Revenant Episode 1 introduces a world where ghosts have evident implications on people’s life, regardless if they believe in them or not. Titled 악귀 is Korean, the horror mystery drama is directed by Lee Jung-lim and the screenplay is written by Kim Eun-hee. The episode has a runtime of about 1 hour and 14 minutes.
The ensemble cast of the series includes Kim Tae-ri as Gu San-yeong, Oh Jung-se as Yeom Hae-sang, Hong Kyung as Lee Hong-sae, Kim Hae-sook as Na Byung-hee, Park Ji-young as Yoon Gyeong-moon, Kim Won-hae as Seo Mun-chun, Yang Hye-ji as Baek Se-mi, Jin Seon-kyu as Gu Kang-mo, Ye Soo-jung as Kim Seok-ran and several others.
Revenant Episode 1 Recap
The episode starts with a man entering a traditional Korean house & locking all the doors quickly. He even puts up spirit protection charms all over and tries to figure out what went wrong in a presumable shamanic ceremony or exorcism. Suddenly he hears a loud knocking on his door and his mother’s voice asks him to open the door quickly. As soon as he opens it, we see a person looking just like the man, standing outside & seems happy that the door has been opened. Next, we know is the man hanging from the ceiling with red marks on his wrist, is found by his actual mother.
At the same time, a girl is going through her day by carrying out part-time jobs, when she walks to the bridge & looks down to the water as if she is about to jump. While two men are sitting on a bench nearby the foot of the bridge & are talking about spirits. He sees the girl & towards her to stop but instead, someone else jumps down the bridge, as he sees some shadows going away. When the girl gets a call from her mother about catching the voice phishing culprits, she comes back to her senses. They go to the police station but realise that they can’t get the money back.
The mother had sent all their savings to a phishing scam, claiming to have kidnapped her daughter, Gu San-yeong. But now they are about to get on the streets since they don’t have money to even pay the rent. As soon as they reach home, the mother gets a call & she asks San-yeong to come with her somewhere. On the way, she explains that her dad didn’t die when she was 5, they got divorced and the mother just faked memorial service every year. But now he has actually died and they are going to pay respects. This makes San-yeong furious but she goes along.
Her grandmother asks to have a chat with her about something & takes her to the same room where the man aka her dad died. She asks what did her dad do, and gets to know that he was a folklore professor. The grandmother then gives a box with a red hair accessory, usually worn with a hanbok. As soon as she touches it, a voice says, she got it. However, her mother throws it away as soon as she sees it in her hand & takes her back quickly.
On the way out San-yeong encounters the man from the bridge, who has a note from her father saying, take care of my daughter when I die. He sees a spirit with open hair in her shadow & before he can say something, she goes away. The man introduces himself as Yeom Hae-sang and questions why did the professor resign 15 years ago. But the mother sends him back as he didn’t have the right intentions to pay respect to the dead.
The next morning, when San-yeong was sleeping, we see a shadow figure rising from her body in the mirror & it goes out to seek the man that scammed them. Once again a loud knock on the door with the voice of his friend asks him to open the door. Meanwhile, when San-yeong wakes up she finds her computer screen smashed but rushes to her part-time job. She has been getting messages from Hae-sang to connect but she feels it’s another scam. When she reaches a construction site to deliver lunch, Hae-sang is also there, inspecting some ancient artefacts that turn out to be graves. There also he asks the builder to hold a ritual to send away the spirits.
He then tries to talk to San-yeong and tells her that an evil spirit has latched onto her, which grows by fulfilling the host’s desire. Like killing the person they hate. He warns her about it & says that people will die around her but she doesn’t pay any heed. However, the police come looking for her regarding the scammer guy’s death case. He apparently hanged himself but on all his clothes & bag, Sang-yeong’s fingerprints are found. But according to the CCTV footage, she was still at home when he hanged himself. The police officer is yet fixated on the case & finds it strange. It turns out he is an acquaintance of Hae-sang and was investigating his mother’s mysterious death as well.
San-yeong doesn’t pay any attention to the scammer’s death but when she visits her friend’s new house, something similar happens. While sleeping, she sees four hands trying to capture something on their phones, but they run away before she could catch them. While coming back from the police station, she finds one of the boys that she had mentioned, lying dead on the street. It was shown that he got a call on his phone from Jung Hyun-woo and the next thing we know is him lying dead. This scares her & she goes seeking Professor Hae-sang at Jeyong University. He is famous for seeing spirits but everyone thinks he has lost his mind.
When he looks at the spirit again, it doesn’t seem to have grown after killing presumably two people. He then goes to the boy’s funeral & realises that another spirit had killed him. When San-yeong spots the other two boys who were with him, she catches them and asks about the fourth boy with them that had 4237 written on his palm. This shocks them & they run away from her again. While Hae-sang tries to investigate on his own by asking the police officer about Jung Hyun-woo. He was apparently bullied by the three boys and died by falling off the roof. He had the number 4237 written on his hand at the time of death. To investigate further he visits the boy’s house but gets no answer.
San-yeong also tries to get more information about the other two kids & finds one running towards her when she reaches near his house. He pleads with her to save him from the dead Hyun-woo. He explains how he has been getting calls from him, even though he is dead. When she goes inside his house to look at the phone, she feels something weird. She remembers how Hae-sang told her that the door is the portal between the other world. When someone knocks, they shouldn’t open without confirming their identity. As she looks at the door, it is wide open and in the mirror, the spirit of Hyun-woo is seen standing inside.
Revenant Episode 1 Review
Considering it’s a horror show, some jumpscare or sudden spirit looking straight into the camera was expected but it was quite subtle. It will be interesting to see how she will deal with the spirit latched onto her. Moreover, the grandmother seems to be hiding much more. On a side note, the evil spirit with the flowing hair looks like an anime character that looks a bit odd/scary but is like a bubbly and cute character. Even when the spirit’s shadow is shown at the start, it looks like a Pokemon or an alien species. Overall, it has been an engrossing episode.
Revenant is currently available for streaming on Disney+.
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