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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
2/5 stars
Lead cast: Cho Yi-hyun, Choo Young-woo, Cha Kang-yoon, Choo Ja-hyun
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.9 per cent
Teenage shaman Park Seong-ah (Cho Yi-hyun, All of Us Are Dead) has been taking care of her cursed and devilishly handsome classmate Bae Gyeon-woo (Choo Young-woo, The Tale of Lady Ok), first from the shadows and steadily out in the open, since the beginning of the supernatural romantic comedy Head Over Heels.
In the show’s final few episodes, the tables turn between them in several ways, binding Seong-ah and Gyeon-woo closer together.


Just after the halfway point of the series, Gyeon-woo was possessed by the spirit known as Bong-su, following which Seong-ah had to stick even closer by his side, as only through her touch could Bong-su be forced down. Much awkward and hard-to-explain hand-holding at school ensued.
Though he was played up as a malevolent spirit, Bong-su turned out to be surprisingly reasonable, willingly trading places with Gyeon-woo whenever the need for it arose.
This is in part because of the fact that Bong-su is the spirit of a young boy – a child soldier who ever since his death has wandered lost in the mountains in his dreams.
The switching arrangement between Gyeon-woo and Bong-su carries on for a time, but it is only a stopgap, not a solution to the problem.
Seong-ah’s solution – as it has been throughout the series – is self-sacrifice.

She secretly performs a dangerous ritual, but thanks to the machinations of the wicked shaman Yeon-hwa (Choo Ja-hyun, Little Women), Seong-ah’s spirit mother General Dongcheon (Kim Mi-kyung, Knight Flower) dies, thus giving Bong-su the 100 souls he needs to become a full evil spirit.
He then switches to Seong-ah’s body and is now strong enough to completely trap her inside. Bong-su, as Seong-ah, disappears and the story picks up two years later.
Gyeon-woo has become a successful archer after graduating from school and each time he wins a competition, he goes to Seong-ah’s room and places his new medal in one of her drawers. The rest of the time, he tirelessly searches for her.
After all the time Seong-ah devoted to protecting him, he is now the one trying to save her. Shortly before Seong-ah’s disappearance, Gyeon-woo also developed the ability to see ghosts. While searching for Seong-ah later, he uses his archery skills to shoot ghosts with powerful talismans, forcing them to answer his questions.

While Head Over Heels kicked off with a lot of high jinks between ghosts and humans, these moments – which were among the show’s most amusing – become few and far between in the show’s midsection. Gyeon-woo as an archer ghost hunter is a welcome addition, but this does not last long.
No thanks to Gyeon-woo’s actions, Bong-su returns, but it seems that the most evil things he has done in the interim are dress Seong-ah in tacky clothes and have a bad attitude.
He stays with Gyeon-woo and Seong-ah’s friend Pyo Ji-ho (Cha Kang-yoon, Resident Playbook), who try to figure out how to get Seong-ah back. He also keeps trying to kiss both of them, hoping to transfer from a shaman’s body to a weaker one.
Gyeon-woo does figure out a way to move Bong-su over to his body, but to get rid of him once and for all, Bong-su’s grudge must be eased and the only way to do that is to figure out his real name.

Roaming inside Bong-su’s dreams, Gyeon-woo sees two child soldiers, but he learns that Bong-su is a figment of the other boy’s imagination, a manifestation of his pain and loneliness.
Once Gyeon-woo coaxes the name of Bong-su’s dream subconscious, the show gets its happy ending, with Gyeon-woo and Seong-ah spirit-free and finally able to be with each other.
While this may be a happy ending, the show could have used more contrast between its high and low points. There were deaths that were difficult for the protagonists to handle, particularly the bitter passing of Gyeon-woo’s aunt Oh Ok-soon (Gil Hae-yeon, Trigger).
But Bong-soo and Yeon-hwa, despite being introduced as the major villains of the show, quickly became toothless as antagonists. There was no palpable sense of danger to their presence on screen.
Despite coming to stay with General Dongcheon and the other shamans midway through the show, Yeon-hwa all but disappeared in the latter parts of the story as her connection to it started to fall out of focus.

Meanwhile, the story was biding its time with Bong-su, waiting until the closing episodes to introduce the sympathetic layer of his character. However, this transition was undermined by his lack of impact as an evil spirit earlier on.
Head Over Heels had its colourful moments, but among all the artifice on display, these never coalesced into a satisfying viewing experience.
Head Over Heels is streaming on Prime Video.


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Choo Young-woo and Cho Yi-hyun both get possessed in this demonic K-drama where a lack of any real danger leads to an unsatisfying end


Choo Young-woo and Cho Yi-hyun both get possessed in this demonic K-drama where a lack of any real danger leads to an unsatisfying end.


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.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 both get possessed in this demonic K-drama where a lack of any real danger leads to an unsatisfying end

Choo Young-woo and Cho Yi-hyun both get possessed in this demonic K-drama where a lack of any real danger leads to an unsatisfying end