Gripping

The Price of Confession is a twelve-episode Korean murder mystery drama that practically reinvents the thriller; it's artfully plotted with a cast that couldn't be more perfect for their roles, including Kim Go-eun as a murderess who offers to take the blame for another inmate's crime . . . if she will murder someone for her.

The premise: an unusual and quirky art teacher (Jeon Do-yeon) finds her husband murdered, and swiftly becomes accused of killing him with no practical way to prove her innocence. While in prison awaiting trial she encounters Mo-eun, a killer who offered to confess to the murder of her husband if she will kill the teenage son of her two victims. When they make the deal things start getting out of control in a hurry, and suddenly you don't know who to believe, even the cops and the prosecutor.

I started watching this with serious misgivings, but Kim Go-eun never steers me wrong, and as with The King ~ The Eternal Monarch I ended up being very glad I watched this series. It's the kind of murder mystery that keeps you guessing until the very end, and I did not work out the puzzle in advance (I guessed who the real killer was, but not the motive, by episode ten.) Jeon Do-yeon is absolute perfection as the art teacher, as is Kim Go-eun as the killer, and both played their roles as unlikeable characters that you end up riding a rollercoaster of emotions over and still can't decide how you feel about them by the end. That's very hard to pull off.

Downside: I'd say the only disappointment was the real motive behind the murder of the art teacher's husband, which seemed rather tepid and unbelievable to me. I'm not a vindictive person, however, so others may buy it. Warnings: there is a fair amount of gore, as well as a few graphic depictions of murders and a suicide attempt, as well as a filmed date-rape sexual assault (only a few glimpses of this are shown on screen), so if these are triggers you may want to skip. Otherwise I give it five stars and then some. Available on NetFlix.