"Great premise, frustrating execution — If Wishes Could Kill had everything it needed to be genuinely scary, and mostly wasted it."
The App Works. The Drama, Less So.
There is a version of If Wishes Could Kill that could have been excellent. Directed by Park Youn-seo and written by Park Joong-seop, the eight-episode Netflix series follows a group of high school friends who stumble into a cursed app called Girigo — record a wish, submit your birth details, and the app grants it. The catch is a countdown timer. When it hits zero, the wisher dies violently, possessed, and often taking someone else with them. It is a clean, genuinely dark premise, and the first episode uses it well enough to convince you that the show knows what it is doing. The remaining seven are less convincing.
The Synopsis
At Seorin High School, five friends are pulled into the orbit of Girigo after one of them uses it on a whim. Se-ah, already carrying the grief of losing both parents, watches the consequences multiply around her as the curse passes from person to person. As the body count rises, the group begins unravelling — not just from fear, but from everything the app exposes about the resentments and jealousies already running underneath their friendships. Their only real help comes from Ha-young, a shaman known as Haetsal, and her companion Bang-wool, who understand the nature of the curse when the teenagers do not.
The Cast
Jeon So Young (Yoo Se-ah): The clearest asset the drama has. Se-ah’s motivation — the inability to be the person who stood aside again — is well-defined, and Jeon So Young plays it with a steadiness that keeps the character credible even when the material around her is not. She does not tip into hysteria, which matters more than it should given how frequently the script puts her in situations that invite it.
Kang Mi Na (Im Na-ri): Na-ri is the most interesting character on paper — jealous, frightened, exploited by the spirit targeting her worst impulses — and Kang Mi Na handles the ambiguity of the role with care. Which makes it all the more frustrating that the drama has no idea what to do with her by the end.
Baek Sun Ho (Kim Geon-woo): Se-ah’s boyfriend, whose single impulsive decision sets the chain of events in motion. Serviceable in the role, and the possessed sequences give him material that shows more range than his earlier scenes suggest he has.
Hyun Woo Seok (Kang Ha-joon): Carries a secret the drama eventually surfaces, though the emotional payoff is more modest than the buildup implies.
Lee Hyo Je (Choi Hyeong-wook): The first to go, and quickly forgotten. His death is meant to announce that no one is safe, but the drama disposes of him so fast that the loss barely registers — which is precisely the problem with the pacing throughout.
Jeon So Nee (Haetsal / Kang Ha-young): The most grounded presence in the drama. Ha-young’s limitations — including the constraint of not being able to leave her home — give her arc more texture than most of the main cast receives.
Roh Jae Won (Bang-wool): Warm, funny, and the most watchable person in almost every scene he occupies. He is doing considerably more with considerably less than the script gives him, which says something about both his performance and the writing.
What Works
The cold open is strong — genuinely unsettling, and confident enough to set the tone without over-explaining itself. The first episode moves well. The mythology has internal logic: Girigo is rooted in Korean shamanistic tradition, and the rules of the curse are consistent enough that the early escalations feel earned. The chain effect, where a fulfilled wish transfers the death curse to the next person, is a clever mechanic.
The backstory of Hye-rung and Si-won — two girls, a destroyed friendship, one act of public betrayal that became something unforgivable — is the drama’s best piece of writing, and the one stretch where the emotional and supernatural elements actually work together cleanly.
What Doesn’t
The problem is that the drama runs out of ideas well before it runs out of episodes. After a reasonably tight opening, the middle section collapses into a stretch of laptop searches and neighbourhood canvassing that drains every bit of tension the first episodes built. The pacing never fully recovers.
The characters make decisions that are difficult to take seriously. For a group of teenagers supposedly terrified of dying from a supernatural curse, their priorities are remarkably personal and remarkably small. Watching people die episode after episode while the main cast remains more preoccupied with their own relationships than with the obvious problem in front of them is the kind of thing that makes horror dramas frustrating rather than frightening.
Na-ri’s ending is the most glaring failure. The drama invests significant screen time in building her as a layered, tragic figure being actively exploited by the spirit — and then disposes of her with a resolution so rushed and ambiguous that it reads not as intentional thematic ambiguity but as the writers simply not knowing what to do with her. A character given that much setup deserved a real conclusion.
The epilogue makes things worse. The implication that the curse is still running — a new phone, a stranger on Discord — lands not as a meaningful thematic statement but as an ending that undermines whatever resolution the finale was attempting to build. It is the kind of closing beat that works when a drama has earned the right to ask more questions. This one had not.
Final Thoughts
If Wishes Could Kill had everything it needed: a sharp premise, a solid lead performance, a mythology with actual internal logic, and a supporting duo in Jeon So Nee and Roh Jae Won who are genuinely compelling to watch. What it lacked was the discipline to follow through. The middle sags, the characters behave in ways that are hard to root for, Na-ri’s conclusion is a genuine loose end, and the ending asks for trust the drama had not quite built up.
It is not unwatchable — the first episode holds, and certain sequences land the way horror is supposed to land. But as a complete drama it is more frustrating than frightening, and the gap between what it could have been and what it actually is sits uncomfortably through most of the run.
Have you watched this one? I would love to know if the ending landed differently for you — leave it in the comments. And for more K-drama reviews, check out the Asian TV Drama reviews page.
Related