Flower of Evil is a Korean television series that ran for 16 episodes in the summer of 2020.
Cha Ji-won and Baek Hee-sung have what seems, at first, to be the perfect marriage. Theirs is a loving relationship that also boasts a healthy sex life. They have a little daughter, Eun-ha, who is cute as cute can be. Ji-won has a thriving career as a police detective, where she runs her own three-cop squad at the Violent Crimes Unit. Hee-sung is a smith who crafts custom-made steel items; the family lives over his workshop.
The only fly in the ointment is Hee-sung's parents Man-woo and Mi-ja, who for unclear reasons absolutely loathe their daughter-in-law, despite the fact that as Ji-won herself points out, she is awesome. An early hint comes when Hee-sung's parents mention his "shady past" and how it isn't wise for him to marry a detective.
Meanwhile, a reporter, Moo-jin, walks into Hee-sung's shop. Moo-jin recognizes him and knows that his name is actually Do Hyun-soo. Moo-jin also knows that Hyun-soo is the son of Do Min-seok, a notorious Serial Killer from Yeonju City who committed suicide before he was caught—and that Hyun-Soo himself is wanted for the murder of Yeonju City's foreman, which happened after the serial killings. In fact, "Hee-sung" has been a fugitive living under a fake identity for 15 years. Hee-sung/Hyun-soo reacts to this by strangling Moo-jin into unconciousness, and locking him in the basement....
No connection to manga The Flowers of Evil, or Korean manhwa Flowers of Evil.
Tropes:
- Battle in the Rain: The knife fight back many years ago between Nam Soon-kil and Hee-sung, when Soon-kil tried to rob Hee-sung/Hyun-soo (seen in episodes 2 and 3), took place in the pouring rain. Hee-sung got the upper hand and seemed to be about to kill Soon-kil when he saw his father, who may have been an Imagine Spot, urging him to do it. Instead Hee-sung jabbed the knife in the ground and ran off...and got hit by a car.
- Black Eyes of Evil: The first good look at Serial Killer Do Min-seok comes in a flashback at the end of episode 3, when he suddenly appears in an Imagine Spot, urging his son to kill Nam Soon-kil. Min-seok is shown to have all-black eyes. Min-seok continues to appear as a hallucination in his son's flashbacks, always with completely blacked-out eyes.
- Blackmail Backfire: The Baek family's maid quits, and gets the bright idea to demand a large cash payment in return for not telling the secrets she knows about them. This is immediately followed by Real Hee-sung strangling her to death.
- Briefcase Full of Money:
- Hyun-soo brings one with a hundred million won ($100K) to the meeting with the human traffickers. He has also hidden a listening device in it.
- Real Hee-sung brings one with five hundred million won ($500K) to pay off Sang-chul's blackmail command. What Sang-chul, who has a weird Money Fetish, doesn't know is that the cash has been dusted with rat poison. Sang-chul smells the money, as is his wont, and dies.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The grandfather clock in Hee-sung's basement, which kind of reinforces the Creepy Basement vibe—but after Moo-jin hears that Nam Soon-kil was murdered at 3 a.m., he knows that Hee-sung could not have done it because Moo-jin heard the clock ring three while Hee-sung was in the basement with him.
- The monogrammed watch band that Ji-won gives Hee-sung in the first episode. She's shocked to find it at the end of episode 4 in the warehouse where she fought with Do Hyun-Soo.
- *Click* Hello: Sang-chul the human trafficker has Hyun-soo tied up in the office, and has doused the whole office with gasoline. While standing in the doorway, he holds out a lighter and flicks it on, and then a hand sticks a gun behind his ear and clicks back the hammer. It's Ji-won, riding to the rescue.
