Search

It had a decent start setting up the atmosphere. The drama was shot nicely too, try to grab the UXN 4K version if you can. The action was good although it was scarce. There was a lot of downtime between each event which almost ruined the drama. It was clear they had an abundance of free time that they started supplementing it with slice of life/comedic moments which were straight up bad and unfitting. The story wasn't as engaging as it was at the start, it somehow lost its direction midway through. Too many plot holes to count even when excluding the supernatural elements. The drama lacked a meaningful connection between characters. The least you would expect from a military themed drama is some comradeship which this drama failed to show. It's a hard watch since the drama doesn't have much to offer other than a good cast.

As close to perfect as a drama could be. Great storyline, suspense, cinematography, acting, soundtrack. Characterisation is excellent, every one of the soldiers is different, nuanced and you could root for their various personalities, even the captain, stuck between a rock and a hard place. The male lead Dong Yoon Jang is excellent, completely believable as a sweet, fun loving, not-the-brightest guy who lights up when he gets to talk about nature and animals. The ex-soldier mother is great too, great to see all the women as smart and well rounded as the men. Very sad its over!!! Loads of scope for Season 2!!!

The action is exciting although the lighting is too dark. The cast is convincing. Similar to zombie type monsters. It gets boring when they are hanging out at the base usually the middle part of the episode. The conspiracy cover up in high places is cliched, dragged out and confusing. Hard to follow because the explanation is too fragmented.

The actors are good as soldiers. Krystal is one of the few actresses who could pull of this role. Jang Dong Yoon is convincing too. Not much emotional connection with the characters. If that had been established earlier it would have been more involving. The back stories come too late. And some of the soldiers look alike so it's hard to distinguish them. 8 episodes would have been enough.

The main problem with the Korean Drama 'Search' is that it took up a lot of themes and storylines and had so little time to develop them.

The whole illness-zombie-animal-fy was not well explained, served only as a prompt for the search to start and sometimes it was left out of the story, in order for the latter to focus on the mystery. That said, the mystery case was pretty interesting and the drama had the thriller factor on full mode, which aided a lot. Another plus was the lack of romance, which would have shifted the mood of the drama to another, more cliche, level. Unfortunately, the family drama needed, too, more time to be developed, as did the characters, who were only introduced rushly to be thrown right into the action, thus, preventing the viewer from creating bonds with them, caring for them and actually feel the right emotions in the end.

Nevertheless, the performances, the setting, even the fantasy part, were all great, well performed and executed.

So, overall, 7 out of 10.

The actor and actress chemistry in this drama was so great!! And the storyline is so good!! I would never miss to watch this drama on iqiyi ^^