Review: Doubt – The Fangirl Verdict

THE SHORT VERDICT:

A well-constructed and well-executed psychological thriller, Doubt will likely keep you hanging off the edge of your seat, with each reveal arguably leaving you with more questions than answers.

Han Seok Kyu is excellent as always, but it’s Chae Won Bin who truly surprises, with a breakout performance as our protagonist’s daughter.

A taut and tension-filled slow burn that is worth a look, even if psychological thrillers don’t tend to be your thing.

THE LONG VERDICT:

Well, my friends. This is a classic case of FOMO, because without this show being nominated for Best Drama at the Baeksang Arts Awards, I really wouldn’t have thought to check it out.

I mean, I think Han Seok Kyu is great; it’s just that I don’t typically gravitate towards psychological thrillers, as a general rule.

Nothing against psychological thrillers, mind you; I just find them a little.. tiring, to watch? 😅

Now that I’ve emerged on the other side, I’m pleased to report that even though Show did, at points, work out to be quite tiring for me personally, I did find it worthwhile.

So thanks, FOMO; I guess I owe you one. 😁

A NOTE ON THE OST

I was unfortunately unable to locate the OST album for this show, but I felt like I had to give the OST a shout-out, because it really was very effective in amplifying the watch experience.

The instrumentals really helped to amp up the sense of tension and suspense, and the clashing chords used, really worked to mirror the dissonance in our story world.

Here’s the episode opening sequence, which, I think, offers a very accurate taste of what i mean.

HOW I’M APPROACHING THIS REVIEW

First I’ll talk about how to manage your expectations going into this one, and what viewing lens would be most helpful.

After that, I talk about stuff I liked on a more macro level, before I give the spotlight to selected characters and relationships, in a separate section. Finally, I spend some time talking about my thoughts on the finale episodes.

If you’re interested in my blow-by-blow reactions, &/or all the various Patreon members’ comments during the course of our watch, you might like to check out my episode notes on Patreon here.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS / THE VIEWING LENS

Here are some things that I think would be helpful to keep in mind, to maximize your enjoyment of your watch:

1. This is a psychological thriller

What I mean is, this is more of psychological thriller than a crime thriller, so the narrative tension comes more from the psychological side of things.

We do also get narrative tension from the actual investigation of the crime, but I thought it would be helpful to let you know upfront how the balance falls.

2. It’s a slow burn

I’d also say it works out to be a slow burn, even though our story does thrust us right into the thick of the action, ie, the discovery of a murder.

Show takes its time revealing information to us, so being prepared to be patient is helpful, I think.

3. Some suspension of disbelief is required

I’d say that writer-nim does take some liberties with stretching believability, at points, particularly in the area of what our main character Tae Su (Han Seok Kyu) is allowed to get away with.

Knowing to expect that, helps.

STUFF I LIKED

General handling and execution

Overall, I thought our story world was handled by a very careful and detailed hand.

The directing feels very detailed and deliberate, like with the regular aerial shots, and PD-nim’s tendency to zoom in on a particular detail, on screen.

Combined with the music, which definitely works to amp up the suspense and anticipation, this came together to make my watch a very absorbing and edge-of-my-seat experience.

I’ll be touching on several specific aspects of Show’s execution, in the following sections.

The storytelling approach

I would describe the storytelling approach as being on the fragmented side of things.

We start our story in the present, without any information about our characters’ pasts or contexts, and this information is dripped into our awareness via flashbacks, from time to time.

The interesting thing, to me, is that sometimes, it’s not really obvious that we’re in a flashback, and it starts to feel rather trippy, to try to situate myself, as I catch on that we’re in a flashback.

[MINOR SPOILER]

Part of the reason I don’t find it obvious that we’re in a flashback, is because there are no helpful captions to fill us in, and there’s also the thing where our protagonist Tae Su (Han Seok Kyu) looks exactly the same in both timelines.

I do think that that is a deliberate choice, to indicate that Tae Su hasn’t changed at all, over the years – and that is one of the factors at play, in the way that his family views him, and therefore, the strained relationships that we see, between his now-late wife (Oh Yeon Soo), and his daughter (Chae Won Bin).