- Cobwebs of Disuse: The Creepy Basement where Do Min-seok tortured and killed his victims years ago, is made even more creepy 18 years later by the cobwebs all over the place.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- The big story in episode 4 is Oh Bok-ja, a villager from Yeonju, who happens to have a much more recent picture of Hee-sung/Hyun-soo, taken just a few years ago when Hyun-soo has been missing for 18 years. How? Bok-ja was visiting Seoul with her mother, and she snapped a photo, and who, of ten million people in Seoul, walked by at that moment? Hee-sung (with a pregnant Ji-won, in fact).
- In that same episode a flashback reveals that Nam Soon-kil only made the connection with the taxi driver, Park Kyung-choon, is because of all the cabs in Seoul he picked that one, and he recognized the driver's keychain, which matched one that Hyun-Soo used to have.
- Convenient Coma: Real Hee-sung wakes up from 15 years in a coma. After just a couple of days, not only is he up and around he is back to murdering people.
- Creepy Basement:
- The basement under the workshop might not have been creepy, but it certainly becomes creepy when the first episode ends with the camera going into the basement, revealing Moo-jin bound and gagged on the floor.
- Then there's Moo-jin's camcorder visit into what was apparently a far creepier basement, the murder lair of Do Min-seok. In episode 6 a TV reporter goes into Do Min-seok's murder basement and shows the steel cage where Min-seok kept his victims. Finally in episode 7 Ji-hun takes Hee-sung into the creepy murder basement, in an effort to get him to crack—and he faints.
- Creepy Souvenir:
- The Yeonjin City serial killer took the thumbnails of his victims. Then the killer of Jung Mi-sook, who was apparently Do Min-seok's accomplice, took her distinctive keychain with the drawing of the fish.
- Episode 12 reveals that the real Hee-sung kept the other set of thumbnails (only half were found in Min-seok's basement), as well as a bloody knife and Polaroids of a bound-and-gagged victim.
- Dramatic Thunder: Some over-the-top thunder and lightning used for the big dramatic confrontation in episode 12. Mi-ja finds her son's Creepy Souvenirs and realizes that he's a Serial Killer. Then, as the thunder rumbles and the rain pours, she goes outside to find Real Hee-sung digging a hole in the yard to bury Hyun-soo (who isn't even dead!). She stabs Real Hee-sung with his own murder knife, which as it turns out is the reason why Real Hee-sung spent 15 years in a coma.
- Easy Amnesia: Jung Mi-suk's fate, as revealed when she turns up alive in episode 13. She doesn't remember anything of her life before she was attacked by Do Min-seok's apprentice.
- Facial Composite Failure: Moo-jin deliberately engineers this in episode 4, giving an incorrect description of Hee-sung in order to delay the police.
- Finger-Twitching Revival: An unusual spin on this in the first episode. In-seo, a 12-year-old boy who fell down a flight of stair, twitches his fingers as he regains consciousness—and then points one at his father Kim Sang-jin, identifying his dad as the person who attacked him.
- Flashback:
- A scene in episode 2 shows Ji-won and Hee-sung's first meeting in 2006. She was working in a convenience store and studying to be a coop, and she carded him when he bought beer. There are many flashbacks after that, both happy ones that sketch out Ji-won and Hee-sung's romance, and scary ones that deepen the mystery of Hee-sung/Hyun-soo and his Serial Killer father.
- A particularly terrifying flashback in episode 7 shows how Jung Mi-sook, believed to be the last victim of the Yeonjin serial killer, opened the door to his car and tumbled out in full view of a witness. A dazed, wobbly Mi-sook tried to stagger away, but the killer played it off as her being drunk and put her back in the car.
- Fruit Cart: It's a stationary fruit stand, but still, the effect is the same in episode 5 when Ji-won and Ho-joon crash their cop car into a roadside stand selling cherries.
- Handy Cuffs:
- Ji-won makes the TV and movie cop mistake of handcuffing a suspect in the front in episode 9. This allows that suspect to climb out a window in an attempt to escape (which means the suspect takes a long fall off the balcony).
- In episode 11 a random cop does this with Sang-chul at the hospital. This allows Sang-chul to strangle the cop and make his escape.
