One folklore professor’s research into the unknown opens the gates for an evil spirit to wreak havoc and causes an unsuspecting daughter and an unrelenting son to become entangled in an ill-fated alliance. In order to find answers and save those around them, our heroes must look towards the past to understand the world and the things beyond it.
EPISODES 1-2
A ferocious downpour rages outside as the show opens to folklore professor GU GANG-MO (cameo by Jin Seon-gyu) rushing back home. With shaking hands, he sets up a barrier around his doors, but his efforts are for naught as he falls prey to the spirit’s deception. After coming face-to-face with himself, Gang-mo dies, hanging from the ceiling.
In this world, ghosts and spirits exist, just as beliefs and fears do. Some have malicious intents, while others wander aimlessly. However, most people remain unaware of their existence, including our protagonist GU SAN-YOUNG (Kim Tae-ri) — a tired twentysomething-year-old who works part-time jobs to keep afloat.
Things take a turn in San-young’s life when her mother (Park Ji-young) reveals that her supposedly-dead father just died. They attend Gang-mo’s funeral, and San-young inherits a traditional hair ribbon as a keepsake. As soon as she touches the item, a strange vision clouds her mind, and a voice rings in her head: “She received it.”
As San-young leaves, she runs into YEOM HAE-SANG (Oh Jung-se), another folklore professor with an interesting ability: he can see spirits. He notices San-young’s shadow reflecting a wild-haired woman, and he recognizes it as the spirit that killed his mother. Their first meeting is cut short before Hae-sang can introduce himself, but as fate would have it, they cross paths again not long after.
Recently the victim of a phishing scam, San-young assumes the worst about Hae-sang, so when he starts talking about ghosts, she takes it as her cue to skedaddle. Though San-young waves aside his warnings, that evening two detectives, SEO MUN-CHUN (Kim Won-hae) and LEE HONG-SAE (Hong Kyung), drop by her house to ask about the phishing offender who stole their money — he died earlier today.
Despite feeling uneasy about the news, San-young chalks it up as a coincidence until another odd death occurs around her. While visiting her friend BAEK SE-MI (Yang Hye-ji), a boy died after he and his friends were caught filming them, and San-young starts to question everything.
San-young drops by Hae-sang’s university where she learns that everyone else thinks he is insane, too. At the moment, though, he might be the only person who can help her, so putting aside her disbelief, she shares her worries with him. When Hae-sang hears about the second death, he realizes that something is off and goes out to confirm his suspicions.
When they arrive at the boy’s funeral, Hae-sang sees a red rash only visible to him on the victim’s face and assures San-young that another spirit did this. The two of them split up, tackling the case from different angles, and come to the same conclusion: the spirit is a worried brother looking out for his younger sister.
Hae-sang tracks down the spirit’s family with the help of his detective acquaintance, Mun-chun, but while trying to free the little girl, the parents capture him, instead. Waking up inside the house, Hae-sang smashes a window open to help the girl escape, but she is too small to climb out. Right then, San-young appears, and with their combined effort, they save her.
With the teenaged ghost gone, Hae-sang tells San-young that they need to deal with hers next, but she berates him for thinking about spirits when the truly scary creatures in this world are people. She leaves Hae-sang behind and tries to resume her daily life by seeking medical help, hanging out with her friend, and attending annoying reunions.
During one of her part-time jobs, San-young unpacks for a well-off family where their young daughter cries for her doll and accidentally scratches her. At the end of the day, her pent-up frustrations come out through the malevolent spirit, and San-young finds herself by the river with the girl’s doll scratched up in her hands.
Frightened by her unconscious behavior, she runs away and ends up in a tunnel with a large mirror. Just as Hae-sang warned, San-young sees the evil spirit latched onto her, and she hears it dare her to guess its name. The spirit suddenly vanishes, and like the incident with the voice phishing offender, San-young sees through the spirit’s eyes as it arrives at her grandmother’s house.
Meanwhile, Hae-sang continues his investigation of the evil spirit and learns from San-young’s mother that she recently received a red ribbon from her father. Hae-sang immediately recognizes the cursed object and rushes to the old house to retrieve it. Though he manages to obtain the ribbon, he notices the evil spirit lurking outside too late and finds the grandmother hanging from the ceiling in a burning room.