[END MINOR SPOILER]

I found it quite trippy, to piece the various fragments of information together, to try to figure out what was really going on.

The way Show works like a kaleidoscope

My friends, I’ve come to the conclusion that our story very much works like a kaleidoscope.

I realized at about Show’s halfway point, that with each little twist and turn we take, everything looks entirely different from before, and our understanding of every character, relationship and detail, is either challenged, or completely overturned.

I just never knew when my understanding of a character would be completely changed, and that was quite a trippy, morbidly fascinating, quite excellent sort of experience.

Because of this, I often felt like Show had told me a lot in an episode, but I would also feel like I still had no real idea of the actual truth behind all these deaths.

Pretty darn well-played, on Show’s part, yes? 😅

Here are a few examples to illustrate what I mean.

[SPOILER ALERT]

E5-6. These episodes, it’s started coming together in my head, that Show has a tendency to serve up an apparently damning scene, only to flip it over soon, so that our understanding of the scene is completely changed.

One example is that scene of Mom burying Su Hyeon (Song Ji Hyun).

When that scene is first served to us, I couldn’t help but think that Mom had bene involved in Su Hyeon’s death, whether accidental or not, and it’s only in these episodes that we learn that Mom hadn’t involved in Su Hyeon’s death at all.

Rather, she’d believed that Ha Bin had been the one to kill Su Hyeon, and that’s why she’d worked so desperately, to hide Su Hyeon’s body; she’d believed that she’d been protecting Ha Bin.

Another example that comes to mind, is the scene, these episodes, when we see Tae Su confronting his wife, and telling her to go ahead and die, if that’s what she wants; in fact, he even goes so far as to dare her to die, by asking her if she’s too scared to do it.

That had looked pretty damning to me, and I’d even imagined that perhaps Mom had then taken her life, after hearing such a heartless thing from the father of her child.

And I’d then imagined that that was why Tae Su wouldn’t speak of his meeting with her, to Ha Bin, regardless of how much Ha Bin pressed him to talk about it.

It’s only later, when we see a fuller version of the scene, that we see that Mom had requested that Tae Su not tell Ha Bin about what had happened that day, because Mom desperately didn’t want Ha Bin to know that Mom had ever doubted her.

That puts a different spin on the entire situation, and with this new context in place, my understanding of Tae Su’s behavior is completely different as well.

Instead of thinking of him as having driven Mom to her death, I now realize that he’s doing his best to keep his last promise to his wife, even if it means that Ha Bin’s distrust of him only deepens.

[END SPOILER]

The rollercoaster twists and turns

Overall, I’d describe the watch experience as a controlled slow rollercoaster; meaning, stuff may not happen fast, but there are definitely twists and turns served up on a regular basis.

This kept me very absorbed during my watch; I never knew what was going on except for what Show deigned to tell me, and sometimes – oftentimes, even – I felt my view of this story world tilt a few times, as Show revealed various pieces of key information.

I don’t know about the average viewer, but I was personally pretty pleased with the pace of the reveals.

I didn’t feel like I was being kept hanging for a long time; sometimes, the reveals even came sooner than I expect – so much so that sometimes, I did wonder if Show had enough narrative yarn left, to unravel it at a similar pace over its remaining episodes.

It’s trippy in the best way, because even before finishing my watch, while the reveals were, as yet, incomplete, I already found certain scenes hitting differently, when viewed on hindsight.

[SPOILER ALERT]

E3. For example, our opening scene in episode 3, which is where we’d left off at the end of episode 2, when Ha Bin asks Tae Su if he really thinks that Ha Jun’s and Mom’s deaths had really been accidents.

On first viewing, because soooo much suspicion is on Ha Bin, and her likely involvement in Song Min A’s murder, her questions make it seem like she’s taunting Tae Su with a non-confession; a tease that hints – without actual confession – that she’d likely been involved in their deaths.

On revisiting the scene for these notes, with the reveal at the end of episode 4 in place – that Ha Bin appears to be investigating Mom’s death, and trying to find out what Choi Yeong Min had to do with it – now her initial questions click into focus; she had likely been trying to nudge Tae Su towards investigating Mom’s death too.

