Followers of television series can often guess where a story will move. You only need to see the profile of the characters, how the conflict breaks out or the pieces that move in the background. Audiovisual art can be predictable, especially when scriptwriters opt for recognizable conventions that affect the viewer’s expectations. However, when it comes to The Assassin’s Paradox, which Netflix releases this Friday, this ability to intuit where the shots will go goes through the roof.
“An ordinary man who ended up being a serial killer. A tireless police officer dedicated body and soul to catching him,” reports the Netflix press website. The promotional image shows these two key characters. Choi Woo-sik is a lethargic university student, who has to work in a grocery store on the night shift to pay for his studies, and Son Suk-ku is a police detective who soon suspects that he has a guy involved in a crime in front of him. Street map.
Once reading this very brief synopsis, the viewer may believe (wrongly) that they know where the fiction will move: the dramatic arc of the character, the obstacles that will be encountered, the way in which this development will be structured. But without going into spoilers, The Killer Paradox deviates in a surprising way, based on a Kkomabi comic, without any excess of self-awareness.
This condition makes it difficult to talk about fiction. What I will say is that we appreciate a series that, instead of wallowing in situations that would last an entire season, suddenly resolves them after one episode. When you think you understand the tone, it evolves: from drama with even social overtones to thriller, to dreamlike moments that fit within terror or a very dark comic impulse that accompanies the depressed protagonist.
In fact, we miss that at times it reinforces this tonal cyclothymia more to give it a more daring packaging, such a distinctive element of Korean fiction, which obeys its own television tradition. This way it would go more in conjunction with the narrative spirit. But, broadly speaking, it can be said that The Killer Paradox is the series of murders that you did not expect. In a genre as exploited as this… how much a breath of fresh air is appreciated!
