Às Cegas (2022)

One of the best korean dramas that I have ever watched

In my whole life time I never got a chance to spend my time doing what I really wanted. This time it was not as the same. I spend my whole time watxging different kinds of kdramas because I really wanted to waste my time. And finally I have watched thousands of kdramas but I can say that BLIND is the best kdrama that I have watched . I really mean it because each and in every rpisode I swayed in my mind that he may be the culprit and he may not be the culprit and also I suspected each and every charactor without considering their status. I must say that it was because of the great skills of the actors and actresses . That was a blast at the final moment in my mind because some of my assumptions were wrong meanwhile some were correct. My favourite genres are crime, thriller and horror and I have never swayed in my decisions and foresee . Therfore I really think this is the best and I recommend each and every one who are interested in crime thriller genre.

Leia Mais

Man alive, what an absolute train wreck of wasted potential.

I'll start without spoilers and provide a warning when the spoilers start.

This drama could have been a very successful average thriller or it could have been an extraordinary revenge story. But instead horrible writing, outrageous plotting and some, frankly, troubling moral backlighting led to the only drama I've ever watched in my life that actually kept me awake because of how angry I was.

And it is hard not to focus on the troubling moral themes when I think about this drama. However the reality is that these troubling moral themes are directly responsible for the otherwise inexplicably bad storytelling decisions. I can't read the writer's mind, but choices were made that were supported by blatant moralizing to the point that one assumes the writer had an Opinion.

When Blind began you already knew that one of those battered boys from the hellish orphanage was involved somehow in what was going on. In the first episode we're introduced to very heavy material and a seemingly delicate approach to its attendant issues.

However, as the story progressed I came to realize that the writer didn't seem to view the adult survivors who endured that hell as actual people. Not in the sense that the other characters were. This is never stated explicitly. But more often than not these adult survivors were half-wrought caricature villains or, rarely, caricature victims who had lost most personhood in their embodiment of their trauma. And even when they were portrayed as human, time and again I felt a divide between them and the characters who were "normal." Like a black uncrossable chasm of wrongness would forever separate normal society from the survivors of unspeakable abuse so much so that those survivors simply couldn't be part of society. Not that they shouldn't, or ought to barred from it, but that they were so broken that they were incapable and it was frankly burdensome to society for them to try. This wasn't some megaphone message or anything, but the omnipresence of this mentality shone through the writing like a sizzling neon sign on a foggy hillside.

An argument could be made that these adult survivors were all depicted as irreparably damaged by their time at the orphanage to really convey how brutal the abuse was, or abuse in general. And I might even agree with that if it weren't for all the other things I had begun to notice. Too, I might not even have cared had the writer not deleted the final episode in place of a flaccid PSA about how murder is bad.

Here begin spoilers:

There were times when this was almost really good. The backstory of the abusive orphanage and the way every single juror was connected was very cool. The tiny pieces of information we received made us desperate for more, the relentlessly gloomy atmosphere just built and built...

The boys in the orphanage were organized by number. In the flashbacks we can identify them by the numbers on their shirts. Boy Number 11 is calm, paternal, self-sacrificing and noble. Boy Number 13 is characterized early on as somewhat off, perhaps a bit sociopathic, perhaps just angry and broken. Regardless, he's definitely unhinged and worrisome. When we originally suspected that Taec Yeon's character Song Joon was Boy Number 13 and thus possibly the serial killer, his brother and many others all suspected him as well. Though not for that reason, as no one else knew that he was possibly number 13. They suspected him because he already had a history of being generally violent and unhinged.

I feel like I should add a sidebar here that none of the characters, from about the last quarter of the drama onward, behaved with even a modicum of logical consistency. But I'll get to that in detail later.