I do like when Show does stuff like this; it’s very trippy and keeps my mind on a bit of a rollercoaster. 🤪😁

And of course, Chae Won Bin’s often almost deadpan, yet almost sneering sort of delivery, just makes it work, so well.

[END SPOILER]

STUFF THAT WAS OK

When Show is tiring to watch

Ok, to be perfectly honest with you guys, I did feel a fair bit of tiredness build up, over the course of my watch, but that doesn’t mean that Show isn’t good.

It’s that Show is so good at what it does, that my brain got tired from holding all that tension that keeps building up, beat to beat, and plot point to plot point.

Maybe if you have more experience and practice from watching similar narratively tense dramas that feed you fragments of clues on a regular basis, you might not feel as tired as I did? 😅

When Show stretches logic

I mentioned earlier in this review, that Show does stretch logic from time to time, which is not my favorite thing, to be sure.

But, because these logic stretches are in service of nudging our narrative forward, sometimes with a bonus surprise twist included, I feel reasonably neutral about it, overall.

[SPOILER ALERT]

E3-4. For example, I was suitably surprised to see that Tae Su had switched out the woven heart keychain on Ha Bin’s bag for an identical one, so that he could take the original, and examine it as potential evidence.

However, I do wonder how plausible it is, that he would be able to find an identical keychain so easily.

Similarly, it is admittedly very convenient that there are two Lee Su Hyeon’s in this story world, with the second one conveniently drawn to Ha Bin, so that she can use him as her alibi when she wants to.

[END SPOILER]

STUFF I DIDN’T LIKE SO MUCH

When our story world is too dark

My friends, this is literally my least favorite thing about this show.

This drama world is just so frustratingly dark.

What I mean is, it’s literally dark, such that I found myself actually waiting for scenes that had more light in them, if only to feel like I wasn’t being shrouded in darkness, by watching this show.

Yes, I know that I can fiddle with my brightness settings, but I didn’t actually want to, because I wanted to see the show as intended by its makers.

Plus, the bright scenes are actually bright, so it’s not like my brightness settings got accidentally dimmed or anything.

I am guessing that this is on purpose, so that we literally don’t know what we’re really seeing, in the dark scenes, but I have to confess that concentrating and squinting, to try to make out what’s going on in the dark, literally gave me headaches. 🤕😅

Or is that just me? 😅

SPOTLIGHT ON CHARACTERS / RELATIONSHIPS

Han Seok Kyu as Tae Su

I suspect that because I have a soft spot for Han Seok Kyu, after enjoying all three seasons of Dr. Romantic (here, here and here!), I had some built-in sympathy for Tae Su, as a character.

Of course, there were also narrative factors that drove my sympathy for Tae Su.

Overall, I felt that he’s stuck in a very difficult place.

[BROAD SPOILERS]

As a parent, the expectation (which we see his wife articulate) is that he should believe his daughter, and her claim of innocence.

But as a criminal profiler, he shouldn’t be partial, and should thoroughly and objectively consider the information available.

What’s a guy to do, in a situation like this, yes?

When he tries to do the police thing properly and consider the possibility of his daughter’s guilt, he’s slammed by his wife and daughter, not just verbally, but in the way that he’s pushed away, emotionally.

And yet, putting myself in their shoes, I can also understand why they would feel aggrieved by his suspicions.

[END BROAD SPOILERS]

Han Seok Kyu nails it, with the way that he portrays all these layers of inner conflict, mostly via his micro-expressions.

On the surface, he’s mostly all clipped business, but you can tell that on the inside, he’s very, very concerned, and not very sure of what to do with the information that is forthcoming.

I thought this was all very well done.

Chae Won Bin as Ha Bin

I feel like this was my first proper introduction to Chae Won Bin, even though I’ve technically had her on my screen before, in shows like When My Love Blooms and Snowdrop (here and here!), where she had small roles.

In both of those shows, I hadn’t noticed her at all, but in this show, I couldn’t help but sit up and take notice; she’s just really, really good, as the morally ambiguous Ha Bin.

Impressively, Chae Won Bin completely holds her own while sharing the screen with a seasoned veteran like Han Seok Kyu, and watching her in this, I can totally understand why she would win Best Rookie Actress at the Baeksangs, for this role. 🥲

As for Ha Bin as a character, I found her extremely fascinating.

