beyond evil being helmed by a female writer (kim soo-jin) and a female director (shim na-yeon) simply tells you a lot about the show honestly. shim na-yeon knew exactly what kim soo-jin wanted when she wrote the drama, especially when it came to kim's sole purpose of making the story about the victims and not the serial killer or the crime in general.
as said by many people, directing these type of storylines could easily be swayed into a some sort of murder porn, or providing humanity into the killer by adding in sentimental shots when filming them which would then utterly defeat the writer's intentions. but shim na-yeon kept that in mind when she directed 16 episodes of this drama. not once did she ever strayed from this. during the scene where ds and jw were interrogating * shim mentioned how she tried hard to focus the cameras mainly on jwds and not * because it was simply unnecessary for us to listen to * when they talked about the murders. they simply didn't deserve to be heard or seen because their story didn't matter. this decision may seem trivial and overlooked by viewers but it was so important to the message kim tried to relay.
and then there is the writing itself, there's dongsik's line
and how it's not exactly common to find stories where it is outrightly expressed that sex workers are human at the end of the day, because they are usually sidelined, especially through the perspective of a male character. there's the characters constantly bringing up the names of the victims in each episode because we should never forget their names, and this is just kim's way of reminding us we should always say the names of those who've lost their lives simply because the world didn't try hard enough to protect them. there's juwon and his pure intentions behind solving the case; to bring justice to the victims and especially lee geum-hwa, the woman he'd led to her death. we see him visiting the morgue in the middle of the series because he knew no one would collect her body. throughout the drama, he remembered her, he tried hard to be punished by the law for her death and each time he made sure to bring up her name even though the officers didn't give it a single thought. he never ceased to emphasise on her importance and it's one of the things i truly respect him for besides his immense character development. we also have jihwa's firm dialogue regarding the killer
and that this is the most transparent way of kim relaying her message.
just to clarify, i am not boiling down kim soo-jin and shim na-yeon's talents to their gender or in any way appreciating them as a creator in the industry simply because they're female. they are truly worthy to be praised as a whole for the justice they've brought to this show regardless of whether they're a woman or a man. but when it comes to shows or any piece of media riddled with crime, there's a stark contrast with how male directors bring out their visions in terms of the killer and the murders compared to female ones.
tldr: kim soo-jin deserved every single bit of the baeksang award for best screenplay and shim na-yeon deserved the nomination and having her name displayed to the world in such a way.