being the possibility of the spirit being unhappy with their post mortem bride, which, if I'm honest, is probably my favorite mythologycal deviation/subversion the series has pulled, as it does have potential for an interesting piece of horror and, to Sang-woo's credit, I do feel like he executed the idea relatively well, despite the final product not being objectively well written. Honestly, if he tweaked his script a tad bit, this could end up laying some potentially interesting groundwork for a feature lenght title, but, that's up to him, not me. Personally, if I were to write this one, I'd either completely leave the supernatural elements out of the story and simply strongly hint at the fact that they're all merely figments of a grieving and clearly mentally disturbed woman's imagination influenced by her Dark Passanger (wow, for the life of me I didn't think Dexter would be one of those things I'd reference in this review), however, as much as that sounds like a cool idea, given the nature of the show, I'm completely ok with that clearly not being the case (also, if you couldn't tell by now, I'm a massive sucker for ghost stories).

Another critique I have of the episode is that, objectively speaking, it comes so close to being the best episode of the show in many ways, but then flops spectacularly with a major flaw, that being, the rather weak and awkward way it was written in. The episode tries it's best to present the viewer with an accurate and authentic representation of psychopathy (with both the protagonist and her son), however, instead of actually basing itself in geniune psychologycal facts, the way it does this is based far more in-line with cartoonish depictions of mental illness that had already become such cliches in the wider net of the horror genre that they simply aren't scary anymore. The fact that they're cliches isn't even that much of a problem, it's the fact that they don't take these existing ideas and try to spin them in a new direction (like how it was done in more prestige shows that dealt with this subject matter, like Hannibal, Dexter, Mindhunter or even some network procedurals like The Prodigal Son). It reminded me quite a lot of The Cell (2000), a movie that became sort off a cult classic, however, I always found it so viciously corny and over the top that I failed to take it seriously both times I tried watching it (I ended up finishing it the second time around and, yes, I found it absolutely hysterical despite the horrendously dark tone), as both it and Mongdal fall into much of the same traps as a few other thrillers based around the subject of mental illness. Now, I'm not saying the shere cheesyness of these scenes doesn't make the episode entertaining, it certainly does, but, I'd be lying if I said that this episode didn't have the most room for a potentially interesting story hidden within it out of the whole bunch. Another issue I've had with the writing is a bit more mild, as it only reffers to a single pretty miniscule scene that never gets brought up again. In the first reservoir sequence, we see two of the characters, Se-Woo and her classmate (whose name I've forgotten and I really don't care enough to go back and rewatch the episode just to catch that one factoid) discuss the rumor that the protagonist of the story, Dong-Joo, had apparently brutally killed a girl he had feelings for that did not reciprocate and disposed of her body in the nearby reservoir. Not only does this break the show don't tell rule, but none of what's being said is neither shown nor confirmed, but, instead of presenting the audience and characters with a choice of wheater or not they believe this to be the case, everyone is just forced to go along with it and it's treated like an absolute fact. I mean, don't get me wrong, Dong-Joo is one creepy son of a bitch, but I'd still be interested if the story had choosen to explore the deeper truth behind this rumor and thus gave him more of a character than a simp with a pension for murder.

On the other hand, the directing, score, visuals, atmosphere and even the performances are, surprisingly, some of the best, if not the best to come out of the show. I enjoyed the abundance of gloomy, coloress or even completely dark shots (for example, the few sequences at the reservoir and the geniunely scary basement murder sequence). Even if the episode was fully dialoge free, I feel like the story we would end up with would have been perfectly satisfying and even slightly creepy (given how mediocrely it was written, I guess that should come as no surprise). The thread they weave tells a story of love and loss, but also that of murder and madness, a narrative quite common in Asian ghost stories and urban legends, which is exactly why I'm more saddened by the fact that it wasn't as good as it could have been than I was with any other episode, and also why I wouldn't be surprised if someone out of the crowd had actually enjoyed it and managed to overlook it's glaring issues.