I must say that Chae Won Bin does a great job at looking tamped-down rebellious and jaded most of the time, while demonstrating that she’s fully capable of turning on a dime and looking completely believable too, when she turns on her sunshiney mode.

Through almost the entirety of my watch, I had no real idea of what was really going on with her, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much of what we see, is nature, and how much of it is nurture.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Like, had she always had deviant tendencies, or had she taken on deviant tendencies, in response to Tae Su’s suspicions of her?

Because, regardless of the actual truth, it was clear to see, that Ha Bin was involved in some shady goings-on; we just didn’t know if she’s actually murdered anyone in cold blood. 😅

What made everything so fascinating to me, is how smart Ha Bin is, in the steps that she takes, to avoid detection by Tae Su.

Like the way she packs to leave, on the day of the field trip, so that when Tae Su catches her leaving with her suitcase, she can easily lie that she’s going on a field trip with everyone else, and Tae Su naturally backs off, because everything checks out.

It’s only much later, when the teacher calls to say that Ha Bin hadn’t shown up to the study group, that Tae Su learns that Ha Bin had never signed up for the field trip – which means that by this time, she could be anywhere.

E7-8. I couldn’t help but feel impressed, at Ha Bin’s resourcefulness and creativity.

Like when she called the youth shelter pretending to be a police officer, in order to establish whether or not Jung Du Chul (Yoo Oh Sung) was Song Min A’s (Han Soo A) father, like he’d claimed.

And then there’s how she visits the police station, and serves up a cover story about having been pickpocketed, in order to get the police officer to call up Jung Du Chul’s information on his computer, before giving him a reason to step away, so that she’d be able to get the information she wanted.

She’s clearly very, very smart. And the fact that she is directing those smarts towards a potential revenge murder, makes her scary. 😅

[END SPOILER]

Tae Su and Ha Bin

The relationship between Tae Su and Ha Bin is at the forefront of much of our story, and their bond, or more accurately, lack thereof, is characterized by – you guessed it – doubt.

He doesn’t know whether to believe her, and she doesn’t know whether to believe him, and it often feels very much like a cloak-and-daggers sort of thing, where they’re pitted against each other.

I found it all very morbidly fascinating, even though, a lot of the time, I didn’t know who to believe, either. 😅

[SPOILER ALERT]

E3-4. So much of the time, Ha Bin seems to be baiting Tae Su, and even toying with him, and sometimes definitely manipulating him, that I can’t help but think that she is guilty of something, even if it’s not what we think it is.

Like the way she lets the detectives in, when they come knocking, even though Tae Su tells her to stay in her room; it’s like she’s defying him, just to see how he’d react.

Plus, there’s the way she tells a whitewashed version of the story, when the detectives ask her about Song Min A.

E3-4. The way Ha Bin asks Tae Su why he keeps asking her questions when he doesn’t believe her, is just the thing to make his doubt himself and his choices as a father.

And then, there’s the thing where she asks Tae Su to go back to his head office, and that she’d go with him.

The reason she gives is very plausible; that she find it hard to keep living in the house where Mom had lived with them, and is looking for a fresh new start.

Clearly, though, she’s trying to remove herself from the boundaries of the investigation?

I am quite slack-jawed at the tricks that Ha Bin has up her sleeves.

When Tae Su declines her invitation to move away with her, she plants money in the trunk of his car and puts in an anonymous report that he’s received a bribe.

Sneaky! But also, effective, in keeping him off the investigation, at least for a while.

And then, when Tae Su corners her with the fact that the heart keychain from her bag is connected to two different murder cases, and she should turn herself in, she makes a report that he’s abusing her by being unreasonably suspicious of her, and gets police protection from him?

My gosh. She’s an evil genius, isn’t she? 😅

E7-8. We get more of that father-daughter tension that’s characterized much of our story; Tae Su wants to know what’s really going on with Ha Bin, while Ha Bin doesn’t want to say.

I have to admit, this was all starting to wear on me, even though I understood why Ha Bin wouldn’t feel like it was necessarily in her best interest to tell Tae Su anything, so I’m glad – and mostly relieved – that sometime during these episodes, we hit a point where Tae Su finally manages to at least identify what Ha Bin has in mind, as her goal:

That she wants to figure out who had killed Lee Su Hyeon, and caused Mom to think that Ha Bin had done it, and then proceeded to blackmail Mom, until Mom’s death – so that she can kill them herself.