When we first got the twist that Song Joon's adoptive brother Song Hoon was actually one of the survivors of that hellish orphanage, the kind and warm Boy Number 11, and not Song Joon, (who was just the biological son of terrible parents) it was a great twist. At that time I figured the plot was going to progress as follows (please indulge my creative liberties for a moment): Song Hoon, aka Boy Number 11, knows that his orphanage brother, the worrisome Boy Number 13, is the real serial killer out there wreaking havoc and getting his pound of flesh in murderous, gleeful bulk. However Boy 13's chaotic rampage is ruining Sung Hoon's (Boy 11) carefully planned scheme to expose the orphanage and get justice, given that he was a judge and, for about eighty percent of the drama, portrayed as an unwavering crusader for justice. However he had vowed to protect Number 13 when they were children so now he finds himself in this troubling situation where he feels obliged to continue doing so. And also is sort of forced to "use" Number 13's wonton murders in his plan. A thing that seemed to be torturing him. This made logical sense. It fit the events, it fit his character, it fit what hints we were seeing on the screen, I felt it had even been foreshadowed a bit. And in the end, I thought, the big issue for him was going to be which brother he would choose to protect, the murderous and unhinged Number 13 whom he had vowed to protect when they were children, or his adoptive brother Song Joon who worshipped and admired him. Which would he choose? Could he choose? That's where I thought we were going. But no. This is very much not what happens.

For one thing, every plot twist except the revelation about Sung Hoon was not a plot twist. It was the writer changing his mind mid way and then failing to rewrite previous episodes before they were filmed. So the twists contradict previous narrative and then clumsily try to make up for it. The absurd planted memories thing is the best example. We were given Sung Joon struggling with vivid memories of his time in that orphanage and then later the writing tried to convince us that not only had these been planted memories (???) but that this somehow served Sung Hoon's plan. (It didn't, trust me. According to this writer Sung Hoon only did that to mess with Sung Joon because of who his parents were.) That confused me. How could a person who treated other children with uncompromising compassion choose to treat another child with cruelty? To punish that child's parents? Perhaps I could believe that. But how could the same boy who protected other vulnerable children in the same breath mistreat a vulnerable child? It would have made more sense according to his character up to that point for him to view little tiny Sung Joon as another vulnerable victim. After all, the monsters who had been abusing the orphans were Sung Joon's biological parents. And they hadn't exactly been treating Sung Joon well.

What's more interesting is that prior to the revelation that he was not Number 13, the idea presented was that Sung Joon was violent and unhinged BECAUSE he was Number 13 and all those bad things had happened to him. When they revealed that all those memories had been planted it became this bizarre thing where, at first, it attempted to the prove the fallacy by saying, look: even when the memories are false it still makes a person unfit for society and inherently dangerous. But then later they just forgot about it entirely. Like the fact that he found out that the memories were false just deleted his violent tendencies.

Let's talk about Sung Hoon for a moment. This was one of the clumsiest and most absurd attempts I have ever seen at a complex and nuanced character. And the actor cannot be blamed. He did a remarkable job despite the horrific writing. This whole thing was honestly a criminal waste of a very talented actor's time and energy. This wasn't complexity. It was a writer who couldn't figure out who this character was from one episode to the next. A writer who couldn't comprehend the psychological damage and emotional trauma of profound abuse beyond "abused = broken and deranged, right?" Is he a staunch and unyielding defender of justice? Does he want to stop Number 13 from hurting people because hurting people is bad? Or does he agree that those people needed to be hurt? Is he conflicted about how much he loves his brother Sung Joon because it makes Number 13 feel abandoned? Or does he revel in the pain he causes the innocent relatives of his abusers? Is he trying to help people, like the troubled girl he seemed interested in sponsoring, or does he have a psychopathic lack of feeling for all life as we were meant to believe when he signed off on the cold-blooded murder of those two women? Was all of this a game to him, or was it justice for which he would gladly bleed or give his life? These weren't questions that were meant to be ambiguous. The writer emphatically stated that each of the above was the one single truth at various phases of the final act. This could have been layered and possibly, possibly interesting and even believable but instead it was so contradictory that it seriously destroyed my suspension of disbelief more than once. And Sung Hoon was the ONE character they had to get absolutely right. But they bungled so much that it was, frankly, embarrassing to watch.

Morally speaking, Sung Hoon represents a significant part of my biggest issue with this drama. Aside from the writer's inability to manage the writing of a killer's motives, it also seemed that they were relying on the viewer's understanding that he was too ruined to be good. The fact that they ineptly tried to make him conflicted while also embodying this idea made him an incomprehensible knot of confused contradictions. The writer wanted him to be sympathetic, but, you see, murder is bad and so he also had to be the epitome of evil. The nuance attempted in the writing of Sung Hoon had the delicacy of a sledge hammer. One gets the impression that the writer couldn't understand why someone would want to murder. Anyone who wants to murder is pure pitch black evil, plain and simple. Which idea was beaten into the narrative like an evangelical preacher pounding on his pulpit.

