Watched all 12 episodes of South Korea's 2022 Through the Darkness, based on the 2018 non-fiction book written by Korea's criminal profiler Kwon Il-yong and journalist Ko Na-mu. Inspector Song Ha-young, the main protagonist in this movie, successfully figures out complex murders and eventually becomes the first criminal behavior analyst of the detective force. The movie spans the years 1998 - 2007, is interfaced with actual world affairs and current events, and revolves around the cases of four serial killers: the initial killer Red Cap, Gu-young Chun (a.k.a. the Child Rapist), Nam Ki-Tae (a.k.a. the Triangle Killer), and Woo Ho-sung (a.k.a. the Camping Knife Killer). It involves in-depth analyses of criminal psychology and is exquisitely performed--indeed, the best performers are the actors who played the roles of the three serial killers and two other killers consulted in incarceration. It secondarily gives us a peek at the bureaucracy of the South Korean police force.

The criminal acts portrayed are violent,, but images of nudity and death are blurred, and, later, enacted out-of-frame. The characters were further unhampered by unnecessary excursions into family life and romance. There were, however, loose ends, such as the body of the woman that was thrown into the lake and was afterward neither mentioned nor retrieved.

An most substantial movie. It illustrates that, in movies, psychology is not melodrama, and that melodrama can never substitute for psychology.

Quite interesting that the Korean word "kaniang' means "it's just that", and I wonder how it is related to the Ilonggo word "kanang".