‘Gyeongseong Creature’ review: humans are the real monsters in this chilling historical horror

The world of Gyeongseong Creature is one caught in limbo. Set in Seoul in 1945, approximately six months before Korea was liberated from Japanese rule, it captures a society in flux. Echoes of traditional times co-exist alongside new elements of incoming modernity, a tension that colours most scenes on the streets of the city. This is just one of many clashes between opposing forces – and one that is of far lower stakes than many of the others that permeate the show.

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Gyeongseong Creature takes the very real war crimes committed by Unit 731 – Japan’s biological warfare unit – in China between 1936 and 1945, gives them a supernatural makeover and transplants them to a secret underground laboratory in the Korean capital. Just as in reality, citizens are hauled off to the site to become test subjects and undergo horrific abuse at the hands of their oppressors. Instead of being infected with syphilis and plague-causing pathogens like history’s casualties, though, the show’s subjects are at the mercy of the sadistic General Kato (played by Choi Young-joon), who is hellbent on creating a new kind of weapon to help Japan expand its empire even further – an almost-immortal monster with tentacles and scales under his control.

While Kato is committing atrocities in his lair to achieve his goal, back on the streets of Gyeongseong – as Seoul was known at that time – Jang Tae-sang (Park Seo-jun) is reaping the rewards of building a successful pawnshop, the House of Golden Treasure. Known in the city as Mr Omniscient, he’s a suave socialite with connections everywhere, and when we first meet him, too cocky and self-serving to have any interest in joining the fight for Korea’s independence, however much his friend Kwon Jun-taek (Wi Ha-jun) tries.

But when police chief Commander Ishikawa (Kim Do-hyun) comes to Tae-sang with an ultimatum, that slowly begins to change. The charming man about town is given a choice – find Ishikawa’s illicit lover Myeong-ja (Ji Woo), who is the latest in a string of local disappearances, before the cherry blossoms fall or lose everything he holds dear. After exhausting his many connections, he desperately turns to two sleuths, Yoon Jung-won (Jo Han-chul) and his daughter Yoon Chae-ok (Han So-hee), who have arrived in Seoul from Manchuria on a hunt for Chae-ok’s missing mother.

As the three unite and embark on what seems like a relatively harmless journey, they make chilling discoveries about the fate of both of the women they’re seeking – and many more people – that test their faith in humanity. Like many monster horrors, the message here is clear. The creature at the heart of the show might be a scary prospect – you certainly wouldn’t want to run into it in a dark corridor – but it’s the lengths so-called humans are willing to go to in a bid for power and dominance that will really keep you awake at night.

You’ll need to suspend your disbelief for some of the scenes centred around this man-made terror, and the CGI on display does cast a fairly predictable form for the monster to inhabit. In the sub-plots, too, there are frustrations – in particular, a romantic strand of the story feels incredibly rushed. The chemistry and bond aren’t given the time to develop and build between the action, so when we’re asked to, it’s hard to really care about the characters’ joint future despite some strong performances from the cast.

Ultimately, though, Gyeongseong Creature is a gripping story that’s not for the faint-hearted. Although it highlights a fraught period in Japan and Korea’s shared history – made all the more ghastly with its fictional embellishments – its lessons are applicable to many barbarities currently happening in our world right now. “Turning a blind eye makes us a part of the problem, no matter how impossible the circumstance,” Tae-sang says at one point, what he’s witnessed having taken him from carefree to incredibly invested. “If we choose to do nothing, then we are no different from those who oppress us.”

Season one of Gyeongseong Creature is available exclusively on Netflix

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