The writer bent the narrative into outrageous contortionist positions to really drive home the idea that Sung Hoon was a sadistic, inhuman monster. But after his arrest there was very, very little time spent getting into the crimes of those who looked the other way when things were happening at that orphanage. Almost no time was spent examining (or condemning) the deep, insidious and pervasive evil of that level of indifference. And the reality that every female orphan was sent to the "vacation home" never to be seen or heard from again was just not really a huge issue to the characters or writer. Sure, there was a montage where lots of people connected with the orphanage were rounded up by the police, but this felt like an afterthought. Their crimes certainly didn't seem like much of anything compared to an adult survivor committing murder. These were all just a bunch of average lowlifes. Sung Hoon was, apparently, Satan incarnate. Best exemplified in the social worker's bizarre moral contradictions by which she, without hesitation, completely washed her hands of Sung Hoon, dropping him like he was on fire, but could still socialize comfortably with a person who had done nothing all those years ago while watching young boys scream for help as they were being dragged through the forest by grown men. What's more, this person had "foreseen" that those boys would become murderers and had advised the evil guards to kill them there and then. And the social worker knew this.... It's hard to decide if her character is morally bankrupt or the writer.

Towards the end, the writer began the Campaign Against Murder™, and thus we were served the inane, scoldy moral superiority of the social worker (a likable character prior to this) who took it upon herself to carry out some of the most empty and imperious exhibitions of moralistic canting that the writer could think of. So egregiously meaningless and self-congratulatory as to feel like they meant for her to look absurd. I kept waiting for someone to tap her on the shoulder and say "hey, you're being both naïve and arrogant." Given my heightened level of annoyance at this point, it had begun to feel like the mere fact that she hadn't been one of the abused orphans was enough to gold plate any effort she made.

According to the moral landscape of this drama, the absurd measures she took to "help the victims" were going to be more effective in raising awareness than Sung Hoon's revenge plan. By the way, placing those two things on the table as the only two possible solutions for a problem that ugly and complex made me want to dropkick my computer into high earth orbit. For one thing, half-wrought moralizing has no place in a bleak revenge drama. You can't hold up a violently abused child and a horrendous murder and pronounce "one does not justify the other and that is the end of this conversation you can all go home I've fixed society." Unless a writer has the chops to extract the really uncomfortable layers of moral, ethical and social nuance in a story like that, they have no business touching it with a ten-foot pole.

Too, the core premise of the title, that evil can survive when people simply turn a blind eye to bad things, was never properly explored. The people who did that, who looked away or who got scared or who were paid to keep silent were ultimately treated by the narrative as victims themselves, with perhaps a little shame on their heads but nothing, nothing compared to Boy Number 11, obviously. Those other people didn't do anything bad, they just watched as little children were chained up in their underwear, beaten half to death, sexually abused, starved, passed around like candy and sometimes deliberately murdered and all they did was, you know, nothing. I mean, that's completely understandable, right? Lots of regular people would probably do nothing, right? Right? It's unnatural and unreasonable to be so angry about that you want to murder. Right?

On top of that, when Sung Hoon was revealed to have endured a long history of self harm, his brother, the "hero" of the story called him an evil coward. And said that not even this (or a suicide attempt) was enough to make up for what he had done. Which heavily suggested that people who self harm are not suffering from crippling emotional pain but are actually overwhelmed by guilt for real crimes. And thus self harm, too, can be seen as another indicator that the person is unfit for society.

The writer did convey that the monsters who ran the orphanage treated their own children like angels but the orphans like dogs because to them orphans were dogs. Which is, incidentally, another facet of the same problem that created such a clunky plot as this. This idea that those orphans were so removed from society that "good" people could treat them in ways too unspeakable to recount without, somehow, it having any effect on their humanity, again, strains credulity. But there's something ugly there that I can't be bothered to explore. Something about when the orphan survivors misbehaved innocent lives were lost, but when the regular people misbehaved they only actually caused harm to the lives of the nameless orphans...

There was something in there about the cycle of violence, but the credibility of such a message was lost in the noise of garbage.