As I had said before, despite it's flaws, along with A Mother's Love, Mongdal still proudly stands as one of the better executed episodes of the show on practically every front, so, I strongly believe that one day Sang-woo should revisit it's concept, because, if he ever does so, I can guarantee that it'll be one of South Korea's best ventures into the depths of the horror genre.

(7) List of sources

Before I end with my closing thoughts, I'd like to list off the sources I used that helped me when discussing cultural aspects and sensitivities of the various subject I had covered within it. I do this partially out of personal bias (I love citing sources lol) and partially out of an academic desire to make everything I write atleast slightly educational, but also purely out of a desire to help those with an interest in these subject find titles that might expand their knowledge and help them with their own research. I intend on doing so with a lot more posts in the future (especially those that touch upon subjects I'm particularly curios about, such as history, mythology, etc.), so, if you're curious, you're very much welcome to have a look:

• Bane, T.: Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, London, 2010

• Belanger, J.: Encyclopedia of haunted places: Ghostly locales from around the world, New Page Books, Franklin Lakes, 2005

• Bunson, M.: The Vampire Encyclopedia, Gramercy Books, New York, 2000

• Devidé, V.: Japan, Školska knjiga, Zagreb, 2006

• Faust, V.: Vampiri: Legenda koja ne umire, Zagrebačka naklada, Zagreb, 1999

• Forth, G.: Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An anthropolgical perspective, Routledge, Abingdon, 2008

• Gwangju News- Behind the Myth: Korean Ghosts (https://gwangjunewsgic.com/arts-culture/korean-myths/behind-the-myth-korean-ghosts/) (accessed 5/4/2024)

• Henderson, H.(ed.): Holiday Symbols and Customs: A Guide to the Legend and Lore Behind the Traditions, Rituals, Foods, Games, Animals, and Other Symbols and Activities Associated with Holidays and Holy Days, Feasts and Fasts, and Other Celebrations, Covering Ancient, Calendar, Religious, Historic, Folkloric, National, Promotional, and Sporting Events, as Observed in the United States and Around the World, Omnigraphics, Detroit, 2009

• Iwasaka, M., Toelken, B.: Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experiance in the Japanese Death Legends, Utah State University Press, Logan, 1994

• Karg, B. et. al.: The Everything Vampire Book; From Vlad the Impaler to the Vampire Lestat, a History of Vampires in Literature, Film and Legend, Adams Media, Avon, 2009

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So, in the end, would I reccomend Folklore to anyone?

Well, the answer is a bit complicated if I'm honest. If you're a diehard fan of Asian horror and culture like I am, I feel like you would find the show to be an interesting experiment at taking promising premises with a layered and well known cultural background and wasting them on rather mediocre and sub-par shorts that sometimes fall flat on multiple levels. Despite that dissapointment, you'd probably have a lot of fun with seeing some rather well-known folkloric baddies on screen and there is a slight sense of admiration I feel like we should all feel towards the directors and writers, as they tried to present some of their favorite aspects of their respective cultures and introduce more mainstream audiences to these stories. If you're just an average viewer in search of a good horror anthology to fill your scheduale with, you'd probably be dissapointed by the show's overall lack of quality when it comes to the things that make up the objectively good pieces of filmmaking. Some episodes make up for perfectly solid inoffensive one time vieweings (A Mother's Love, Mongdal), some do have all the best qualities of a guilty pleasure perfect for a bad movie night with your friends (Tatami, Toyol) and the rest are unbearably bad pieces of cringe that you can easily skip over (Nobody, Pob). Personally, this isn't a show I'd ever think of rewatching unless I was REALLY bored, and even then I'd much rather curl up with a good book rather than go back towards something I wasn't fond off. I'm given to understand that the show was renewed for a second season (featuring episodes from Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, The Phillippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) which has recived a far warmer critical and audience reception than the first, but, this time I'll think once or twice about giving it a shot. Don't wanna get burned twice.

Trailers: