I usually have a lot to say about most stories I watch. I tend to get deeply and passionately engrossed in fiction and want to talk about the story in depth with whomever I watched it with after completion, or I struggle to write concise reviews because I have such strong feelings about the story. That is not the case for The Guest, and it’s because I have no particularly strong emotion about this show. I would recommend The Guest depending on your approach to how you engage with fiction. If you watch for simple entertainment value plot-wise then move on quickly to the next show rather than for extreme immersion and connection with characters, this might be the show for you.

I found the plotline of The Guest to be incredibly straightforward, simplistic, and somewhat predictable. Simple stories aren’t always bad, and predictability doesn’t always have a massive bearing on writing quality. But I do think this story was simplistic bordering on feeling like the script was like what you might expect from a children’s show but with dark visual/subject content. Basically, this story deals with dark topics like exorcism and demons, and it has grim lighting at times, but it mostly lacks the depth necessary for emotional connection to the characters or for the theme of the story to feel dark or insightful. Dark things happen but the story doesn’t treat them with huge depth, and dialogue is often quite repetitive and shallow. I went into this watch having heard a lot of people call this kdrama “very different” and “unique” but I really do feel that it’s just dark in visuals but without being very rich in commentary or meaning. It’s a show you watch to see things happen, not to be touched or psychologically mind blown. I feel like this warning is warranted, given that people who tend to like this show’s genre tend to lean toward favoring depth and heavy psychological themes and may be disappointed.

One of my biggest complaints with the story is I was anticipating a very interesting and strong friendship to bloom between the three protagonists. While I appreciate the nontraditional gender lineup for the main characters and that the female character was not a love interest for the men, I was expecting much more development, growth, and camaraderie between the characters. It felt like not much more was fleshed out for the characters beyond their initial backstory, feeling guilty toward one another because of their shared involvement, and feeling an obligation to protect one another to lessen that guilt, which felt more like internal conflict than evidence of true closeness. I was looking forward to seeing more dimension to the characters and bonding over their character traits and liking each other as people for who they were, but they are not developed much beyond their premise. (The scene where Yoon buys Hwa Pyung food and left it for him while he was sleeping was probably one of the most genuine signs of care we saw in the story outside of appearing to want to protect one another out of moral obligation; I would have loved to see more scenes like this.) Relatively more development is poured into each of the main characters’ relationships with their pre-existing social circle outside of one another, such as Gilyoung’s relationship with Bongsang, Hwa Pyung’s relationship with Yook Gwang, and Yoon’s relationship with Father Yang.

Overall, if you tend to like more simplistic watches and are interested in the relatively more unique visuals and concepts of this storyline in terms of the exorcism, it may still be worth checking out. Another reviewer described The Guest as an “easy watch” and I would say that is pretty accurate; you will be able to have some fun at guessing how the plot will unfold without having to think too hard and the content is not as emotionally heavy as a different writer could easily have made it. Many people seem to have a soft spot for this series because of the originality of its premise for a Kdrama, so definitely check it out if you think it is up your alley.