I liked all three characters for most of the drama. But when Sung Hoon was revealed to be the killer, the way the other two treated him and the mentality behind that treatment was so inhumane and contradictory to their previous selves that not only could I not take it seriously from a storytelling standpoint but I no longer respected them as human beings. As far as I was concerned they could both go walk off a cliff and I wouldn't care.

Maybe now that I've got all that out of my system I can actually move on with my life.

Leia Mais

Another good thriller.

This series is really something. I believe that along with "The King of Pigs", these are the two best revenge thriller series of the year. This series takes you to the guts until the last episode. There is a lot of suffering, and that explains the choices of certain characters who in turn have also caused other people to suffer.

Some of the characters were some of humanity's worst trash, what they did to those kids is just awful. And the fact that years later they refuse to restore the truth to save their asses, it's really unbearable, and I also understand the "why" of the actions of certain characters. This series is an excellent suspense thriller, from beginning to end we have no idea of ​​the revelations to come, even though I guessed the murderer quickly and his potential accomplices, I believe that the mystery does not lie in the "who ?" but in the "why?". Why these murders ?

The characters, including the murderers all have motives, and sometimes even if as an audience we judge their actions, we understand why. And I honestly think it was all done with a certain realism in every aspect.

The series is therefore really well done, the tones are dark, enigmatic. The music is memorable. Well detailed script. The characters are striking with a sometimes sickening realism. I must say that I finished this series with the ending that it deserved, and I don't feel the need for more episodes or less, everything has been explained and makes sense.

So honestly, a good thriller that I recommend for sure.

Ps. From what I get, it was inspired by real events, which is the more tragic. In light of this, I do wish the kids here, the victims were more highlighted rather than the antagonists who did horrible things to them.

Leia Mais

He Who Holds The Gavel Wields Formidable Power

WARNING: SOME MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW.

First off, I watched this show since it first aired, so this review is rated from a different perspective compared to those who just binged all episodes of the show in one sitting.

Blind may your typical revenge-based thriller, but its overall plot is quite unique, since it’s premise is based on a true story, which the authors have taken and sprinkled a bit of their own creative narrative to it. Blind takes inspiration from a South Korean case involving a welfare place called Brothers Home. I suggest that you research about the matter, but viewer discretion is advised. In short, the plot is nothing you’d see in other kdramas, but Blind’s take on it had some pitfalls. Some spoilers below.

Given this is based on a real case, I can’t help but feel conflicted. Although the plot is circulated around revenge, I didn’t like how they made victims of HWC come out as seemingly psychopathic, bloodthirsty murderers. I’m not saying that I necessarily disapprove of the revenge arc, but some characters ruined it for me more than others. If one of the villains were more dimensional like Sung Hoon, I would’ve approved of it, but Yoon Jae is an entirely different case. His character ruined it for me. Yoon Jae lacked character development, and stayed as a rather two-dimensional (flat) character throughout the story. Considering how much he was mentioned throughout the story, I expected for the writers to make him a much more impressional anti-hero, but he just came out as a villain. I was disappointed to find out that he wasn’t a main lead, since his character was mentioned so much throughout the drama.

Even after the drama ended, Blind still had so many plot holes. In fact, I counted around 15. I was disappointed how none of these were filled at the end. Another thing that irked me was the sloppy investigative work. Almost everyone, including Sung Joon, looked like amateurs trying to play cat and mouse.

Blind also lacked influential characters. Aside from Sung Joon and Eun Ki, none of the other characters, including Sung Hoon and Yoon Jae, made a deep impression on me. Although Sung Hoon character was morally grey and dimensional, I felt like he lacked something. Overall character to me was just.. weird. I can’t quite explain it. He’s straightforward, smart, and seemingly perfect, but he seemed too animated. I’m not sure if this was on his actor’s part, but I felt that Sung Hoon’s character could’ve been written differently. I already talked about Yoon Jae, but I have to mention one thing: If his character was written like Children of Nobody’s anti-hero Lee Eun Ho, I would’ve approved of it.

I appreciated the final episode so much. It seems like the writers took some time to spread awareness about the real-life issue. It was impressionable, call to action wise.

