kdrama: Gumiho: Tale of the Fox's Child

This is a 16 episode horror sageuk about Gu San Daek, a gumiho (fox demon) who is discovered by a human who she spares only on the condition that he never tells anyone about her. Later, she approaches him as a human woman and lives for 10 years as his wife, because if she lives as a human for 10 years and he keeps ther secret for just as long, she and her children become human. Naturally, the night before the 10 years are completely up, he tells their daughter, Yeon Yi, about meeting a gumiho in the mountains. Outraged, she leaves him, taking Yeon Yi with her, and he commits suicide.


Meanwhile, Yoon Soo Doo (Or was it Yoon Doo Soo? I'm too lazy to look it up, so I'll just call him Loser Yoon.) is a nobleman who has a daughter, Cho Ok, who has been ill her entire life and is constantly near death. After she's stricken with blindness, a creepy shaman who lives in a creepy cave in the mountains (Note: played by Babystealer from City Hunter. He is marvelously creepy and sinister and utterly polite.) tells him that Cho Ok can be saved if, on her 10th birthday, she eats the liver of a girl born on the same day as her, and says that he'll know the right girl because Cho Ok's blindness would be cured by her and she would be the first person she sees.


Naturally, Loser Yoon gathers up all the little girls in the region born at the same time as Cho Ok to see which one he'll murder. Also naturally, the child in question is Yeon Yi (for reasons that are not completely explained except that The Plot Says So, Gu San Daek must live as a human until Yeon Yi turns 10, which is when she'll completely come into her powers as a gumiho), and Loser Yoon takes the two into his household for "protection" as they're a homeless mother and child. And shows them such blatant favoritism that it turns the whole household against them.


This thing is stuffed full of overwrought drama and OTT emo, particularly the first half. I spent most of the first half going "This is fun, but how will they keep it going for 16 episodes?" And then I'd remember that, oh yeah, 1/3 of the scenes are Yeon Yi being lost or in some new form of Dire Peril (quite developed survival instincts, though), another 3rd is Gu San Daek running through the forest in a near panic, looking for her, and then the last 3rd is, you know, plot. There are also icky scenes of Loser Yoon romancing Gu San Daek. Which, on her side, is ok based on what she knows because as far as she knows, he's a nice man (with an unpleasant family) helping her and her daughter. On the flipside, all his niceness was just to get her to stay with him so that he could murder her daughter, and presumably comfort her after her daughter's mysterious death and keep her as a concubine. I spent several spurts deeply concerned that the writers were going to make that an Epic Romance, and being all "but if you must have a romantic plotline, what about that nice mute servant who likes her? He isn't planning to murder her daughter!" (Note: In this series, unrequited love cures muteness, makes you a master swordsman despite having no training, and gives you the ability to survive enough stab wounds to kill a dozen other men.) Actually, there is a romantic plotline between Yeon Yi and the son of the local magistrate, who's about 12-13. Apparently, while I can go with Korea's conviction that someone you knew for 3 weeks when you were 10 will be the most important relationship in your life, I don't buy it when it's a full blown Epic Love Story.


The second half still has a lot of OTT emo and overwrought emo, but it also has a lot more plot, and is when the horror elements really come into play. It also switches a lot of the conflict from Loser Yoon wangsting about how can be bear to murder a cute little girl (and that wouldn't REALLY make it wrong to marry her mother, right?) to his wife, Lady Yang, and Gu San Daek fighting for the survival of their respective daughters. I had some metanarrative issues with this and the way it pitted women against each other (not just then, but throughout), but it also emphasized that, ultimately, it's a story about mothers and daughters and their love for each other. Also, while Lady Yang was no less awful than her husband, I found her much easier to understand and could see her POV more clearly than Loser Yoon's, even if I didn't (couldn't) actually sympathize with her.
( spoilers )

The four main actresses, incidentally, are particularly well cast, especially Cho Ok (probably the most difficult role in the series once we reached the second half-I don't know how, but sageuk's always have amazingly talented child actors) and Gu San Daek's. The actress's features actually made Gu San Deak's partially transformed form work much better than it usually would, though a lot of that relied on her feral expressions (though the really heavy breathing that came with the transforming made me giggle at times) and the creepy, animalistic smile that she had. Usually when you have human-like characters that aren't really human, the character just comes across as a human with extra abilities and angst, often used to make bad behavior "nature." (See: practically every vampire ever. And many a werewolf and fictional representation of a deity.) Here, the actress was convincing as a mixture of human and animal-pretending-to-be-human but still thought like an animal, and who was becoming an animal again. Of course, the actresses don't really get to show their stuff until the second half.


While I liked it in different ways at most times throughout (there was a lot of giggling early on that I'm sure wasn't the writers' intention) it's not an easy or particularly pleasant show. Like most Korean horror (well, historical horror-while I've liked the historical horror stuff that I've watched, I haven't really enjoyed any of the contemporary horror stuff except the horror bits on the Gumiho series with Han Ye Seul-I apparently like Gumiho stories because I also really liked the ones in the Hometown Legends horror anthologies) unpleasant things happen to everyone, including children, and it isn't afraid to cross almost all lines, and almost every character, including the more sympathetic ones, do or intend something awful at one time or another.