Review | K-drama review: Beyond Evil – masterful serial killer drama keeps the screws tight until the very end

This murder mystery series has kept viewers interested with sustained level of tension and plot twists

The characters all come under suspicion at some point, which gives the cast a chance to shine

Reading Time:3 minutes

Shin Ha-kyun in a still from Beyond Evil.

Published: 6:15pm, 12 Apr 2021Updated: 6:15pm, 12 Apr 2021

4.5/5 stars

Like the best Agatha Christie whodunits, rural murder mystery K-drama Beyond Evil has given us a circus of colourful characters and fed us a steady stream of juicy red herrings during its endlessly taut and surprising 16-episode run.

The show started with a few crimes in need of solving – one in the present, another a 20-year-old cold case – but each hard-fought-for revelation unearthed a new surprise and a deeper crime. As new strands of deceit emerged, criss-crossing over the last, a larger tapestry came into focus, one intricately threaded with a spectrum of dark moral shadings, and musty from its decades of wear.

Beyond Evil takes place in the Manyang village and the nearby town of Munju, both fictional towns in Gyeonggi Province that encircles Seoul. Twenty years ago, several women died or disappeared in a suspected but unsolved serial murder case. Lee Dong-sik (Shin Ha-kyun), the brother of a teenage girl who vanished, was briefly suspected.

In the present, Dong-sik is a disgraced former detective and now a gruff and unpredictable police officer in the same village. A new string of killings hits the area and Dong-sik immediately connects these with the earlier crimes.