Flaws aside, the drama did a wonderful job at keeping my attention gripped. Each episode had an impressional cliffhanger, which left me anxiously waiting each week. It stayed consistent in this aspect. Furthermore, this is probably the first Korean thriller where I actually rewatched each episode to try and play detective on the case. It was fun reading theorizing and reading other people’s theories on platforms like MDL and Reddit- the community was incredible and well-mannered (almost everyone out spoiler tags on their comments, that’s why).

Blind’s soundtrack was also perfect. A new MV was released each week, and none of them flopped. I literally played these OST’s every day and never got sick of it. Im thoroughly impressed by the sheer amount of variety in the OST’s. It included so many genres, many of which I thought I wouldn’t like- such as country and rock. However, some scenes in the drama could’ve used a more suitable OST. Often times, I find that certain scenes had OST’s that completely ruined the mood for me.

I have to give credit to the wonderful actors and actresses that participated in this project. The cast had seasoned actors and actresses, so I wasn’t concerned on cringe-worthy acting. I was especially surprised by Eunji’s acting, since it was natural and she immersed into her role well. Taec and Eunji had so much chemistry on and off set, and I kinda wished they took the romance route for them at some point. However, I felt like some characters needed more work in role immersion.

Finally, I liked how morally-grey the drama was. As the titled states: “Enter Blind, Retreat Equally as Blind,” it’s best to approach this drama completely spoiler-free. Even towards the end of the drama, you’d still feel conflicted on whether or not justice was served. Some characters had crueler fates than others, but was it deserved? was justice served on a silver platter or was it bittersweet?

Leia Mais

Is the police a joke? - You should might consider a different Thriller

The story itself was good and had alongside the purpose of an meaningful ending through a conclusion on the well being of children (which undoubtedly is important) some peaks, but I won’t bother with pointing out things everybody is telling you. Since everybody just gives it a 9-10 which I can’t grasp at all.

I was happy with the acting of our ML seeing him after Vincenzo playing a good guy, but his character was just so wack.

I loved Ha Seok Jin, here and in the devils plan he fits the role of being the big brain just way to well.

Jung Eun Ji did a really good job in her acting I hope she gets more enjoyable roles than miss night and day which I had to drop after 1 episode - it’s just to much.

Now concerning my title.

After you knew about the 5 kids and everybody in the jury being part of the welfare Center in a way - isn’t there just one conclusion? Somebody with enough power had to orchestrate the selection of the jury - who is it gonna be? Obviously the judge.

Now you take the jury members, everybody younger than 30 was obviously either a child/brother to someone related to the incident or one of the children themselves. And in the end both guys are in it and not just one - how did the chef and the killer even start some sort of bromance? Nah come on.

Jumping to episode 11 where the most unnecessary person died causing the biggest plot hole.

You’re telling me:

The ML meets up with the Nurse at day, tries calling the FL while it’s dark (somehow he couldn’t reach her for 30 minutes or what?). He arrives at the Center and just checks out the office where he finds the picture of the 3 kids. Without checking anything else to find the FL, he drives home to find his brother after realising he got manipulated. But somehow he can’t get a hold of his brother either. He now drives to the parents home confronting them about his brother.

Meanwhile the brother saved the FL of the killer and drove with her away somehow crashing into some animal and digging a grave for it.

In between everything police officers where at the scene finding blood and telling the ML about it.

So a total of 5 persons never had the idea of checking the place the girl was staying at. Even though our judge was accomplice he never wanted the girl to die but both him and the FL just forgot about her and went digging that fckn grave without looking after her or checking their phones.

The police officers just went away from the scene after finding blood for what?

And the ML was so shocked of the picture, it wasn’t important that the killer might’ve killed the FL in her home?

So our dumbasses of police officers consisted of what?

A corrupt chief who destroyed every evidence he could get a hold of after losing his daughter which was just forgotten about?

His corrupt buddy who thought he was mister big shot but killed a little boy?

The nerd who just made some fiction drama up from every little whatsoever.

The team leader who was nonexistent.

Our ML who can’t get shit done.

And probably the only normal guy. Our best buddy who actually left some good impressions in my head, but he ain’t the big brain - the character was fine though.

And that’s our squad? Who couldn’t figure out anything at all. Neither that somebody orchestrated the jury nor there might be an inside man in the jury.

In my opinion that’s not how you write a story.

