REVIEW: The Silent Sea
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 1 out of 5 stars
SYNOPSIS
*taken from MyDramaList*
Set in the future, when the planet suffers from a lack of water and food caused by desertification. Yoon Jae is a soldier for the space agency. He is selected for a team, including Ji An, to travel to the moon. A scientist who joins the mission to recover mysterious samples from an abandoned lunar space station, where an accident killed everyone including her sister.
RAMBLING
*Beware of spoilers*
I was all over Instagram saying how much this show scared me. It’s a suspense thriller set in space… c’mon, I’ve been burned once before (Event Horizon is still probably one of the scariest movies I’ve ever watched. Scarred for life.) But I’m glad I muscled through this show. It was bursting with commentary, and I had a fun time dissecting it.
In a dystopian future where the world has run out of water and the seas are bone dry, a crack team of pilots, engineers, and doctors is sent to retrieve a vital sample on a soon-to-be decommissioned lunar station. (Insert SNL Stefon voice here) This club has everything: A crash landing. Lights inside of space helmets. Dead bodies. Bae Doona acting dead inside. Gong Yoo. Chameleon actress Kim Sun Young. Dead bodies. People throwing up water. Guns. Clones. Gong Yoo.
Did I freak out during all the water vomiting scenes? Yes. Did I appreciate the irony of these people desperate for water drowning from too much of it? Yes.
Did I guess that the creature from the black lagoon lurking around the base and using the ventilation system as a highway was a child clone? Yes, but only after the photograph of Director Choi with the girl. Who knew xenomorphs could look like child models??
Man, I thought the set design/production design was remarkable. Decent cinematography—could everything have been a few shades brighter? Sure, but where’s the fun in that? I particularly liked all the shots of the moon and its surface. It reminded me of other great movies that take place on the moon—First Man (with Ryan Gosling) and Ad Astra (with Brad Pitt) come to mind. There was one shot of a crew member walking down a hallway, horizontally across the screen, and they transitioned that into a shot of Doc Song (played by Bae Doona) walking in the ventilation tunnels, horizontally across the screen. There were shots of people sinking in an abyss of water, which were nice as well.
Even more than the set design, I loved the CGI and VFX. Astronauts in zero gravity. Projectile vomiting water. Multiplying droplets of bloody water. A girl shown with a third eyelid (nictitating membrane) like a fish or reptile. Self-healing wounds. It was all done very well.
“The government is evil” is a running theme throughout the show. The government assembles a great astro-team to bring back an essential sample… but never gives them the whole story, withholding key information that could save their lives. Once things begin to go south on the moon base, the government’s mouthpiece, Director Choi, literally laughs off the insinuation that there is any sabotage or secrets. It’s revealed that the government sanctioned this top secret moon base to commit atrocious experiments in the name of saving the world. But the threat of exposure (i.e., bad PR) made the government cruelly shutter the project and murder all the brilliant, misguided scientists it empowered. Director Choi is shown looking at a photograph of her standing with the child Luna. So it’s implied that Director Choi allowed her own daughter to be cloned (and killed) countless times for research. Director Choi also has a photo of her smiling next to Doc Song’s sister. So to compound the issue, Director Choi murdered her own friend and colleague for the truth to stay buried… or drowned.
As if that wasn’t enough, back on earth, the Korean societal system is now a class system based on water acquisition. Those with a higher “water grade” level can access more water, while the poor and working class stand in line for just a few gallons of water. Protestors gather at these water distribution sites urging the government to end the water class system. So even the little water there is on earth is being distributed unfairly. In a brutal take on essential vs. nonessential, the most essential workers and brilliant minds are given all the water they want, while nonessential folks are left to languish. I also thought it sort of felt like a crude take on natural selection, since it seemed like the weakest and least contributing would die off as a result. Captain Han’s (played by the great Gong Yoo) own daughter could not be cured in the hospital unless he acquired a higher level. In other words, your progeny will be maimed—although we have the means to save her—unless you become invaluable…to the government.
Who did clones better? Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, or The Silent Sea? I’d like to think that it’s 1. Jurassic Park, 2. The Silent Sea, 3. Barbra Streisand (with her cloned pooches) 4. Jurassic World. All jokes aside, it’s a fantastic ethical dilemma, and in The Silent Sea, they paint it as both criminal and necessary. It is at once a heinous act of willful, perverse creation AND a genetic salvation. (“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should!” - Jurassic Park) Luna is and is not human, but despite her origins, she deserves to live, as does humanity at large. Did the ends justify the means? By “means,” I refer to the countless Luna clones that were mercilessly sacrificed at the altar of science.
I found it ironic and maybe a little bit of poetic justice that every scientist who mindlessly killed Luna clones (and God knows what else) to adapt humans to lunar water was killed by that very lunar water they studied. They viewed the water as the greatest discovery that could save everyone, and it killed them. The only survivor was of their own making.
