The Price of Confession Review: When an art teacher is sent to prison for murdering her husband, she gets approached by a mysterious inmate and offered a deal – she will take on her murder charge in exchange for committing a murder.
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The Price of Confession Kdrama Cast
Jeon Do-yeon, Kim Go-eun, Park Hae-soo, Jin Sun-kyu, Choi Young-joon, Kim Sun-young, Nam Da-reum, Kim Joong-don
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The Price of Confession Series Director
Lee Jung-hyo
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The Price of Confession Netflix Writer
Kwon Jong-gwan
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Original Title
자백의 대가
The series has 12 episodes, each with a runtime of around 60 minutes.
The Price of Confession Review
At 12 episodes, it’s difficult to sit and take in the insanity of The Price of Confession, a series that relies on a bunch of characters acting irrationally for hours on end. From Prosecutor Baek Dong-hun to protagonist Ahn Yun-su, everyone seems to be some version of insane without any rational decision-making skills.
What starts off as a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse between two inmates in a prison turns into this crazy ordeal with people dropping like flies, somehow Yun-su getting dragged into it and the police, prosecution and even prison guards acting like fools. It’s like everyone is governed by emotional decision-making and cannot fathom the thought of being smart for a second.
With 12 episodes of this, one cannot overcome the absolute annoyance of seeing adults acting like this and facts being disregarded because the prosecutor has a huge ego. Regardless of what the ending might be, you expect a tenacious and experienced prosecutor to follow the clues instead of having a perpetrator in mind and trying to frame them one way or another.
Ahn Yun-su isn’t any better and constantly makes one bad decision after another. I guess she has the excuse of being a frazzled woman desperate to save her daughter, but even then, it gets on your last nerve at times. I think the core story was interesting to watch, though, and I was hooked to try and understand who actually delivered the fatal blow. I didn’t suspect for a minute that Yun-su was the one who killed her husband, so the need to know who the real killer was was intense for me.
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But even then, 12 episodes is one too many for the answer to be given. I say this because the tension gets dissipated trying to make us understand who could’ve killed Ki-dae and Se-hun, while also delivering a social message surrounding justice not getting delivered. It’s just a lot of work for not enough satisfying conclusion in the end. I will also mention here that I just did not buy the perpetrator’s identity in the end, and his motivations felt weak. Coupled with the rather terrible investigation and a bunch of professionals fumbling around, this might just be one of the most frustrating Korean shows I have watched in a while.
However, at least the performances are good. Kill Boksoon‘s Jeon Do-yeon is great as always, although I can’t say the same about her character. I liked Kim Go-eun as well, although I felt her character’s motivations needed just a smidge more background. I think some of the social discussions are interesting and could’ve been moving, if they were brought to us with more focus. Right now, I found that it really missed the mark as well.
Final Thoughts
In the end, The Price of Confession isn’t worth the almost 12-hour runtime. I think it would’ve made more of an impact if it were a bit more to-the-point. But, with how it stands, it loses the tension somewhere along the way and by episode 7, it feels a bit boring.
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