So, I have many mixed feelings about this one and I'm not really sure I can put all of them into words but let's try.

When I heard about this drama I thought it could finally be the amazing thriller/murder mystery I've been waiting for. Now was it all that I was hoping for? No. Was it still good? Yes. When I first started Flower of Evil I didn't expect it to be so... romantic? I guess it's kinda my fault for not having properly looked into the genres of this show, but I don't like to know much about the dramas that I start and well, this one definitely surprised me, not in the way I was expecting though.

I only realised how vanilla this drama was halfway through it, but by then I was too invested to stop watching it. I think the writers did this on purpose, marketing it as a thriller but building a love story to try and please every audience and it kinda worked (?).

Honestly the thriller/mystery aspect of this drama is a bit weak. A lot of the plot points and twists are predictable and the story is full of conveniences, like how the sun hides behind the clouds right when it was about to reveal the presence of someone in the scene to the police, or how one of the investigators get a call right when they were about to discover something important but decide to stop everything to answer the phone. Also, some of the explanations they gave were a lot of a stretch and so forced to the point I simply couldn't believe them. I'm not gonna go too deep into this to avoid spoilers, but damn these things kept breaking my immersion and infuriating me at the same time.

In the end, though, this drama still got me interested enough to finish it and actually enjoy it. I'd say a lot of it is due to some pretty good characters, and by that I mean mainly Hyun Soo. Honestly this drama surprised me, cause I didn't expect to love Hyun Soo so much, but when I realised I was already too attached to him. I think this is also due to Lee Joon Gi's acting. The man really killed it. The actress who played his wife did an amazing job, too, they shared quite some emotional and impactful scenes. Everyone was pretty good, actually, except for some extras. The romance was also really well built. I think it was a pretty refreshing approach, seeing a romance from the perspective of a couple who's already married and kinda have to re-evaluate their feelings for each other and also how this tied to Hyun Soo's growth as a character.

I also really like the way this drama portrays how having a psychopath as father afects both of his children, and how they characterize people with antisocial disorders under different lights. The soundtrack in general is pretty good in setting the atmosphere as well.

The main villain, though, was a pain-in-the-ass. He had one of the most punchable faces I've ever seen, wow. Because of him and cause the drama really gets unnecessary mellodramatic sometimes towards the end, I felt extremely frustrated watching the last few episodes, but at the same time I kept getting invested and couldn't simply turn away from it. I guess I could say Flower Of Evil was a bit of a sweet torture to me.

In the end, I believe this drama can still please a lot of people, specially because it's more vanilla and friendly than what you expect in the beginning, so in case you're wondering if you should start this drama, I'd tell to go for it and make your own conclusions about it.