Celebrity (2023) Was A Flop? || Review of K-drama Series

I’d been in a movie slump for several months now. I don’t know why I couldn’t pick up a single movie to watch, even when I was the most bored. There are over six movie series on my phone and several more single movies but I just kept downloading more and never watching.

When my movie slump was over about last week, I picked up a series that TikTok had been gushing about for weeks now and decided to watch it. I was pretty excited mainly because I’d heard good reviews about it and because it was just 12 episodes of about forty minutes on average making it quite easy to watch. I finished this series in two days and was pretty happy about it. I present to you…

Celebrity

’Celebrity’ (2023) is a mystery/thriller Korean series. It revolves around the hidden and quite unsavoury lives of e-celebrities, that is, social media celebrities. The lives they live offline and the ones they portray on social media. It’s an in-depth study of what goes on in the world of these celebrities. The rivalry, spite, maliciousness, and struggle for more followers and a perceived better life compared to other e-celebrities.

Main Characters

Park Gyu-Young as Seo A-ri

The protagonist and main lead moves from being a financially-struggling, social suicide to becoming a pretty successful e-celebrity and business owner, surpassing her predecessors. Seo A-ri is quite calm amid adversity and chaos. She observes the lives of the Gabin Society and with the help of an enthusiastic “fan,” seeks to make a name for herself.

Kang Min Hyuk as Han Jun-Kyung

A wealthy businessman and owner of Hue Cosmetics, his life is simple and is all about becoming an even more successful man till he crosses paths with the main lead and seeks to make her his in a calm, relaxed fashion. He’s not the male protagonist but a supporting role in the life of the female lead.

Gabin Society

Made up of the bougiest class of e-celebrities, these ladies believe that the world is their footstool and a free ball to kick however they choose. They’re foul-mouthed and don’t hesitate to tear down whoever is in their way, physically and emotionally. They flaunt their wealth scandalously but their secrets are just as dirty as their hearts.

Brief Summary of the Plot

The scene begins with the lives of different celebrities and how important social media is in the world then transcends to the owner of the voice narrating the scene. It makes use of in finis res plot, which means beginning a movie from the end, then moving to the beginning. Thirty-one year old Seo A-ri begins an Instagram live in what looks like a secluded room. She throws every member of The Gabin Society into a panic as she seeks to deliver to the world all the secrets that these women have closed up.

A-ri begins her story with her uninteresting life as a make-up sales expert. She does door-to-door delivery of her products and winds up in the home of Yoon Si-hyeon, an unofficial member of the Gabin Society and the most decent of the lot. From her place in hiding, she learns some names and afterwards, in the comfort of her home finally decides to open up an Instagram account.

From there on, she meets an old school friend who’s also a member of the Gabin Society and promptly invites her into her world. It’s there that she stumbles into the charming Han Jun-Kyung, who’s enamoured by her wit and uniqueness, unlike the other women he’s used to. After creating a scene at the party, she suddenly finds herself entangled in the most unlikely way with the other celebrities.

She soon enough gains popularity and earns the hatred and spite of the members of The Gabin Society. Maybe she could have blended into the background uneventfully, but after learning of the secrets of the high class and accidentally witnessing the death of a man in the club the high class hang out in, her life has become too complicated to just disappear and when she unwittingly angers _bbbfamous, the “fan” whose been helping her climb to the top all along, her world crashes in on her. Will she survive it?

My Review and Rating

Unlike a lot of Korean series, the genre of “Celebrity,” isn’t romance and even though the main lead has a love interest, it’s not the prime focus of the series. You cannot achieve success in a series like this if you don’t have a stellar plot that would keep the watchers going and this series had that, rendering it much more attractive.

Not quite sure what exactly was wrong, but the chemistry between the love interests wasn’t sizzling. It was rather bland, to say the least, and they didn’t put much effort into making that part of the movie work. The general plot however was intriguing and would have any watcher at the edge of their seat.

There were some loopholes however in the ending of the series. A few mysteries that weren’t unravelled and what became of a few characters mentioned in the beginning making the ending in itself rather bland and not as satisfactory as I would have liked it. In comparison to other stellar Kdramas I’ve watched, I’ll give this a 4.2 out of 5 stars. It’s a good weekend series to immerse yourself in however, if you feel like it and if you’re interested in a sizzling, mysterious plot, Celebrity is the series for you.

Jhymi🖤

All images above are from the movie screenshots.