Second Season of 'Gyeongseong Creature' Suffers from Sophomore Slump

         On September 27, 2024, the second season of 'Gyeongseong Creature' was released by Netflix to predominantly negative reviews. In the series, "a young man and woman struggle for survival while fighting monsters born out of human greed." The ensemble cast includes Han So-hee, Park Seo-joon, Wi Ha-joon, Kim Hae-sook, Claudia Kim, and Jo Han-chul. Read the full review round-up below.

        Jonathon Wilson of Ready Steady Cut notes, "I think we can all admit now that Gyeongseong Creature was a weird show. It aired needlessly in two parts separated by two weeks and spliced a creature feature with a period drama, trying to imbue mindless – but expensive-looking – CGI monster action with poignant metaphors about historical injustices. It was intermittently successful; Part 1 was longwinded but decent, and Part 2 was tighter but nuttier." Adding, "Han So-hee and Park Seo-joon are both back for Gyeongseong Creature 2. In Season 1 the former played Yoon Chae-ok, who discovered with the help of a pawnbroker named Tae-sang (Park) that her mother had been turned into a Lovecraftian tentacle monster by the Japanese Army with the help of a parasite called Najin. After swallowing the Najin herself, Chae-ok has survived through the ages right into Season 2, where she still hunts down the missing, albeit under the new alias, “Silverbill”. Tae-sang has had a slightly different path. Park is now playing Jang Ho-jae, who is ostensibly a new character, but his convenient amnesia and the fact he not only looks exactly like Tae-sang but works out of the same old-fashioned building that used to house the pawn shop, makes one wonder why this plot point is even treated as a mystery at all."

        Pierce Conran of South China Morning Post says, "After battling a dangerous monster engineered by the Japanese army at the tail end of World War II, Han So-hee and Park Seo-joon return eight decades later to duel with a panoply of new villains in the second season of Netflix’s big-budget, low-logic series Gyeongseong Creature." Continuing, "Park this time plays Jang Ho-jae, a wily young man who works as a private investigator. Ho-jae is the spitting image of Tae-sang and is working in the same building that served as Tae-sang’s pawn shop, the old-fashioned design of which now sticks out in modern-day Seoul. Owing to an accident he was involved in a year earlier, Ho-jae has no memories of who he was before that time. The trouble is, before we are even introduced to Ho-jae, we witness this “accident”, which involves him superpowered and engaged in a nighttime CGI battle with dozens of black-hooded assailants on a bridge. The show makes almost no effort to hide the fact that Ho-jae is actually Tae-sang, who also ingested a nanjin monster bug back in the 1940s. So much for mystery."

Photo by Oscar Nord on Unsplash

        Ayushi Agrawal of Pinkvilla writes, "Lee Moo Saeng’s character has been heavily underused in the story, not giving enough time for the development or understanding of his purpose. Despite his strong presence in the progress of the show, he remains a side character. Gyeongseong Creature season 2, much like many other mysteries, does not make sense when compared to real-life occurrences— when you think about how a murder victim’s phone is not tracked by the police despite its usage multiple times after the incident. It definitely adds to the fantasy element of the story. The dialogues have not improved much, with Han So Hee slipping in and out of old Korean and new Seoul-ized Korean, sounding odd at times. As for Park Seo Joon, if not for his patchy makeup in episodes 1 and 2, it would’ve been a perfect portrayal of the popular actor."