I have to admit, I hadn’t seen that coming, even though I’ve found Ha Bin very opaque and sometimes quite creepy since the beginning of our story.

Maybe I’m just not very good with thrillers coz I don’t watch that many of them?

I hadn’t seen this revelation coming, at all, and yet, now that Tae Su’s articulated the thought, it makes complete character sense to me; I would believe that Ha Bin’s mind would work that way, and that she would be capable of seriously pursuing such a goal.

E7-8. One of the big developments that we get, is Tae Su handing Ha Bin all the recordings of Mom’s counseling sessions with the psychiatrist, in an effort to help Ha Bin see that Mom had chosen to take her own life because of her own doubts, and not because she’d been under threat from anyone.

Tae Su doesn’t hand over the recordings right away, though; he simply tries to convince Ha Bin that Mom hadn’t killed herself because of the culprit behind Lee Su Hyeon’s death, but because of her own doubts that she’d harbored about Ha Bin.

It’s a big blow to Ha Bin, and I believe she takes it to heart, that Mom had died because of her, which, I think, is why she tells Tae Su that she’s no longer interested in committing the perfect crime, and now no longer cares if she gets caught; I think it’s her way of punishing herself, for causing Mom’s death.

I think that Tae Su only hands over the recordings later on, in a desperate bid to get through to Ha Bin, to get her to stop her dangerous plans.

I did feel for Ha Bin, in that she looks truly shocked and devastated, to hear Mom’s tearful admission of her worries about Ha Bin, and her reasons for her actions; that she’d wanted Ha Bin to live a normal life like other people.

And there’s also how Tae Su finally confesses that he feels that it had been his fault, that Mom had turned out that way, and that he’d tried to hide this from Ha Bin, because he’d felt like this would be his last chance to salvage his relationship with her.

I believe that this all comes together for Ha Bin, to help her make the decision to stop her plans, and not ruin her life because of Mom.

This is definitely a big decision for Ha Bin; one that feels hard won, given all that she and Tae Su have gone through, for her to get to this point. 🥲

[END SPOILER]

Special shout-outs:

Han Ye Ri as Eo Jin

I actually liked the fact that Show introduces two additional profilers into our story world, because I felt that they each added a nice layer of interest, in the way that they saw things differently.

I thought Han Ye Ri was pitch perfect as the book smart Lee Eo Jin who likes to follow protocol, and who just truly wants to learn from and impress Tae Su.

Noh Jae Won as Dae Hong

On the other side of things, I thought Noh Jae Won was delightfully gently off-the-wall, as Dae Hong, the much more emotionally driven, empathetic profiler.

I really enjoyed Noh Jae Won as an eccentric patient in Daily Dose of Sunshine (review here!), so this was quite a treat for me, to see him lean into a different flavor of eccentricity.

THOUGHTS ON THE ENDING [SPOILERS]

E9-10. Coming into this finale, my expectations were pretty high, if only because I sincerely had no idea how Show was going to tie this all up.

After all the rollercoaster-esque developments over every pair of episodes that I’d watched, I sometimes didn’t even feel certain about which way was up, anymore, in this drama world. 😅

Overall, I’d say that episode 9 still managed to retain that rollercoaster quality and narrative tension, and I felt like I had to question, all over again, what I thought I knew about our characters and the actual circumstances of these murders.

Like, just when Show had gotten me to the point where I felt like I could safely believe that Ha Bin hadn’t committed any of the murders, I suddenly felt, at the end of episode 9, that maybe I’d been wrong all along, and perhaps the truth was that Ha Bin had killed at least one of these people. 😅

I thought that was very well done, so kudos to Show for that.

That said, I have to confess that when I got to the middle of episode 10, which is when Tae Su finally confronts Seong Hui and tells her that they have evidence that she’s the one who’d killed Lee Su Hyeon, I was rather underwhelmed.

I mean, I’m no expert, certainly, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the CCTV footage that show Seong Hui arriving on the scene before everyone else, only count as circumstantial evidence?

