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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Cho Yi-hyun, Choo Young-woo
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.4 per cent
A high school girl moonlights as a popular shaman in the supernatural-tinged romantic comedy Head Over Heels, starring Cho Yi-hyun (All of Us Are Dead) and Choo Young-woo (The Tale of Lady Ok).
In this adaptation of the webtoon Gyeon-woo and the Fairy – which remains the Korean title of the series – Cho plays the bubbly Park Sung-a, who has managed to keep her school and shamanic worlds separate until Bae Gyeon-woo (Choo), a handsome young man, appears before her at a fortune-telling session.


Gyeon-woo has been dragged to session by his grandmother, who fears he is in grave danger.
Sung-a, whose identity is concealed by a veil, falls in love with Gyeon-woo at first sight. The problem is that first sight – to her clairvoyant eyes – involves him entering her temple upside down, an omen that foretells imminent death. She gives him at most 21 days to live.
Since Gyeon-woo is not superstitious and believes that the shaman in front of him is a con artist looking to fleece his credulous grandmother, Sung-a has a hard time convincing him that he needs to be careful. So she takes it upon herself to protect him.
Her job is made easier when Gyeon-woo pops up the very next day in her classroom – he is a new transfer student. Since he does not recognise Sung-a, Gyeon-woo is flummoxed by her wide-eyed interest in him.

Things quickly go from bad to worse as Sung-a’s efforts to save Gyeon-woo lead to embarrassing and hard-to-explain situations, such as when she douses him with water in the men’s bathroom.
What he does not realise is that a “water ghost” has latched itself onto his shoulders, recalling a ghost from the Thai horror classic Shutter.
Sung-a’s bizarre behaviour does not help, but Gyeon-woo typically recoils from human interactions. Beyond doting on his grandmother, he does not trust people and would rather be left alone.
After Sung-a and her classmate Pyo Ji-ho (Cha Kang-yoon, The Art of Negotiation) show up at his house to hide protective talismans in every nook and cranny, Gyeon-woo rebuffs their attempts at friendship: “Nothing personal, I just don’t like people.”

The chip on Gyeon-Woo’s shoulder probably has something to do with why his parents are not around.
While he cannot see it yet, this is something he has in common with Sung-a, whose parents abandoned her in a temple many years ago and never returned.
Sung-a also has her hands full at school, but not with the studying she should be doing to stop being at the bottom of her class.
She is busy securely protecting her classmates from various apparitions in the school, including the “water ghost” and a “fire ghost” in a utility room.
In this sense, the show calls to mind the Netflix series The School Nurse Files, in which a nurse played by Jung Yu-mi protects pupils from supernatural entities.
But Head Over Heels finds itself too preoccupied with juvenile crushes to be an amusing mash-up of romcom and horror like this year’s The Haunted Palace or the Son Ye-jin film Spellbound.
Instead, the show we get is generic, garishly bright and at times downright awkward in the delivery of its stilted dialogue.

It attempts to capture the emotions and confusion of youth with a saturated aesthetic, but the polish feels forced, which is not helped by the leads.
Cho and Choo do not always seem comfortable in their roles, particularly the former, who strives to imbue her performance with energy but seems to be operating at a different frequency than the other cast members.
More disappointing is the mawkish staging of the series, directed by Kim Yong-wan. Kim is a veteran of the big and small screen who has proved himself in horror (The Cursed) and romance (If You Wish Upon Me), and whose most recent show, the highbrow election thriller The Whirlwind, was also well received.

Some dramas go through growing pains, which can be a result of a quick-fire plot getting in the way of characters and themes.
Hopefully, when the story of Head Over Heels begins to settle in the coming weeks, so too will its lead performers.
Head Over Heels is streaming on Prime Video.


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Choo Young-woo and Cho Yi-hyun star in this awkward romcom about a schoolgirl moonlighting as a shaman trying to protect the boy she loves


Choo Young-woo and Cho Yi-hyun star in this awkward romcom about a schoolgirl moonlighting as a shaman trying to protect the boy she loves.


Prime Video K-drama Head Over Heels: Choo Young-woo in new romcom off to a bad start

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Choo Young-woo and Cho Yi-hyun star in this awkward romcom about a schoolgirl moonlighting as a shaman trying to protect the boy she loves

Choo Young-woo and Cho Yi-hyun star in this awkward romcom about a schoolgirl moonlighting as a shaman trying to protect the boy she loves