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  • Location: Buffalo, NY
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ShanTeaTime

Buffalo, NY

ShanTeaTime

Buffalo, NY
Cheat philippines drama review
Completed
Cheat
1 people found this review helpful
by ShanTeaTime
Jan 23, 2021
6 of 6 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 5.5
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 5.0
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 6.0
This review may contain spoilers

I Am Conflicted AF

This was a very strange series. Don't get me wrong, I love dark premises. Plus dark premises mixed with magic/witchcraft!? *Chefs kisses, I love that stuff. But them trying to incorporate it with this BL kind of storyline didn't mesh very well. We essentially have our main guy being lusted after by 3 different people, all of which are siblings. That's interesting enough, but then there's incantations going on and harsh religious upbringing stuff and major deceit. It was a lot to try and do within only 6 episodes. It felt like each episode was disjointed from the other and that's not good.

I could tell watching this that the budget was basically non-existent. Which makes sense since this is a web show on YouTube. I'm not sure if there was a kickstarter for this, but if there wasn't they should've started one! It could've given the creators even more money to play with. What they had though they used fairly well. Certain camera tricks were used for the dark magic stuff, some of it a little cheesy but nothing cringy. The incantations themselves were actually probably the best parts of the show! Then we get to the "romances", I put that in quotes because they are all individually toxic in their own ways and hard to watch. Like I said there's major deceit in this and that includes blatant sexual assault. I'm glad it wasn't played off as nothing, its addressed but not well enough still. I need serious repercussions to happen in one of these shows dammit! Also there's abuse coming from Jay's character. It's a mess, its meant to be but if you can't handle that stuff do not watch.

The only decent character in this morally is Dong. Or at least that's what I got from the ending, which was kind of a letdown by the way. They tried a twist and it didn't land hard enough. I think it's the way Vee delivers it is why it didn't work for me, it needed a real punch for a complete character switch to work. Instead they just kind of blurt it out in dialogue the last few minutes with very little to back it up and then a character seemingly gets killed? Nah I need more than that for it to hit. There were some good moments in the narrative, but it just sucks that the ending happened in that way. I don't think we necessarily need a season 2, but I know they will carry through with that since the show garnered the amount of success it did. Finally, I wanted to say that as much as I appreciate low budget stuff (I'm a film student so I identify deeply) they could've also casted differently. I think the main actors were alright for the most part, but some of the dialogue was delivered so horribly I couldn't take it seriously at all. I wish all the best for the cast and crew though! Let's hope for more progression from them!
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