Bulgasal literally means "impossible to kill", or simply "immortal". It comes from the Korean folklore legend of Bulgasari, which illustrates the story of a frightening monster during the late Goryeo period (918-1392) that keeps growing as it eats all the metal. However, the drama named after the monster incorporates an immortal monster living for 600 years and drinks blood to survive.

Created by Studio Dragon & Show Runners and broadcasted on tvN, "Bulgasal: The Immortals" is the reunion for director Jang Young Woo and the husband-wife writer duo Seo Jae Won & Kwon So Ra with composition from Nam Hye Seung. It is also distributed on Netflix and TVING. It's basically a fantasy thriller with more than 3 timelines, 2 of the major ones taking place in far past and one occuring currently.

Dan Hwal (Lee Jin Wook) was cursed by Bulgasal 1000 years ago and was born as a cursed child, again 600 years ago, just to turn into a Bulgasal himself, after losing his entire family. He vows to avenge his family by killing the woman, the one who turned him into a bulgasal, as soon as she reincarnates as a human being. For that he desperately chases her down through the 600 long years till the present time and does all kinds of thing to survive. Will he be able to accomplish whatever he's been dreaming for all these years?

Kwon Na Ra plays the Bulgasal of 600 years ago, who has reincarnated 10 times since then and presently lives as Min Sang Woon who moves frequently along with his sister Min Shi Ho (Gong Seung Yeon) just to hide from the Bulgasal after a tragic incident to her family. Lee Hye Suk (Park Myung Shin) is a butcher who cares for Dan Hwal to a great deal. Kwon Ho Yeol (Jung Jin Young) is an ex-detective and currently a private investigator. Nam Do Yoon (Kim Woo Suk) is a highschool student living with all the above people as a family, due to some situations. All these people live at one place as the Bulgasal family and somehow interconnected with each other in different reincarnations.

Apart from them, we also have Lee Joon as Ok Eul Tae who plays the ultimate antagonist of the story.

Plot development is very monotonous. The introductory episodes might look intriguing to you bcs of the folktales as welll the Goryeo monster annihilation scenes but those weren't anything impressive to look forward to further. I had a hard time connecting to the essence of the story for 6 episodes but it became a lil interesting there so I was honestly expecting some good progress, just to be disappointed even further. It had several peak moments throughout the rest of the 10 episodes, nevertheless, I forced myself into finishing it since I am bad at dropping. So losing all my interest, I started fast forwarding since the 8th episode at 1.5x and somehow finished it.

The revenge storyline got lost somewhere in the middle and when they brought it up again after few episodes, towards the ending, it was again another set of confusing questions with infinity loops. In other words, it was predictable and nothing sort of suspenseful or confusing to make theories about. The 2nd half became very repetitive and overstretched, they were just revealing new details in every 15 minutes to keep it interesting, and the efforts were visible. The finale week was not satisfactory though entertaining with lots of things happening but that again became rushed. The ultimate back story was lame and very very funnh lmao. The final fight between the antagonist and protagonists itself was repetitive 2-3 times in the same premise.

The screenplay writing is moderately average which shouldn't be the case given there are 2 writers who have even worked together before. The plot development is entirely uninteresting, I must mention; the beginning itself has too many loopholes, which might create the impression of a suspense to be answered later, but trust me they just keep getting dull and dreary. I feel the writers have done a fair amount of research to create a good concept but making it into a good script is where they failed at, that too quite miserably.

The twists didn't help to be awestruck; like I'm not saying everything has to be wow, but they were underwhelming. Some revelations were amusing, I gotta admit, but the following excitement dies down soon enough with repetitive elements. The incorporation of various monsters from Korean folktales was in fact a nice idea, but the way they were trying to turn them into connecting plots, didn't work. The major turn off about the story was distorted narrative. The plot elements don't provide scopes to connect to the story or the character, thereby failing to gain any point.

