Day 257: KDrama - Bride of Habaek

Bride of the Habaek (Water God) is about a Water God, Habaek (Nam Joo Hyuk) who has to go to the human world to recover magical stones so that he can become king. He locates his servant Yoon So Ah(Shin Se Kyung) whose family is cursed to serve him for eternity. It is a love story between a god and human.

I felt this drama fall shot as a fantasy/magical romance, it failed big time. There was hardly any magic or demonstration of powers in the drama.

Most of the plot lie flat and super slow and air time is wasted on scenes, which don’t offer much storyline. Usually there is a slight build up (often near the end of an episode) which results in NOTHING when the next episode starts. This quality remains consistent throughout the drama.

The gods’ world was well presented but it suffered because of poor direction, writing and weakly developed characters. In fact, I hope to see more in the heavenly scenes. The stylists, makeup artists, set designers and special effects team did a great job. This is definitely one of the strong points of this drama.

The casting was nice and the acting was pretty good too. I think every actor had their good moments and gave their best, even when the direction wasn’t clear.

Although it was a romance-based story and with some cute moments, the romance between the leads didn’t have much foundation or strength. The storytelling had ZERO charm and the writing was a total mess from beginning to end, even though they already had a ready made plot. Usually there are protagonist and antagonist in a normal storyline. In the end, everyone's characters are somewhat the same.

I was quite bored and lost in the middle, where there is no explain why Habaek's human form first love had to die, why did the demi god was outcast, why Habaek sometimes have power and sometimes don't, he looks so confused all the time... He is supposed to be the future king! I was completely lost half the time. The script was pretty vague. It’s very hard to understand what the characters are feeling, what their intentions are and where the story is going.

The director wasn’t able to express the thoughts of the characters well and execute situations properly for the the most part especially during the heart to heart conversations. It was hard to undertand what the director was trying to project, for instance every time Yoon So Ah reached out to grasp Habaek’s shirt or the aggression between various characters.

There are some story lines not closely connected to the main plot which come to the surface every now and then yet have no clear conclusion. There are A LOT of unanswered questions left at the end and the happily ever after the writers struggled so hard to create has nothing happy about it.

I felt I have wasted 16 hours of my time to watch this. I would give a 4/10 the 4 goes to the gods’ world creation and the casts' acting efforts. I won't recommend anyone to watch this drama.