Embrace in the Dark Night (2024)

Stilted is best word to describe this mini drama

I watched this minidrama after heavy promotion on Youtube especially that bold trailer. If someone asks me to describe this drama in one word, I'd say 'stilted' is apt. Stilted acting, stilted character growth, stilted romance, stilted plot.

What I liked:
1) Qiao Fei characterisation - She is one of two characters that I like in this mini drama. Despite having less screen time, actress Zhang Ya Meng managed to give life to what could be a 2-dimensional character. I like her take charge nature, which is contrast to Female Lead Wen Xi.
2) Ren characterisation - He is the other character that I like in this mini drama, ever since his first appearance in the women's boutique. He is resourceful assistant to Male Lead Zhe Qing but he is his own person.
3) Qiao Fei - Ren romance - I prefer their romance to Zhe Qing-Wen Xi romance. Better chemistry & execution of their love story. It's cute that Ren felt challenged by Qiao Fei's remark of not dating younger men.

What I disliked:
1) Wen Xi characterisation - Gosh another damsel in distress. It's good that she came out of the "helpless girl shell" after her sister's accident. However her way of solving her sister's accident wasn't smart. She should have partnered up or "used" Zhe Qing.
2) Zhe Qing-Wen Xi romance - Gosh I cannot stand the manhandling! Some may find Zhe Qin's aggressiveness as hot but to me, it's just wrong. His moves were unnatural and stiff to the point of assault. Even most of kissing scenes were hard to watch because there were too much push factor rather than pull factor in their dynamics. Wen Xi never seemed to enjoy kissing.
3) Plot - just messy. I don't understand why Wen Xi was kidnapped in the first place. She was a nobody. Wen Hao's situations (being a whistleblower and having a secret romance) made this drama interesting but they became lost momentum once Wen Xi's romance developed and the villain had more screen time.

Favourite scene
When Wen Xi was drunk and Zhe Qing wanted to confirm her identity. What a smart way to validate your suspicion!

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Started with a bang and ended with explosion and confusion

PLEASE DONT BELIEVE THOSE 9.0 reviews! this drama is horrible! started interesting but slowly got abusive and manipulative.

1) the female lead is plain dumb! She tries come up with her own plans thinking they will work and doesnt consider danger as an issue , like she is naive in a lot of situations . She probably one of the dumbest female leads also getting manipulated the male lead.
2) The male lead fail to communicate and trust the female lead, like if he has just told the female lead maybe they could og work together.. It was the male lead bailing the female lead ass' every single time! Also he is very controlling a bit too sensual?
3) The bad guy is played pretty well where you hate him. He was abusived by his father which made him turn into a two face person .Like seemingly innocent but also a psychopath

The only good thing was the steamy romance but too much and always forced feels a little to much .

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The story is nonsensical, but the leads' chemistry makes up for it

The problem here is that this is a super low budget drama, and therefore the plot is rushed and weird. However, the leads' chemistry is so good that it oddly makes up for the bare bones production and story. It's like an AI wrote a script with the primary objective being to put the leads in as many tropey, contrived situations as possible. And then the actors were so good and had so much chemistry, it made the astonishingly bad script almost passable.

If you ignore the story and production values, it's watchable. I hope the ML and FL actors get bigger (better) dramas because of this one.

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