It only proves that she was there, but it still doesn’t prove that she’d killed Lee Su Hyeon?

I was waiting and hoping for Show to shed more light on this, and I was particularly interested to know how the police would nail Seong Hui for the crime, so to speak, especially since she’s so consistent with her wide-eyed, innocent act.

Unfortunately, that’s literally the last we see of Seong Hui.

We do see Do Yun give his statement to Dae Hong, that he’d been told not to say anything, and that he’d been afraid to eat his mother’s food, for fear that she would poison him too, but again, that doesn’t prove anything?

Given that this manhunt has been on for the entire duration of our story, I have to say that I’m really quite underwhelmed with how this aspect of our story is concluded.

For the curious, this is also precisely why my final grade for this show isn’t higher.

That said, I’m trying to rationalize that the mystery of the murderer isn’t actually the main focus of our story; it’s more like the vehicle through which we explore the relationship between Tae Su and Ha Bin, kinda like how plain noodles are often the vehicle for the sauce, which is where all the flavor comes from.

(And yet, the other part of my brain argues that even so, we’d still want the noodles themselves to be firm and springy, yes? Ok, fine, I’ll stop now; I’ve said my piece. 😅)

I’m reasonably satisfied with how Show resolves the broken relationship between Tae Su and Ha Bin.

It is a little convenient that Tae Su manages to get through to Ha Bin in the space of two conversations, but I’m willing to buy that perhaps Ha Bin’s been waiting all this time, for Tae Su to ask her whether she’d killed Ha Jun – and then accept her answer at face value.

Plus, there’s the thing where Tae Su had grabbed that blade with his bare hand, showing that he wouldn’t hesitate to allow himself to get hurt, if it meant that he could protect Ha Bin. 🥲

It feels so different and fresh, to hear Ha Bin later tell Tae Su that she doesn’t know what kind of person she is, and then to have her accept, when Tae Su assures her that he’ll be right next to her, while she figures it out. 🥲

They’ve both come so far, when I think about it.

Ha Bin’s come far enough to be able to accept that offer and assurance from Tae Su, but also, Tae Su’s come far enough, to trust Ha Bin, and position himself simply as her source of support.

He’s not trying to make her a certain way; he’s willing to trust her to take the lead in this, and figure this out for herself.

It’s all very quiet and understated, but I do think it’s a pretty emotionally powerful moment.

It makes sense to me that Tae Su would resign from his job, after all that he’s done to flout the rules, but it’s nice to see him and his colleagues make peace.

And, I also did like that we got to see Eo Jin and Dae Hong speaking peacefully on the same side, and acknowledging each other.

In particular, it feels important, that when Dae Hong shares that he plans to quit, Eo Jin tells him that he’s doing very well, as a police officer.

Finally, it’s also poignant that we get to see Tae Su celebrating Ha Bin’s birthday, because that’s where we’d started our story; he’d prepared that birthday celebration for her, but with the frigid state of their relationship and everything that had happened, he hadn’t managed to celebrate her birthday with her after all.

Now, it feels like a huge step forward, that he’s not only celebrating it with her, but is seated next to her at the table, like an ally, instead of across from her, like an adversary.

I take his gift of the watch to symbolize a new beginning, and I think that shot that we get of the watch, starting to tick from midnight, is to represent the start of a brand new day, in Ha Bin’s life.

A fitting and hopeful close to our story, I thought.

THE FINAL VERDICT:

A solidly twisty controlled rollercoaster of a psychological thriller.

FINAL GRADE: B+

TRAILER:

PATREON UPDATE!

The next drama I’m covering on Patreon, in place of  Doubt, is Our Unwritten Seoul [Korea].

You can check out my episode 1-2 notes on Our Unwritten Seoul on Patreon here.

Here’s an overview of what I’m covering on Patreon right now (Tier benefits are cumulative)!

Foundation Tier (US$1): Entertainment Drop (Sundays) + the first set notes of all shows covered on Patreon (that’s 2 episodes for kdramas and 4 episodes for cdramas)

Early Access (US$5): +The Haunted Palace [Korea]

Early Access Plus (US$10): +Our Unwritten Seoul [Korea]

VIP (US$15): +The Prisoner of Beauty [China]

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