If you enjoyed Netflix’s K-drama horror Sweet Home, here are five other chilling shows you should seek out and watch
- Vengeful shamans, nefarious cults, flesh-eating zombies – take your pick if you haven’t had your fill of chills having watched Netflix hit Sweet Home
- You could try The Guest, considered the scariest Korean chiller yet, or Flower of Evil, a taut psychological thriller about a cold-case detective’s grisly find
Sweet Home, the latest drama sensation out of South Korea, is tearing up Netflix charts around the world, but it’s far from the first chilling Korean tale to make its way to the small screen.
Ghosts have long figured in TV comedies and tales of romance, but in recent years drama-makers have steadily grown more serious about the horror elements in their shows. If you’re in the mood for vengeful shamans, nefarious cults or flesh-eating zombies, be sure to check out these chilling K-drama horror offerings.
Kingdom
Netflix’s first original Korean series hardly needs an introduction, but no K-drama horror list would be complete without this period zombie smash.
After Train to Busan brought the Korean zombie trend to life in cinemas around the world, Signal writer Kim Eun-hee and Tunnel director Kim Seong-hun teamed up to bring the hot trend to the small screen in 2019, with Ju Ji-hoon ( Along with the Gods ), Bae Doo-na (Stranger) and Ryoo Seung-ryong ( Extreme Job ) facing off against the undead horde.
We’ve had two seasons to date, with a one-episode prequel spin-off in the works for 2021.
Save Me
In 2017, OCN adapted Jo Geum-san’s webtoon Out of This World into this countryside creepy cult horror-drama, starring Seo Yae-ji ( It’s Okay to Not Be Okay ) and 2PM’s Ok Taec-yeon. Set deep in farming country, the show presents an unvarnished side of Korea rarely seen on screen.
Equally good, if not better, is 2019’s second season, with brand new characters and drawn from a different source, this time Yeon Sang-ho’s acclaimed animated indie The Fake. Swindling pastors and unsuspecting country bumpkins are once again the focus in this jazzier follow-up orchestrated by Lee Kwon, the director of the ace K-thriller Door Lock.
The Cursed
Train to Busan mastermind Yeon Sang-ho pops up again as the writer of The Cursed, his very first K-drama. Uhm Ji-won (Missing) plays a reporter who teams up with a gifted young girl played by Jung Ji-so (the daughter of the rich family in Parasite ) who can curse people to death. Their target? A mysterious and nefarious corporation with a strong connection to something very, very evil.
The creepy and engrossing series, which aired early this year, has sprouted a movie spin-off, which recently wrapped production and will hit the big screen next year.
The Guest
If you liked The Wailing , or better yet the little seen K-horror masterpiece Possessed, then this 2018 series should be right up your alley. Considered the scariest K-drama horror yet, it’s a tale of three characters who were connected as children when an evil spirit killed their families.
Twenty years later, one is a dormant psychic, another a stoic priest and the third a tough detective in this story that conflates the mysteries of Christianity and shamanism in a decadent cocktail of drama and chills.
Flower of Evil
Perhaps more of a suspense thriller than true horror, Flower of Evil, the most recent show on this list, nevertheless packs a mighty punch in the tension department.
Moon Chae-won (Good Doctor) plays a happily married mother and detective. Soon after her unit stumbles on some grisly cold cases, however, she realises that her husband (Lee Joon-gi, The King and the Clown) may be connected. As she digs her way to the extremely dark side her betrothed has been hiding from her, a taut game of psychology and fear begins.
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