- How We Got Here: The first scene shows Hee-sung, bleeding from the head and also drowning, because he has been tied to a hook at the bottom of a swimming pool. Ji-won then dives in and kisses him, and the show cuts to the main story.
- Human Traffickers: Hee-sung's hunt for the accomplice leads him to get mixed up with some scary human traffickers in episodes 9 and 10. They have three victims Bound and Gagged in a cell and are offering $10,000 for a person to buy one and do—anything, presumably. As it turns out, one of the things they were doing was providing victims to the Yeonjin serial killers.
- Intrepid Reporter: Moo-jin, who is so eager to break the story of the serial killings that he is willing to team up with Hee-sung, despite thinking that he might well be a murderer.
- Let Off by the Detective: Jae-sub, after making it clear that he knows everything, decides not to arrest "Hee-sung" or expose his true identity as fugitive Do Hyun-soo. He doesn't think Hyun-soo is a murderer, and anyway, the village foreman deserved to get killed.
- Match Cut: In the first episode, there's a cut from a mirror in the room where Hee-sung is having a creepy dinner with his parents, to a mirror in an interrogation room, where Ji-won watches as a suspect is being grilled.
- Obsessive-Compulsive Barkeeping: What is the bartender—the same one who served Hee-sung and his father 18 years ago—doing, when Hee-sung makes his return? Cleaning glasses, of course.
- Old Flame: Moo-jin and Hae-soo. He was crazy about her back in the day when they were teenagers, but he ditched her after her father was exposed as a serial killer. In 2020 Moo-jin meets drop-dead gorgeous Hae-soo again and is once more head over heels for her, so eager to please that he does stuff like change out her lightbulbs. She is more standoffish, remembering how he dumped her 18 years ago at her moment of crisis.
- Once More, with Clarity: An early flashback shows Hyun-soo/Hee-sung smeared with blood, standing over the freshly murdered corpse of the village foreman, saying that he felt fine. In episode 8 that flashback is expanded, revealing that it was actually his sister Hae-soo who murdered the foreman because he tried to rape her. Hyun-soo took the knife from her and smeared himself with blood, because he wanted to protect her and take the blame.
- Orgy of Evidence: Jae-sub (Ji-sun's partner) considers how the Do house was burned in order to erase fingerprints, photos, evidence—but how the knife that killed the village foreman was found in Do Hyun-soo's backpack, with his textbooks, and with a button from his school uniform. Jae-sub says that excessive amount of evidence makes him think that Hyun-soo didn't actually do it.
- Parking Garage: Moo-jin the reporter is chased into a parking garage by a homicidal human trafficking goon in episode 11. He crawls under a car to hide, and the goon finds him, but Moo-jin is rescued by the cops just in time.
- Pensieve Flashback: In episode 10 Hae-soo goes under hypnosis in an effort to remember the mystery man at her father's funeral, the one who was almost certainly an accomplice. The hypnosis session is presented as a Pensieve flashback, with Hae-soo in her own memory looking at her younger self.
- Plot Twist: Episode 13 drops a a big bomb: Jung Mi-suk, the last victim of the Yeonju serial killer whose body was never found, the one taken by the accomplice—isn't dead. She's locked un in a mental asylum.
- Product Placement: In episode 12 Ji-won's supervisor says that everyone needs to keep up their health, so he gives out packets of some Korean health drink. The labels on the packets and the box are clearly shown, and another detective complains because he wants two.
- Proscenium Reveal: Do Hae-soo, Hyun-soo's sister, is introduced in episode 4 bending over a bloody corpse lying at the bottom of a drained swimming pool. She says "It doesn't hurt anymore, does it?" Then the corpse opens its eyes and says "It smells weird." The "corpse" is an actor and Hae-soo is a makeup artist on a movie set.
- Raincoat of Horror: The scary person who murders Nam Soon-kil was wearing a full raincoat that obscured his face. Naturally, Hee-sung has a matching raincoat.
