Mask Girl is a series about an office worker who is insecure about her looks, becomes a masked internet personality by night, until a chain of ill-fated events overtakes her life. In this series, we see how Kim Mi-mo, someone who aspired to be a celebrity and loved to dance from her childhood days, gets sidelined and settles down for an office job because her looks don’t meet the beauty standards.
Now a grown-up, Kim Mi-mo is a dancer who dances on an internet site with a mask to fulfill her wish to be a celebrity/dancer. But her choice to pursue an office romance with a handsome guy in her office leads to a spiral of unfortunate events which sends Kim Mi-mo on a run and sends a vengeful mother at her tail.
The story proceeds further to explore what happened to Kim Mi-mo.
From here on, there could be spoilers for the series.
Biggest twist you will see
Yes, the twist is right in front of you. But most people might miss it. Don’t we all know how great Korean thrillers are? So when we understand what actually messed up Kim Mi-mo’s daughter’s life and we see how the story played out that is like a punch to our face.
Yeom Hye-ran was so great in “The Glory” that when I saw her in Mask Girl, I was like that Leonardo Dicaprio meme.
And she hits it out of the park again. I am already a fan of this amazing actor.
Revenge and Korean movie/series
I am already familiar with the famous Vengeance trilogy by Park Chan-Wook. (Old boy, Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance and Lady Vengeance)
But again this is another story where the vengeance is driving force after the first act. We see how the series of events that follow the murder of Joo Oh-Nam are so well-paced, that the drive to see what happens next leads to binge-watching. But the interesting thing here is, that in the next episode, we see something completely different than what we would expect. Usually, it would throw the audience off who wants to binge-watch. But that is certainly not the case with this series.
Women
Yes, the women in this story are three-dimensional, and I want to see more projects like this.
We have Kim Mi-mo whose story progresses from being an innocent girl to an office worker with a secret identity to a murder suspect on the run with a different identity, to a convict, to a mother who saves her child. Kim Mi-mo is constantly reminded she is not beautiful, and the things she longs for make her suffer, which drives her to get the plastic surgery she wants only to hide from everyone, only to give herself up to the police and spend years in prison. She had to put up a fight till the end. Literally!
Then there is Kim Kyung-ja, who is a single mother who raised her son all alone struggling to financially support him with all she had. She tried to be there for him only to get pushed away and finally lose her son. This breaks her final straw. She is on this mission to avenge his death. And she doesn’t know when to stop and nobody can stop her.
Other complex women characters play important roles in this story as well. But I don’t want to spoil the whole story here. So go watch it. Seriously!
Woman-centric
This story’s protagonist is a woman. This story’s antagonist is a woman. This story is about how a woman goes through a series of unfortunate events. Unlike other woman-centric stories where we see the struggles of a woman as a victim, a weakly written character or being too preachy, or the villainized version.
But in this story, we see women who are just the usual characters who have their own arcs, and motives, and how their choices seem so relatable and necessary for the story. We see male characters on the sidelines. I am not saying I want that. But I have seen the majority of movies where male characters are more dimensional, more predominant, and who the story is about. Unlike that, in Mask Girl, we see the woman characters at the center of everything.
Themes
The typical trope of a mother’s love towards their son is here used as the driving force for the antagonist. Something that is glorified and purified is used for a negative action here.
We see female friendships build on trust, bonding, affection, and being there for each other. After seeing most stories mainstream pitting women against women or women betraying their other female friends, this was great. It is about time to show how pure female friendships can be. As someone who has loving girl friends, I was tired of not being able to see such friendships on screen.
The motherhood with an absent mother. Yes, absent mothers are portrayed as the most sinful people in many stories. But here we see an absent mother who is complicated thanks to her past and still loves her daughter with all her heart. This is mostly done with absent dads. So this is a new take.
A special mention here about the amazing fight sequences for the women in this story without the visual being over the top.
There can be more amazing things in this series that I might have missed here. But I will tell you this. After a long time, I felt happy to see this series and I was instantly motivated to write this blog.
So now it is up to you to go watch this series.