The Bequeathed: Episodes 1-2 (First Impressions)
by solstices
Hauntingly delicate, poignantly evocative, and unusually unsettling, The Bequeathed is off to a robust begin. It strikes with the regular assurance of a story that is aware of what story it needs to inform, and if I hadn’t already been drawn in by its achingly advanced characters, I’d have been satisfied by the compelling deftness of its storytelling.
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EPISODES 1-2
On the first light, on a desolate nation street, an aged man ambles previous an open area with a bottle of makgeolli in hand. The silence is peaceable, as early mornings are wont to be, till it turns eerily ominous. With solely a scarecrow and the distant mountains to bear witness, the person begins to foam on the mouth. As a shaman proceeds along with her ritual — elsewhere, and seemingly at a unique time — the dying man desperately reaches out for assist that won’t come.
It’s a gap scene that aptly encapsulates the disquieting environment of this drama. Underscored by a soundtrack that alternates between placid tranquility and discordant dissonance, The Bequeathed toes the road between the atypical and the weird. All the things is all proper, till it isn’t. Characters act in methods which might be simply in need of regular, but not solely inscrutable, and also you’re left on tenterhooks ready for the opposite shoe to drop. It’s the kind of suspense that haunts you with the hardly perceptible potentialities of what lies between the traces.
After that sinister overture, we’re taken again to the mundane. YOON Web optimization-HA (Kim Hyun-joo) is a contract trainer diligently working in the direction of a full-time professor place, and when the detective company she’d commissioned sends her pictures of her dishonest husband YANG JAE-SEOK (Park Sung-hoon) and his mistress, Search engine optimization-ha’s unperturbed demeanor suggests that is previous information to her.
She isn’t given the time to ruminate upon it, although. Her cellphone rings with a name from the police, informing her that her uncle — the person from our opening scene — is lifeless. Search engine optimization-ha’s bewildered by this sudden flip of occasions, as a result of she hadn’t identified of her uncle’s existence within the least. For one, her father had deserted her when she was simply seven years previous. To Jae-seok’s aid, Uncle doesn’t owe any debt, however he’s left behind an inheritance of an ancestral burial floor that now belongs to Search engine optimization-ha.
It solely will get stranger from there, as a result of Search engine optimization-ha is stopped exterior the morgue by an unfamiliar man. Claiming to be the village chief YOOK SUNG-SOO, he informs Search engine optimization-ha that he’s already organized Uncle’s funeral, because the complete village adored him. There’s one thing deeply unsettling about the way in which Kim Jae-beom drawls his phrases that instantly raises goosebumps, coupled along with his unblinking gaze and the grin that by no means fairly reaches his eyes. All of it feels very curated, like a masks of theatrics and manipulation.
As if one perplexing determine wasn’t sufficient, we get one other within the type of Ryu Kyung-soo. Accosting Search engine optimization-ha at Uncle’s funeral and lamenting his depressing destiny in distinction to her profitable life, he declares that he’s her youthful half-brother KIM YOUNG-HO. His wailing is anguished and accusatory in a fashion that toes the road between unwarranted and pitiable, and I’m torn between desirous to know extra and wanting to maintain him twenty ft away from Search engine optimization-ha.
The encounter leaves Search engine optimization-ha deeply shaken — not simply due to Younger-ho’s transgressions, however as a result of he may very well be telling the reality. Way back, when Search engine optimization-ha was nonetheless a scholar, she’d tracked her runaway father down utilizing a return deal with and witnessed him taking part in along with his new son.
Since hint quantities of thallium have been detected in Uncle’s makgeolli, elevating the opportunity of murder, detective CHOI SUNG-JOON (Park Hee-soon) is placed on the case. He attends the funeral organized by Sung-soo, which is so packed to the brim with raucous villagers and piping scorching meals that it might as properly be a village competition. Sung-joon carries himself with a nondescript silence that enables him to seamlessly mix in, and matched along with his perceptive commentary, he quickly gleans key info.
Sung-soo is the contractor of the redevelopment challenge that goals to construct a golf course close to the village, and there’s a sack of thallium hidden at his building website. His acquaintance KIM KWANG-SOO, the event head of Jijo Building, presents to buy the burial floor from Search engine optimization-ha. What she doesn’t know is that the burial floor is the final plot of land holding again the development challenge, since Uncle had refused to promote, which explains why they’re wanting to get their fingers on it.
All leads level to Sung-soo, however when he’s introduced in for questioning, he deflects the blame to Kwang-soo. Claiming that he merely satisfied the villagers to promote their land in trade for a minimize of Kwang-soo’s revenue, Sung-soo works himself up into an aggrieved indignance, as if he’s genuinely wronged by the police’s accusation. However is he?
On the detective workforce, we even have PARK SANG-MIN (Park Byung-eun), who appears to nurse a mighty inferiority advanced towards his sunbae Sung-joon regardless of rising by way of the ranks sooner than him. Not solely does he choose fights over trivial points, however he additionally leverages on his place as workforce chief to disparage the additional investigations that Sung-joon carries out solo. It’s straightforward to dislike Sang-min as a result of he’s spiteful, tetchy, and doesn’t appear to be contributing a lot to the case.
