[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Drama Festival - The Sleeping Witch"

Ah-Mi (played by Hwang Woo-seul-hye) was in a horrible accident sixteen years ago and wakes up to discover that she now lives in a completely different world and is in her early thirties. This revelation...doesn't exactly have the dramatic impact on her psyche that I might expect. For most of this drama, all anyone can think about is the mystery of what specifically happened on that night sixteen years ago. A man died at the time, and no one seems to know why he was in the room with Ah-Mi.

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The issue of this mystery is sort of an interesting one, I guess, and by the end of the episode it's clearly resolved to the satisfaction of every character. But in terms of heart "Drama Festival - The Sleeping Witch" is rather lacking. Ah-Mi is, for all practical purposes, a sixteen year old girl in a thirty two year old body. The shock she feels at her new situation in life is rather lacking, and the adjustment period takes on somewhat creepy proportions simply because it doesn't really acknowledge this.

Physically, Ah-Mi soon starts wearing ridiculous oversized glasses which I can only assume were part of some sort of Korean fashion trend back in 1997. And there are certain points in the muckraking of the mystery where the fact that she doesn't understand most modern technology is relevant. But all of this just comes off as rather weak and unconvincing. The giant time leap is more of an excuse to use certain mystery tropes than it is a genuine exploration of the issues involved.

If the mystery itself were high-quality enough I probably wouldn't fixate on these wasted opportunity issues so much- but at best "Drama Festival - The Sleeping Witch" is only average in this regard. Most of the main important clues don't even come directly from Ah-Mi at all, so her relevance as a character is often thrown into question. This drama uses an extremely elaborate set-up for no particularly good reason. So the central plot device is mainly a distraction.

The ending also takes on somewhat melodramatic proportions, given that the main reason the mystery has been unsolved for so long seems to be from a lack of effort rather than a particularly deliberate conspiracy. The story all makes logical sense and flows well enough- there's just not very much in the performances or scripts to inspire a lot of emotion. For all its efforts, "Drama Festival - The Sleeping Witch" only carries about the emotional impact of a typical crime procedural script. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing- it just doesn't really warrant complex narrative discussion.

Review by William Schwartz

"Drama Festival - The Sleeping Witch" is directed by Lee Jae-jin-II and written by Oh Hye-ran and features Park Seo-joon and Hwang Woo-seul-hye.