Summary
Spooky in Love can’t help but feel a little contrived and forced in Episode 1, with several aspects not quite working as intended.
Got to be honest – this all feels a bit contrived to me? Based on the 2011 South Korean film Spellbound, Spooky in Love is one of those K-Dramas that feels as if it’s playing a cover-band take on a proper opposites-attract romance like, I dunno, My Royal Nemesis. In Episode 1, at least, every constituent part feels a bit too familiar, every element a bit too predictable. It’s still early, of course, and I’m always willing to give shows the benefit of the doubt, but as far as first impressions go, this isn’t exactly a great one.
The gist of it is that the hotel heiress Cheon Yeo-ri can see dead people, which is not an altogether unusual talent in films and TV. She also has a hint of Rogue from X-Men about her, since if she touches someone with her bare hands, they become cursed. As a result, she wears gloves all the time. She has been dealing with spirits for years and has become accustomed to them knocking around, Odd Thomas-style. It’s the usual stuff.
Entirely by chance, Yeo-ri meets Ma Gang-uk, a prosecutor. Gang-uk can’t commune with the spirit world, but he’s good at putting evidence together, which in some ways is the same thing. As far as meet-cutes go, these two wrestling by a shallow grave seems about right for the tone the show is evidently going for. But even that feels a bit too slapstick and played out.
If there’s a word of the episode, it’s probably “coincidence”. For example, Yeo-ri’s cousin, Ha-ri, is engaged to a professional golfer named Park Seung-jae, the smug son of an assemblyman who got away with murder – literally – in a case Gang-uk was prosecuting. I don’t mind stuff like this, generally, but it happens so much in this premiere that it feels a bit off, like the writers never found a reason to have these two characters meet and so instead just contrived a few scenarios where they had to be in close proximity. They meet again later, when some thugs break into Yeo-ri’s car right outside where Gang-uk happens to be.
Granted, I like the idea of Yeo-ri receiving directions from an invisible passenger in the back, but even that’s par for the course. But basically everything that happens in this episode – up to and including the cliffhanger ending of Gang-uk grabbing Yeo-ri’s gloveless hand to stop her from tripping – is designed to get things in position for the main premise, which will find Yeo-ri, the heiress of Reina Hotel & Resort Group and the CEO of its flagship hotel, helping Gang-uk solve cases by providing unique insight into the victims. There’s definitely mileage in that idea, I just hope it doesn’t play out as artlessly as this episode does.
Tropes are all well and good, of course. Many – let’s be frank, all – romantic K-Dramas have them, but Spooky in Love feels very cursory in how it arranges them, and I’m not sure there’s anything else here, at least not in Episode 1, to make up for that. There isn’t a great deal of chemistry between Yeo-ri and Gang-uk, even though we’re being told in myriad ways that sparks are supposedly flying, and there doesn’t seem to be anything all that interesting about Yeo-ri’s specific predicament, although, to be charitable, it’s probably a bit early for that.
You know me – I’m always willing to wait, and I’ll be covering the show every week anyway, so it kind of is what it is. But thus far I remain entirely unconvinced.
