Scholar Who Walks the Night Review

Scholar Who Walks the Night (2015) 

I’ve always been skeptical about vampire Korean dramas, yet I will say that Scholar Who Walks the Night was a good introductory genre for more to come. Honestly I wasn’t expecting much, but this story about love between a vampire and a human –though nothing new- was interestingly good in many ways. From the ever self-restrained beast and the classic damsel in distress, to the evil plot and a twist to historical dramas. Not to mention the birth of a new love and bias ;)

Scholar Who Walks the Night is a story about Kim Sung Yeol (Lee Joon Gi), a human turned vampire that must find a secret plan to kill the evil vampire ruling the kingdom, while accepting his fate and fighting for his present loved one Jo Yang Sun (Lee Yoo Bi). Will he be accepted? Will he save the people he loves? Or will the evil yet sexy vampire in the throne will kill everyone? You will have to see the drama to find out!

Like I mentioned, the whole vampire-human love thing is not new, but the purpose for both their lives and relationship is a nice twist. They need each other and Sung Yeol always has a purpose. The funny thing is that as much as he wants to keep Yang Sun safe, that girl has a way of finding trouble –I began to wonder if she had a death wish! This adds a bit to the conflict being stretch in terms of taking too long to resolve, to then suddenly have a quick ending. NOT something I am a fan of. I am beginning to think that this conflict-recipe is something common in historical dramas. I have to point out the similarity of the ending with that of Faith: The Great Doctor, another fantasy historical-ish drama. Without forgetting that, if I am not mistaken, the setting (location) was the same.

 

On a positive note, I was more pleased with this ending because the lapse of their separation wasn’t too long –I hate when the male lead suffers the separation of his loved one! Since I am talking about the location, I will also mention how I could not unnoticed the reuse of another location. This time one of the buildings appeared in Gu Family Book but with another purpose of course. I’m not saying this is something wrong for the set designer cannot go around looking for lots to build a set for a drama, but surely is something to take into consideration when filming. Especially if the other drama was a successful one, because the setting can become iconic. An easy fix could be props and playing with the camera angle. I point it out because I liked both dramas, and the reused scenery happened more than once; I just couldn’t help to not notice.

I love vampires, as well as zombies but I have yet to watch a Korean Drama about zombie romance, so I obviously loved Lee Joon Gi’s vampire character. His protective sense and self-restraint reminded me of Edward from Twilight –come on, we are talking about vampires here so I was bound to make the connection be it for its cons or pros. Plus, I don’t think it’s easy to play a vampire in pain and when Sung Yeol was in pain I could feel it –contrary to Edward. Her character, on the other hand, wasn’t bad but I found it a bit annoying at first. I will blame it on her nosiness because oh boy how I hate nosy characters. At the end, the connection she had with Sung Yeol and Gwi (Lee Soo Hyuk), the evil vampire, and Crown Prince Lee Yoon (Shim Chang Min) was interesting and well developed. Talking about Crown Prince, I was sad about JungHyun (Lee Hyun Woo)’s short screen time. Yang Sun’s first encounter with Crown Prince Lee Yoon was funny and sparked my interest. The fact of reading and making adult novels in that period was something I had not seen before and had not even considered. So to add the lustful part as entertainment in a book was also a new view for me –the Ginseng I had seen already, but the lustful drawings were neat! Of course, everything in its PG-13 mode. SPOILER! Another thing that caught me by surprise was the queen’s death. I did not see that coming and I didn’t like it at first, but later, after some thinking, I decided it wasn’t wrong (considering the genre, style and conflict that is).

Scholar Who Walks the Night gave me hope for more vampire dramas. I was left with two good looking vampires, two good looking Crown Princes, and a catchy original sound track. I could see myself watching this drama later on just to reimagine the so romantic vampire-human relationships.

My rating for this drama is: ♥♥