By the time San-young arrives, her grandmother is dead, and all her father’s relevant research burned in the fire. In a daze, San-young walks out of the house and stands in the middle of the road, waiting for death. Her senses come rushing back to her as a truck narrowly misses her, and Hae-sang runs to her side, pulling her to safety.
Crying in his arms, San-young admits to wanting to run away but deep down she always wished to live. She might not know why this is happening to her but she does not want to die — no, she cannot die. She warns Hae-sang that he will be in danger if he stays, but he tells her that it does not matter and reveals the reason for his decades-long obsession.
Turning the clock back to 1995, young Hae-sang just lost his father when his mother started to act strange and took him far away. The night of her death, he woke up to a banging at the door, and before his mother could stop him, he let the evil spirit inside. He watched in horror as his mother hung herself while possessed, and though he knew what he saw, everyone else — including his grandmother (Kim Hae-sook) — told him that she committed suicide.
Back in the present, Hae-sang takes San-young to his apartment and shows her everything he researched so far. He believes her father held the key to figuring out the spirit’s true nature, but unfortunately, the fire destroyed any clues he may have left behind. Recalling her out-of-body experience, San-young reveals to Hae-sang that she saw a map in her father’s notes. With her recreation, they begin scouring references, both old and new, and find a match.
1958, Jangjin-ri. In the middle of the night, young girls from a village gather outside a large tree, and a woman dressed in white examines them while holding the red ribbon. Cutting to a new day, the woman in white entices someone hidden under a cloth with raw meat, and with a menacing smile, kills her.
What a treat! Kind of gruesome to say after a rather bloody ending, but I think I’m falling in love with this show already. The characters are so interesting, and I love the budding dynamic between our two leads: the man on the hunt for the ghost that killed his mother and the woman wanting to protect those around her from the evil lurking inside. San-young and Hae-sang are so different yet alike, and its their differences along with their similarities that make them such an engaging duo — the juxtaposition of belief and disbelief, the desire to run or to fight, the need to find or to hide. As their goals align, their desires start to blend, and I’m curious to see where the story will take these two characters down the road.
Both actors are amazing in their respective roles with Kim Tae-ri portraying the duality of San-young with such foreboding and unease while Oh Jung-se balances the humanity yet otherness of Hae-sang with so much nuance and charm. As someone who watches shows for their characters more than the plot, Revenant is everything I hoped for and more. Not only is the acting phenomenal, the world-building is also intriguing with a very character-focused approach. I love the notion of spirits existing on a spectrum, much like humans, and living amongst us. It makes them complex entities, and in a way, they act as both objectives for our protagonists to achieve but also as characters in their own right with stories to be told. Especially through Hae-sang’s eyes, the boundaries blur between worlds, and the use of mirrors and reflections to depict the hidden is such a visually pleasing and symbolically rich choice.
While the show is chilling, this fear comes more from the overall tone than any particular jump scares or macabre images. The spirits, themselves, aren’t too ghastly (should I knock on wood?), and the show doesn’t rely on cheap tricks to be horrifying. In fact, bona fide horror aficionados might find the show rather tame — I, for one, watch all horror movies with one eye closed, so do with that as you will. The settings definitely help build the atmosphere within the show, and the gritty parts of the world actually look run-down and lived-in. For once, our struggling protagonist does not whip out the latest electronics or don extravagant outfits, making the contrast between the classes that much starker and discouraging because sometimes true terrors aren’t the unseen but the living.
There’s something very unapologetically Korean about Kim Eun-hee’s dramas, and her latest script reflects her penchant for history and social context to enrich her worlds. While known for her thrillers and trailblazing foray within the genre for the small screen, I’m starting to think that her writing holds so much appeal not simply for breaking conventions but because she takes what is more traditionally seen as “western” concepts and makes them wholly Korean. While occult dramas are not new and the cultural prevalence of shamanism in Korea makes it a rich source for these types of stories, Revenant takes the ideas of ghosts and spirits as a historical phenomenon that existed in tales and culture. Thus, it encroaches upon every aspect of daily life not just the supernatural, and by making the spirits exist in all forms — ghosts with last wishes, gods protecting lands, or evil spirits out for vengeance — the show sets itself apart from the typical exorcism or shamanistic dramas. While I’m sure many of her fans are still clamoring for a sequel to Signal or another installment to Kingdom, I’m excited to see how she’ll take this genre and make it her own.