[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Silent Sea" Episodes 1-2

In the future, the world is undergoing a severe water crisis. People on Earth talk about it constantly throughout the first episode of "The Silent Sea" which consists almost entirely of forgettable tedious exposition. We know their rocket is going to crash, since we saw that happen in the first scene. Why the rocket crashes is a mystery the surviving crew members don't appear to consider too important as they start to move to the moon base in the second episode.

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"The Silent Sea" is paced like a movie. There only seems to be enough plot for maybe ninety minutes, yet by the end of the second episode we've only hit the end of the first act. The characters left Earth, arrived on the Moon, and observe mysterious happenings afoot at the moon base. Whatever killed the moon base crew has only at the end of the second episode infected one of the crew members of the crashed rocket, with no symptoms.

A lot of this is the fault of Captain Han (played by Gong Yoo). Gong Yoo isn't particularly bad in the role, but his character literally tells other characters to shut up whenever they express the slightest curiosity about anything. The astrobiologist Dr. Song (played by Bae Doona) isn't much better. Despite being framed as our hero, we're still learning new backstory about her well into the second episode. A better screenplay would have a third character as our cipher, struggling to decide whether Captain Han or Dr. Song is more trustworthy.

Instead we have Dr. Hong (played by Kim Sun-young), a medical doctor. I'm not sure why this mission needed any scientists, actually, if the objective was just to pick up a package and leave. Anyway, Dr. Hong is noteworthy mainly because she has a brief conversation with Dr. Song where the astrobiologist acts kind of rude. Dr. Song really likes animals, even though a water crisis is going on and humanity can't afford to feed them anymore.

"The Silent Sea" showers us with incredibly boring details like this while just stalling for time with its actual plot. It's quite obvious that whatever experiments were being conducted on the moon base had something to do with the water crisis, or else the characters wouldn't obsessively spend so much time talking about the water crisis. Director Park Eun-kyo has unsettlingly little confidence in her own script if she thinks this story only has one halfway interesting twist.

Review by William Schwartz

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"The Silent Sea" is directed by Choi Hang-yong, written by Park Eun-kyo, and features Bae Doona, Gong Yoo, Lee Joon, Kim Sun-young, Heo Sung-tae, Lee Mu-saeng. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/12/24~Now airing, on Netflix.