The seemingly rookie director have been able to produce shows which were popular and seem to have been recalled now as well despite being critically average. But he seems to have not improved from experience and that has resulted in poor direction and execution of this drama. The screenplay is a messy one; not only it stupefy the audiences' interest, it also was unable to create any proper suspense throughout to keep the viewers going. The biggest turn off about this drama is the screen-editing, which could have actually saved a shoddy story, but alas!

Cinematography was pretty okay in my opinion and their investment for creating the Goryeo premise was justifying though there wasn't much to do. Camera angles weren't at all impressive per se the sound effects were tedious to begin with. The dark aura and the shady vibes in fact blended perfectly with the shadowy premise, as intended by the makers.

Composed by one of the best Nam Hye Seung, the 4 OSTs are somewhat good, I have to admit but they couldn't save the drama for a fact. The only track I could like is "Leave" by 4MEN, which suits the mood and the story's essence as well. The rest 3 were written to be romance-centric, both gloomy and joyful, which is definitely not what the story is about, thereby being proved useless. I would actually like them if they were not the parts of this drama. The other 3 tracks are "Tunnel" by Kim Ye Ji ft. KARDI, "Can't Forget You" by Minseo and "Beyond The Time" by Janet Suhh.

There was absolutely no need of romance and the writers visibly forced a love story plotline into the story expecting it'd pick the overall interest of the audience, which irl worked as many people fell for it. I am no objector of romance, in fact, I am sucker for it and got no problem with witnessing one in such fantasy thrillers but I can say it with confidence whenever romance is forcefully incorporated into a story where it wasn't required at all. What I liked to an extent was the bromance, which was in fact very subtle between the protagonist & the antagonist, but it did create an influence.

There were tooooo many flashbacks, enough to make you give up on understanding. The twists created weren't intriguing at all, rather the back & forth in time line, that too inclusion of more thanb2 timelines, was a major limitation for the writers themselves in framing a decent storyline with good plot elements. It's like they got confused in their own story. There were many filler scenes and unnecessary guest appearances (small roles). In fact, the 4 major supporting characters were used like fillers, just to be a part of the family and interact while projecting some comic dialogues to make the scene funny.

Another major drawback I would like to mention is the underutilization of the cast. First of all the proportion of major characters to that of the total number of people involved was very low. Secondly, it's waste of the tremendous skills of actors like Lee Jin Wook, Kwon Na Ra, Lee Joon, Jung Jin Young and Park Myung Suk. Given the potential they hold, the director failed to properly incorporate them into the story. The ultimate problem was with the dynamics of the characters drawn by the writer. The characters were unable to creare any significant impact on the viewers and their archs were poorly painted with repetitive dialogues and unnecessary reminisces that they were forced onto, to think about.

What's wrong with fantasy?
# Poor plot outline created with the concept.
# The origin was unclear, even after the finale where they showed the entire story that took place 1000 years ago, they were unable to explain where exactly bulgasal-s come from. The expectation that that timeline beholds the answers to all the questions, got destroyed in 15 mins.
# Different monsters were rather funny than scary.
# The characters curse each other as if they're some heavenly beings, that too pretty often. Ik it's fantasy but there should be a line of logic in fiction too.
#The connection between 3 bulgasal characters wasn't frustrating, rather stupid, irrational and awfully drawn to make it look intricate, whereas it isn't really potentially influential.

I must clarify before signing off, that I wasn't confused. I am not sorry for not being polite here bcs some people irresponsibly conclude their disagreement by stating that the person with negative comments was unable to understand the story and got confused. I was sane and tried to understand and like this thing but it didn't work out bcs it is what it is.

Final Remarks... Bulgasal overally is pretty average. Not jumping into a rash conclusion that it was bad, It felt like a good concept with scopes of beautiful script & nice improvement yet failed opportunity due to poor writing and direction, despite up to par performance. It could have been a lot better and a decent drama, if not something wow. I have to respectfully decline the argument that it was a good fantasy drama and the ratings should fall near to that of the other examples given.