Netflix K-drama Mask Girl: Go Hyun-jung, Nana in deliciously dark saga of desire and revenge that surprises at every turn
- Wickedly entertaining, this series starts with a young girl with a dream – one that will turn into a nightmare exploring patriarchy and the ugly side of beauty
- Go Hyun-jung and Nana, in perhaps her best role yet, are its stars. Do yourself a favour, go in cold and let its cool and calculated mayhem wash over you
Lead cast: Go Hyun-jung, Nana, Yeom Hye-ran, Ahn Jae-hong
A quiet year for K-dramas heats up with the late summer surprise Mask Girl, an aggressive, surprising and addictive show that will have viewers tapping on Netflix’s “next episode” button with furious abandon.
This is the kind of series that you’re better off knowing very little about before tuning in, but suffice to say that it starts with a young girl who has a dream – one that will turn into a nightmare exploring patriarchy and the ugly side of beauty.
That girl is Kim Mo-mi, who has always wanted to become a star. The trouble is, she was born without the looks to match her dancing and singing talent.
She grows up to become a nondescript office worker, but at night she transforms into “Mask Girl”, a popular webcaster who delights her fans by gyrating to classic tunes in skimpy outfits and adds to her allure with a collection of wigs and masks.
Mo-mi, who keeps her online identity a secret, has a crush on her boss, the handsome Team Leader Park (Choi Daniel), while her lonely colleague Joo Oh-nam (Ahn Jae-hong) – who happens to be a Mask Girl uberfan – has long had eyes for her.
Mask Girl begins as an office comedy-drama with obsessive romantic overtones reminiscent of cult South Korean film Crush and Blush. This is a fairly innocuous start but, with its sexual undertones and dark characterisations, it hints at the ingenious madness that is to come.
Korean dramas are overrun with sympathetic characters, but you will not find any of them here, at least at first. Mo-mi is greedy and her desire to be loved warps her personality. That desire is answered, but not in the way that she expected.
Confronted with the violent desires of men, Mo-mi’s survival instincts are unleashed and her life changes irrevocably. She becomes a different person, just as she always wanted, but the actions that get her there kick off a chain reaction of vengeance that cannot easily be undone.
The big names in Mask Girl are Go Hyun-jung and Nana, but talking about their roles would spoil much of the surprise. What can be safely said is that no one face sticks around for long – each episode offers a clear-cut chapter led by specific characters. The same characters recur, but not always with the same appearance.
The series reinvents itself through each of these distinct chapters, which often change location and switch up their visual styles – almost half of one episode is filmed in black and white.
Bad things begin happening to Mo-mi, and new characters, such as Oh-nam’s overbearing mother, Kim Kyung-ja (Yeom Hye-ran), a disgraced K-pop star and a small-town bar hostess, slip in and out of her ferocious life story.
Mask Girl marks the small-screen debut of film director Kim Young-hoon, who previously made the stylish crime thriller Beasts Clawing at Straws, and is based on a webtoon of the same name by Mae Mi.
The stylistic similarities should come as no surprise, as celebrated production designer and long-time Park Chan-wook collaborator Ryu Seong-hie lends her talent to the show’s art department.
Most unexpected of all is the journey our emotions take as we watch Mask Girl.
By the show’s penultimate episode – members of the press were invited to preview six of its seven episodes – you may be surprised by how you have come to feel about Mo-mi, a protagonist like no other in Korean dramas.
No one gets a huge amount of screen time but each member of the cast throws themselves into their roles. Ahn Jae-hong is deliciously creepy, Yeom Hye-ran is malevolently magnetic and Nana, in perhaps her finest role yet, is a captivating screen presence.
Revenge is a dish best served cold, so do yourself a favour – go in cold and let Mask Girl’s rush of cool and calculated mayhem wash over you.
Mask Girl will start streaming on Netflix on August 18.