Then the drama hits us with a double whammy. Sang-min’s limp is the results of previous stab wounds, inflicted by a teen. The identification of that boy? Sung-joon’s son. He’d been bullied over his father’s occupation and compelled right into a pretend kidnapping that was supposed to finish with him stabbing his dad, however his rescuer — and thus, his sufferer — had been Sang-min. The guilt Sung-joon carries within the aftermath is our reply as to why he does all of the investigative legwork, however permits Sang-min to assert all of the credit score. It’s a gut-punch of a flashback that immediately recontextualizes their relationship, upturning all the pieces we thought we knew, and it does it with so few scenes however a lot emotional influence.
There’s one thing plaintive about the way in which Sang-min nonetheless calls Sung-joon “hyung,” and the way Sung-joon instinctively reverts to “Sang-min-ah” throughout a non-public (and one-sided) argument, that makes me hope for reconciliation. These males are deeply hurting — one lashes out, whereas the opposite accepts it quietly prefer it’s his cross to bear — nevertheless it’s exactly this damage that reveals they nonetheless care.
I’ve to take a second right here to laud the drama for the way properly it’s arrange its characters to be delicate foils to 1 one other; a lot is revealed by way of their interactions, and their contrasting responses to the identical conditions. Search engine optimization-ha is mellow and placid, however you get the sensation that beneath her enigmatic exterior there are potent feelings brewing. In distinction, Jae-seok is vacuously self-important and insensitive in a dryly hilarious method, plugging his nostril within the morgue and mouthing off tactlessly as a rule.
Even our obvious antagonists, for all that they each make my pores and skin crawl, are extra totally different than they’d appear at first look. Younger-ho might have gotten all up in Search engine optimization-ha’s private house, but for all his boundary-crossing leering, he’s not precisely aggressive regardless of his creepiness. As for Sung-soo, I can’t say the identical. His sudden, truncated bursts of anger really feel disconcertingly uncooked, nearly like glimpses into his true nature. Sung-soo conducts himself with an affected affability, nevertheless it’s uncanny sufficient that it comes throughout as a deliberate veneer.
The investigative thriller is loads engrossing, however the second episode takes it up a notch and weaves within the occult horror I’ve been anticipating. An argument — which has Search engine optimization-ha throwing the proof of Jae-seok’s infidelity in his face and kicking him out of the automotive — ends with Jae-seok lifeless in a ditch the following morning, a bullet gap in his head. The close by bullet shell belongs to a looking rifle that’s thirty years previous, and Search engine optimization-ha recollects that her father had owned one. At a makeshift altar for mentioned father, out in a area, Younger-ho burns a straw effigy alongside a photograph of Jae-seok.
When Search engine optimization-ha returns house to her metropolis house, she witnesses Younger-ho leaving the house constructing with bloodstained fingers. Then, she’s met with a horrific sight. Her door and its surrounding partitions are coated with glyphs and a portray of a three-headed chook, all drawn in blood. It spurs a flashback of a shamanic ritual, along with her father certain within the heart of it as the entire village watches his exorcism.
What’s notably fascinating in regards to the blood drawing is that the three-headed chook usually symbolizes safety from misfortune, not a malicious curse. It appears Younger-ho might have drawn a makeshift talisman for Search engine optimization-ha, however as for his rationale and his motive? Enigmatic as ever. Moreover, the chook is often depicted with a single leg, not two — a mistake, or an intentional distortion by Younger-ho?
One thing I actually like about this drama is how muted and mellow it’s, in each tone and pacing. There are not any dramatic crescendos or overwrought frights, and the one jumpscare we get is a barking canine. It makes the narrative really feel true to life, permitting its uncommon outbursts of battle to land more durable as a result of they’ve been pent up all this whereas. The inexplicably odd habits and peculiar incidents surrounding our heroine really feel all of the extra discordant and incongruous, too.
When the implacable Search engine optimization-ha lastly breaks down, it’s over one thing trivially mundane, and it’s so deeply relatable. Ever since our very first introduction to her, she’s been holding all the pieces in, unable or unwilling to course of the numerous setbacks. Search engine optimization-ha carries her sorrow in a method that’s etched into her temperament however not her habits; she doesn’t mope over her bypassed job promotion, and she or he doesn’t weep over her husband’s passing. It’s solely when the hanging rod of her wardrobe collapses and the garments come spilling out that she bursts into tears, unable to tug herself collectively any longer.
It speaks to the power of the writing, and the depth of the portrayals by the veteran forged, that the gradual construct of the narrative is compellingly gradual reasonably than frustratingly so. There’s nuance tempering each line and historical past woven into each encounter; these are such human characters, and there’s a lot for us to interpret.
This drama manages to convey a lot by way of so little, which makes for such understated but highly effective storytelling. Thus far, it feels as subtly suspenseful as Forest of Secrets and techniques, with a tinge of the contained peculiarity of Past Evil’s village, crossed with the eerie folklore of The Visitor and Revenant — and I imply this as excessive reward, as a result of I cherished all these dramas. The Bequeathed is a gradual burn, nevertheless it’s holding me invested with how intentionally and successfully it doles out info. I’ve religion that the remainder of its story is prone to be properly definitely worth the wait, and even when it isn’t, I believe I’ll nonetheless get pleasure from the way in which it’s advised.
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