Coma (2005)

A South Korean miniseries set mostly inside a hospital that's almost completely abandoned, having been marked for closure. A young professional woman, Yoon Young (Lee Se Eun), is sent in to check insurance criteria are being met by the few remaining staff members, all of whom are reticent about why there's a single female patient still in the ward. The patient, Lee So Hee (Cha Soo Yun), is in a coma, unable to speak for herself. Why she's there and why she's comatose opens a door to a horror/mystery that leads to a dramatic and creepy conclusion. If you already have a morbid fear of hospitals, then you may want to avoid watching.

The building has ghosts: the dead kind that act independently, with long, face-obscuring hair and a grudge, and the haunting memory kind that are trapped in a moment, destined to replay a tragic event over and over.

Subsequent episodes simultaneously expand upon the sleeping girl's past and offer up new stories with new characters, each somehow tied into it. Within that framework are a small number of different time periods overlapping.

The narrative throws around a lot of what appear to be red herrings as it gathers the disparate threads together, but they weave into a satisfying conclusion, so don't get too frustrated if you feel a little lost from time to time.

It's lit in a very precise way. A lot of the time the colour is either drained out of the picture or the cold, murky appearance of the concrete is extended to every other aspect of production. The closest approximation I can think of is the aesthetic of most survival horror games: the flickering corridor lights, the shit-smeared and blood-stained half-tiled walls, etc.

An over-reliance on the now clichéd Asian horror sounds (clicking/grinding bones and scratching/shuffling corpse) was tiresome, but the series was aired in 2005 and that may have been less of an issue then. Had I been lucky enough to see it in 2005 I'm positive that I'd have liked it more.

5 episodes, approx 55 minutes each. The final episode is the best.

3 unsanctioned after hours operations out of 5

HOMELAND - Season 1 [2011]

 

“Why kill a man when you can kill an idea?”

It's not often a television series has me completely absorbed into it by the final scene of the pilot episode.  Normally it takes a few episodes, sometimes a complete season.  However Showtime's Homeland managed to capture my undivided attention within the first twenty minutes of the pilot.  Inspired by Gideon Raff's Israeli television series, Hatufim, showrunner's Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa (of the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle 24) run over familiar territory, dealing with the subjects of terrorism, espionage and paranoia.  It tells the disturbingly intense story of a troubled U.S. Marine returning home to his family after being a tortured prisoner of war for 8 years to the al-Quada.  Even though he's celebrated as a hero, an equally disturbed CIA agent suspects him of being turned by the enemy and a potentially dangerous threat to the country. 

While 24 was driven by it's implausible, yet riveting, action, Homeland keeps it's feet firmly grounded in realism and makes the experience all the more terrifying.  Driven by such intimate intensity, Homeland is the type of show that will keep you awake at night wondering if it's time to lock yourself up in your house with a tinfoil hat. 

The first 5 episodes are consistently strong, compelling and effectively suspenseful, however it seems to lose it's step for a few episodes in the middle but still has enough purpose to keep the viewer trucking on forward.  Thankfully, we're rewarded by the final 4 episodes that pick up the slack and dare you not to break a sweat or hold your breath. Without the wonderfully absorbing cast, including My So Called Life's Claire Danes, Band Of Brother's Damian Lewis, Firefly's Morena Baccarin and Dead Like Me's Mandy Patinkin, Homeland probably wouldn't have been nearly as emotionally engaging. 

It's not a perfect series or even breaking new ground, with 24 and Rubicon before it, but it is certainly something that's easy to recommend to anybody that loves episodic suspenseful television. 

13 episodes.  Roughly 55-60 minutes each

Buyer's Guide:

Available in DVD and Blu-ray box sets and on iTunes, Netflix and Amazon.

3½  instances where your own side is scarier than the enemy out of 5