Unexplained happenings are the bread and butter of any thriller worth its while, and upcoming high school mystery High Cookie certainly has them in spades. Slated to be LG U+’s first original drama on their streaming platform, this delectable thriller has dropped more crumbs for us with its first teaser.
Opening on an ominous shot of an innocuous-looking smiley face cookie, a hopeful voiceover espouses the benefits of this frosted treat: “One bite gives you improved concentration, and finishing it all grants your wish.” It’s certainly a tantalizing opportunity to turn your life around. “However,” the voiceover warns, “eating more than one is not recommended.”
The side effects of cookie greed are stark. As a man makes a call in a hospital’s emergency ward, we see a bloody gash on his hand. Cut to the hallway of a high school, where panicked students run past an unconscious schoolmate, desperate to flee the school compounds. This is the very location where student Choi Min-young — played by Jung Da-bin (Glitch) — gets tangled up in this sugary magic, having succumbed to the temptation of the peculiar desserts.
Luckily for Min-young, she has a loving older sister who will do anything it takes to protect her. Played by Nam Ji-hyun (Little Women), factory worker and family breadwinner Choi Soo-young is fiercely independent. With their parents out of the picture, the girls only have each other to rely on, and Soo-young’s determined to rescue her little sis from the clutches of the cookie’s curse — even if that means diving headfirst into danger by picking physical fights and getting herself kidnapped.
At school, there’s another variable to this sticky-sweet puzzle. Choi Hyun-wook (Twinkling Watermelon) plays top student Seo Ho-soo, whose stellar grades belie his family circumstances. With a terminally-ill mother and a missing father, Ho-soo’s life has been far from easy, yet he’s still guilelessly kind, helping out his fellow schoolmates even though they view him as a pushover.
Last but not least, Kim Mu-yeol (Trolley) rounds out our main cast as the school’s admissions consultant Yoo Sung-pil. Unscrupulous in his methods to make his students’ dreams possible, Sung-pil is shrouded in a veil of mystery that is as suspicious as it is intriguing. The teaser gives us a glimpse of him shoving a guy’s head right through his car window, though it’s still too early to tell whether he’s punishing evil, or committing evil himself.
Helmed by PD Song Min-yeop (Youth of May) with scripts penned by Kang Han (Silence of the Lambs), the 20-episode drama High Cookie will be released on October 23.