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Pierce Conran

3/5 stars
Lead cast: Kim Hyun-joo, Park Hee-soon, Park Byung-eun, Ryu Kyung-soo
Swigging a makgeolli (Korean rice wine) bottle, an old man mutters to himself while traipsing through a wintry field. Panic suddenly seizes him and he collapses to the earth, gripping his own throat as he breathes his last, his terror-filled eyes gazing at the gravesite ominously looming over him from the blue mountains beyond.
What horrible secrets could be buried there?


This is the hugely atmospheric opening of the six-part horror thriller The Bequeathed, Netflix’s first Korean drama of the year.
Created by Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, Hellbound) but directed by his protégé Min Hong-nam, formerly an assistant director on Train to Busan, the show stars Kim Hyun-joo (Hellbound) as Yoon Seo-ha, a struggling lecturer who inherits a mysterious family gravesite following the passing of an uncle she never knew she had.
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Upon arriving in the countryside with her smug yoga instructor husband Yang Jae-seok (Park Sung-hoon, The Glory), she meets detective Choi Sung-joon (Park Hee-soon, My Name) and his superior, Park Sang-min (Park Byung-eun, Kingdom), who believe that her uncle may have been murdered.
After learning about the gravesite that she will inherit, she also discovers that she has a very creepy half-brother named Kim Young-ho (Ryu Kyung-soo, Jung_E), who believes himself to be entitled to the gravesite.
Before long, more bodies begin to drop and as Seo-ha, Sung-joon and Sang-min try to identify the killer, they are compelled to delve into the mystery surrounding the gravesite.

The show’s bleak and evocative countryside setting immediately calls to mind a few landmarks of Korean cinema.
There’s a red scarecrow in the opening scene, just like the one that welcomes Kim Sang-kyung’s Seoul detective in Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder. Meanwhile the foreboding tone, shamanic rituals and fear-of-outsiders theme also recall Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing.
These similarities lay out The Bequeathed’s intentions. This is a grim and stylised journey into the countryside and its swept-under-the-rug horrors. Later in the opening episode we are shown the tiny village that serves as the setting for the series from afar, tightly enveloped by the suffocating nearby hills.

Another of the show’s K-cinema building blocks is creator Yeon himself, as the foul-mouthed, alcoholic uncle, and the wealth of parasitic characters, which are reminiscent of Yeon’s dark indie animation The Fake, which was later adapted as the drama Save Me 2.
Yeon may not be the director but his DNA is all over this series. The grim locations, hopeless characters and unforgiving society are all hallmarks of his work.
The Bequeathed draws us in quickly with its atmosphere but the mystery of its central premise soon loses its lustre. Viewers looking for full-on supernatural horror – despite early reports, this is not a zombie series – may be wise to readjust their expectations.

This is more in the vein of a serial killer thriller, with the usual neon lights swapped out for the brown hues of mud and dirt.
A lot of time is devoted to the investigation and particularly the frosty interactions between the detectives, whose positions have reversed over the course of their years on the force, thanks to a terrible incident that befell them a few years earlier.
The show loses its way around the halfway point, when the action slows down and the reveals don’t offer the most exciting new nuggets of information.

It does come back strongly near the finale, when the show’s big secret is laid bare and the main characters are thrust into a tense and twisted set piece involving a kiln.
Given the short episodes and the meandering midsection, one wonders if the story would have been better suited to being a feature film.
Though reports have suggested that The Bequeathed is based on a webtoon, it might be more accurate to say that it is the other way around. The webtoon, which only debuted a few months ago, appears to be based on the scripts that Yeon and his co-writers wrote for the series. The second part of the webtoon is set to come out the same day as the show.

The year 2024 looks to be a big one for Yeon as he is also scheduled to return as a director in March with the Korean adaptation of the popular Japanese manga Parasyte, while the second season of Hellbound is currently in post-production.
The Bequeathed will start streaming on Netflix on January 19.


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Ryu Kyung-soo as Kim young-ho in a still from “The Bequeathed”. Photo: Jeong Se Hyeon/Netflix.

Kim Hyun-joo (centre) as Yoon Seo-ha, the inheritor of mysterious burial site, in a still from “The Bequeathed”. Netflix’s serial killer thriller is atmospheric, but may have been better as a feature-length movie. Photo: Jeong Se Hyeon/Netflix

Park Hee-soon as detective Choi Sung-joon in a still from “The Bequeathed”. Photo: Jeong Se Hyeon/Netflix

Park Byung-eun as detective Park Sang-min in a still from “The Bequeathed”. Photo: Jeong Se Hyeon/Netflix

Ryu Kyung-soo as Yoon’s creepy half-brother Kim Young-ho in a still from “The Bequeathed”. Photo: Jeong Se Hyeon/Netflix

The bleak, rural setting of “The Bequeathed” is reminiscent of Bong Joon-ho ’s 2003 crime thriller “Memories of Murder”. Photo: Jeong Se Hyeon/Netflix

Kim Hyun-joo as Yoon Seo-ha, a lecturer who inherits a family gravesite, in a still from “The Bequeathed”. Photo: Jeong Se Hyeon/Netflix

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Hellbound’s Kim Hyun-joo plays the inheritor of a burial ground linked to a string of murders in this serial killer horror with Yeon Sang-ho’s DNA all over it
The bleak rural setting brings to mind Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder, and given the series’ rambling midsection, it may have been better as a movie itself


Created by Train to Busan and Hellbound director Yeon Sang-ho, Netflix’s serial killer Korean drama The Bequeathed stars Kim Hyun-joo as the inheritor of a mysterious rural burial site.


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Review | Netflix K-drama review: The Bequeathed – horror thriller series created by Train to Busan and Hellbound director Yeon Sang-ho uncovers dark rural secrets