Who are you? We’ve met before, right? I feel like we’ve met before. - I know her. It’s a long story.

REVENANT 악귀 (2023)

The Good Bad Mother Review

“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be easily lost.” -Lemony Snicket.

GIF by moonlightsdream

After her husband dies Young Soon travels to a new place and gives birth to her son and from that moment she decided to make him a prosecutor.

However, after everything, Kang Ho gets into an accident and is now paralysed with a 7-year-old mentality.

Spoilers ahead

I have to say this drama gripped me from the very first episode to the very last.

The plot of the drama is intriguing and with every episode, you get more curious about the lives of the main leads and the village people.

It also did lean on harder topics and was quite well-balanced with some humour.

Though, the harder topics were not always approached right, for example, the scene where she started drowning Kang Ho so he would stand up, which is clearly abuse.

But most of the comments I saw were about how she’s doing a good job, how she knows him the best so pushing him down there is a good method.

Not only that later on Kang Ho actually starts walking and the writer and director showing this horrible method as effective is even worse.

And to be honest, I hated the idea that Kang Ho still liked his mother even after he had his memory back, and after all that time everything was for her.

With how much abuse he got through I wanted him to leave, or at least distance himself from her as we saw in a very few episodes.

But there were no consequences for her, yes she got some terrible luck with a lot of things but getting cancer or those tragedies just became a way to show her in a better spotlight without actually doing any work in the abuse department.

And I fell for that too, at first. I would start feeling like: ‘Oh yes, she’s changing a bit now’ and then she throws a terrible line or does something bad and we’re back in the same circle.

I feel like none of the characters really changed much, probably the only one would be the trot producer. I did not see any growth in any of the characters would it be the village people or would it be Kang Ho or the mother, as we saw them in the first episode they’re the same in the last.

I’m sorry but I won’t count the dead person’s letter about how she will be better next time because she never showed anything like that in this life.

I liked other relationships, how the village people are so close and Mi Joo’s children are adorable.

Sam Shik was also a good second lead who just knew when to let things go and he was just a funny character, just like two Woo Byeok’s handyman. They were the characters that made the show so much more loveable.

Overall, this drama is something unique and there are so many interesting discussions you can have while watching it.

The acting is also phenomenal and I have no complaints about it but I just wish the characters learned something from the experiences that they had. And for me, that was missing a lot of the time.

9/10