Glitch follows a young woman investigating her boyfriend’s sudden disappearance, befriending UFO enthusiasts, reuniting with old friends, and uncovering grand cultist conspiracies in the process.
Story
Glitch tells the story of Hong Ji-hyo, a young woman with a seemingly perfect life. And yet a secret she keeps to herself keeps gnawing at her.
It’s an alien, a grotesque little archetypal figure of an extraterrestrial grey man, but also wearing a green baseball cap. It appears around Ji-hyo from time to time, standing still and gawking at her.
When one of these visions of the alien gets out of hand, Ji-hyo finds herself mentally whiplashed. Her boyfriend Si-kook finally hears the parting words he thought were inevitable.
Despite the expectations, a breakup hits hard nonetheless. It hits Ji-hyo too when she learns that Si-kook has gone missing ever since the breakup.
When the police are no help, Ji-hyo turns to UFO forums and enthusiasts online while bizarre things keep happening to her. She ends her search on a UFO forum and a profile called “Moonhole”.
At the forum’s offline meeting, she meets Moonhole, who turns out to be a friend from childhood. Together, the group begin their search and finds an entire cult that’s behind the disappearances and related to aliens and UFOs.
Meanwhile, Ji-hyo’s role in the whole ordeal becomes even more central as the cult begins hailing her as their next messiah.
With the help of Bo-ra, her friend, a cop, Direct Kim, and the UFO forum guys, Ji-hyo finally defeats the cult, exposing them for the lies and fabrication they deluded their members with.
However, the finality of events in Glitch actually takes a turn for the extraterrestrial as a real UFO arrives and nabs Ji-hyo and Bo-ra. The two eventually get spat out of the UFO and Ji-hyo finally resolves things, properly, with Si-kook.
Glitch ends with an end to the perils of the cult and the aliens. However, inexplicable things still surround an oblivious Ji-hyo while the alien with the green helmet now appears only to Si-kook.
Performances
Glitch has a big cast rife with different talents and faces both familiar and new. The lead actors do a fine job conveying the varied range of emotional content the script asks of the.
However, it’s the supporting cast that sometimes lends a greater heart to the scene. It’s especially true for the comic scenes where the actors do succeed in pulling off great timing.
Positives
Glitch has a warm heart at the centre of it all and with the plot progressing in a dozen different directions, it’s the friendship of Bo-ra and Ji-hyo that keeps viewers from utterly disorienting themselves.
There’s a great bit of advantage that the show takes from its ensemble cast of talented actors all of whom give something to chew on even when the narrative doesn’t.
Negatives
Glitch is a slog to get through and its unnecessarily lengthy runtime hampers its watchability even more. The amount of time it takes to reach the last leg of its narrative is criminally high.
The last episodes are also where the story unfolds its most interesting chapters. Unfortunately, the due to the finality of events towards the last episodes, the only fascinating content the show has to offer ends up getting curtailed and rushed for a truly disappointing finale.
Characters like Byung-jo are given a lot of wasteful screen time for a role in the main story that ends up being really trivial at the finale. Meanwhile, Direct Kim’s arc ends up with a confusingly undeserving resolution.
Verdict
A disorienting mix of genres, Glitch suffers from a lack of cohesive tone and purpose to the narrative.
In a bid to leave the resolutions and explanations open-ended, the show ends up muddying up its own messages with unnecessary ambiguities.
However, the worst of all the downsides is the show’s unwarranted and uncalled-for runtime, making it a laborious chore to binge through.
Glitch
Director: Roh Deok
Date Created: 2022-10-07 12:30
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Also Read: Glitch ending explained: Did Ji-hyo get abducted by aliens?