- The Reveal:
- Episode 3 ends with Hee-sung's father going through a fake closet into a hidden room, and revealing the real Hee-sung, presumably his real son, who is in a coma.
- And the big reveal, in episode 11, is that the real Hee-sung, in a coma some 15 years, was Min-seok's accomplice in serial murder.
- Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Hee-sung does this in episode 7 with the recording that the killer of Jung Mi-sook left on the witness's voicemail. He is trying to puzzle out what the mysterious tapping sound in the background is, but he can't figure it out.
- Rooftop Confrontation: For the big showdown in episode 11, when Detective Jae-seop, who has figured out that Ji-won knows the truth about her husband, confronts her with this fact. The rooftop is a private place but it also allows the movie to show the lights of Seoul at night.
- Serial Killer: Do Min-seok in the back story, who committed seven murders in Yeonjin before killing himself. The present day investigation reveals that he must have had an accomplice, and Hee-sung/Hyun-soo is determined to prove that it wasn't him.
- Sherlock Scan: And an Establishing Character Moment, in the first episode. One of her partners is grilling Kim Sang-jin, but Ji-won takes a look at him and says he didn't do it. Sang-jin is wearing slippers that don't fit him, and one sock is dirty while the other isn't, supporting his story that he fled from a restaurant in a panic after getting the call about his son.
- Sinister Switchblade: In an episode 14 flashback, Real Hee-sung suggests to Do Min-seok that they ask Hyun-soo to dispose of an inconvenient victim. A pissed-off Min-seok then jabs a knife into Real Hee-sung's gut...but the switchblade is still retracted. Min-seok then holds the switchblade in front of Real Hee-sung's face and then flicks it out, to make the point that Real Hee-sung will be dead if he doesn't follow orders.
- Slasher Smile: In episode 2, Hee-sung is practicing how to mimic emotions and, while watching a video, mimics a smile. The smile is very creepy and comes off as this.
- The Sociopath:
- The murderer in episode 2, Park Seo-young. She explains that she didn't kill the "old hag" Jung Min-ok for the money, like everyone assumed. In fact she stabbed the old lady to death because she was sick of climbing the long steps to Min-ok's apartment and she got pissed off when Min-ok asked her to scratch her back. She then says that "3% of people are like me" before surrendering to Ji-won.
- Then there's Hyun-soo himself, who has to mimic human emotions. In episode 4 a ruefu Moo-jin says that all the ignorant villagers thought that Do Hyun-soo was "possessed", when Moo-jin now understands that he had antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy). Ultimately, this is subverted when the show makes plain that Hyun-soo is not a sociopath at all, but is suffering from a mixture of childhood trauma, abuse and harassment from everyone who knew him, and a misdiagnosis from an incompetent psychiatrist.
- Eventually it's revealed that the real second psychopath, and Min-seok's murder partner back in the day, was Real Hee-sung. Min-seok recognized him a fellow spirit who also enjoyed killing, and took him in as a murder partner.
- The Speechless: Man-woo and Mi-ja hired as their maid a deaf-mute woman, and specifically one that can't even read lips. They did so to make it harder for a servant to rat them out, although the maid does know that they were keeping a comatose person in a hidden room.
- Staircase Tumble: Ji-won's case in the first episode involves a boy who cracked his skull when falling down a flight of stairs and nearly died.
- Thanking the Viewer: "Thank you for watching Flower of Evil" appears onscreen at the end of the series.
- That Cloud Looks Like...: Little Eun-ha thinks that clouds look like egg tarts, her favorite dessert.
- Trashcan Bonfire: A fire in a trashcan in episode 4 makes things a little creepier, but also provides a convenient spot for Hee-sung to dispose of a photograph.
- Wedding Ring Removal: Ji-won takes off her wedding ring in episode 8, as she has decided to break up with her husband for lying to her for their whole marriage. She soon changes her mind and by episode 10 Hee-sung notices that she has the ring back on.
- The X of Y: Flower of Evil