Just give up on dragging it out after episode 10. Delete the death of the girl in episode 11. Give us at least one regretful person. I mean take the shaman for example she was just some unimportant witness who could have started to feel regrets. But she just said nothing having her seizures and disappearing after being locked up in the welfare center just to sit in the courtroom at the end. Her maybe talking about number 11 and 13 goving the police some hints that’s all we needed - maybe alongside at least some sparks of love between the FL and ML not to much since it’s a hard story but the possibility was there. We got the bromance and a love story between some mid 30 judge and a 20 year old - but alle we got was some hand waving at the end?

All in all just to many bad persons and a to dumb police squad to get shit done. In the end they needed number 13 to go crazy while being on his killing spree and yap about it in jail. I don’t know if others figured the plot out as well - for me it was just to obvious and predictable who the bad guys would be. It might be worth to watch since it’s fine until episode 10 but it’s definitely nowhere near a 9-10 rating (Only if your standards are low and they are if you can’t compare it to for example through the darkness and realise the differece in quality)

Leia Mais

Kdrama that you for sure won't regret watching.

I've been looking for a good kdrama to watch for a while, and I found it in this show. Every aspect of it has nothing to reproach itself with, the acting is of a high standard, which makes the whole story even more exciting. There is no moment of boredom, in every episode something happens and the story is incredibly interesting and also unpredictable. Music included in this show really fits to the storyline and the only thing I wish was more presented is closer relationship of Ryu Sung Joon and Jo Eun Ki. However I totally recommend waching it and I guarantee you will not regret it at all.

Leia Mais

Good Enough

Korean Drama " Blind " is a crime thriller, involving a past and a present case.

The drama had enjoyable performances, first and foremost, with all the actors and actresses, but, especially, the main ones, fleshing out their characters brilliantly and showcasing the right amount of emotion.

The start of the drama was quite intense as well, with the mystery of that past case being the main source of all the horific moments of the story.

However, the drama soon grew bleak. It was obvious from the start who was behind everything and any attempt to shade shadow on the other characters was not well managed. In addition, the drama got boring and the twists tiring.

So, overall, five out of ten.

Leia Mais

Underwhelming

As a big fan of crime dramas, I was super looking forward to this. I love Taecyeon in Vincenzo and was excited to see him in something else. This show has great casting and acting; however, I was disappointed with the plot of this one.

The show itself is a fairly mediocre crime drama. It felt like they were throwing darts to figure out the twists, leaving plot holes that they had to try to quickly clean up towards the end of the show. The show starts by splitting the storyline between children locked in some kind of hellish prison, and our main characters in present day. Figuring out how these storylines connect is super interesting....until it's not. It seems as though the writers tried so hard to throw the audience off and to make sure they wouldn't expect the twists that they weren't even worked into the story well. However, towards the end of the show I did start to enjoy it a bit more. Considering my love of crime dramas, to rate this one so low hurt a bit, but I think there are a lot better, more cohesive crime dramas out there.

Leia Mais

I just started to doubt myself

Okay, hear me out. I just finished this drama and I'm SO SHOCKED.

FIRST OFF ALL, I just LOVE Ok Taecyeon, I saw him for the first time in "save me" and It was like love at first sight so when I found out he was acting in "blind" I just freaked out so yeah I'm here for he.
I can't tell u about this drama without spoiling everything, so... I loved the storyline and the way we had A LOT of plots in the same plot. The way we just don't know who is being more suspicious. I just stopped believing everyone in the fourth ep, but I'm happy to say I've ALWAYS suspected of the culprit, ALWAYS.

I was sad in the most of drama cuz Sung Joon is so lonely (⁠ᗒ⁠ᗩ⁠ᗕ⁠), but i can't say more.

I loved the way they put everything together, there were only two or three things I didn't like, but overall it's PERFECT, truly the best drama I've watched this year.

TAECYEON I LOVE U \♡/

Leia Mais

Wonderful thriller

Good thriller, even better acting. I do feel like there could have been more resolution to the plot line but I really loved the performance of Ha Seok-Jin in this drama as Ryu Sung hoon. Ok taekyeon was also phenomenal.

The female lead in my opinion is just the best character ever. She is strong, has a great sense of morals and just. One of my favourite kdrama female leads.

The story was very dark I feel. What the children of this story endured was extremely sad.. and their situation was extremely difficult as well. I hope the real life victims of such abuse also escape these circumstances.

Leia Mais