A great question posed during the show is who is the real monster? Are the turncoat astronauts who murdered their comrades for a bit of moon water the monsters? Or is Luna, with her otherworldly abilities, the monster?
I saw so many references (or inspiration) to the Alien franchise with Sigourney Weaver. Not just in the execution of the spectacular suspense and thriller genre, but also in the Aliens sequel motherhood theme. Just like Aliens, Doc Song finds a lone child in an inhospitable landscape who miraculously survived, unscathed, on her own and whose expertise of the abandoned facility helps a precious few survive as well. Although there is no alien queen to contend with, our astronauts do have to escape from a deluge of lunar water…and life-giving water is just a stone’s throw away from Mother Nature? There’s an essay on motherhood in there somewhere…
I was quite fascinated with the show’s take on grief, reconciliation, and closure. Doc Song is shown as having a complicated relationship with her estranged older sister, who once told her as a child that she wanted to show her “The Silent Sea”—aka the dark spots on the moon. Her eonni wasn’t the protector or provider that is typical in K-dramas. She seemed to shirk her responsibility as an older sister, instead choosing the higher calling of protecting and providing a future for humanity. It makes for a bitter Doc Song, and I didn’t blame her one bit. Once she finds out her sister died, and that she had been on the moon for years(!!), Doc Song is left with unresolved feelings.
I thought the show took directly from the Brad Pitt movie Ad Astra when it showed Doc Song speaking stoically to a therapist A.I. It asked her questions about her training, how she was feeling, and how she felt about her sister. Just like Brad Pitt travels all the way to Neptune to discover what happened to his mysterious father, Doc Song travels to the moon to unravel the mystery of her sister’s death and her final message to “Find Luna.” In Ad Astra, it was a heartbreaking moment for Pitt’s character to come face-to-face with his father and realize that the mission meant more to him than his own son. In The Silent Sea, it feels a little more ambiguous. The sister is not alive for an almighty reunion, but Doc Song seems to gather from her vlogs that she was sorry for her sins but also sorry for being a bad sister. Doc Song does apologize for not picking up what was her sister’s final phone call, something many people can relate to—if I only picked up his call, if I only saw her one last time, etc.
Why didn’t they ever show the mad scientist sister in her final moments? It seemed like those flashbacks (though not exactly, as there wasn’t a character that was having a flashback) were leading to some sort of reveal, something that the sister did or said that Doc Song would uncover. Since there was nothing like that, we get the sister watching the madness unfold and her being trapped along with her colleagues as she calmly says “Excuse me”—to whom, I don’t know. We never see her die, and we never find her body. Weird.
I’m unsure why the lunar scientists did not focus their research on changing the lunar water so it did not multiply infinitely when it came in contact with a living organism. Instead they sought to change us—humans. You know what, I get it—just like all viruses on earth, which mutate and change all the time, we can never globally change the virus, but we can develop our own defenses with vaccines.
Final scene: Luna, the moon child, doesn’t need oxygen or any protective gear; she can even walk barefoot on the frigid moon. I half expected them to show Luna swimming in the supposed lunar sea. I liked how she was shown inside the facility going at warp speed, she was so fast, but out on the moon’s surface, she’s at normal speed—perhaps to account for the change in atmosphere and gravity. She doesn’t seem to belong on earth at all; she was engineered for the moon. Does her unbelievable existence mean that humans can adapt and become true moon dwellers? Possibly.
What does James Cameron have to do with the finale episode of The Silent Sea? Nothing, except they probably took inspiration from Titanic to stage some of those flooding scenes. My heart will go on…
Speaking of heart, does Gong Yoo die? After a few flickering moments, the lights on the inside of his helmet extinguish. If that means that he’s dead, then sure, I guess he died. But I don’t think he did. He’s a wild card character, and he could very well still be alive—even after being blasted out into the frosty moon. His character was complex, and he has something to live for. With Luna gingerly offering him back his daughter’s sticker in (what the show would have you believe are) his final moments, I think there’s enough to suggest that maybe his helmet’s lights went out, but not his determination to see his daughter again.
Why the negative reviews? Well, I mentioned a plethora of other sci-fi works just in my review; many feel that the show is too derivative, and because it does so many things, it feels unfocused. I can see that criticism, although I don’t subscribe to it.
To me, it feels more like a Netflix commercial for itself, and I do mean that negatively. Gong Yoo was recently in Squid Game (albeit a small role), Bae Doona is in Netflix’s Kingdom zombie thriller, and Heo Sung Tae was just put on the map with his sinister face tattoo villain in Squid Game. (A quick search sees supporting cast members in Netflix’s Hospital Playlist, Vincenzo, Kingdom, Law School, Vagabond, and even Persona.) Also, I would say that it’s just not memorable. In keeping with the show’s quick pacing, it feels like a show that came in quickly and will wash away quickly (pun intended).
I would recommend this show only to those who can handle suspense and already like sci-fi. If you’re looking for a typical K-drama, then drink at your own risk.
Did you see The Silent Sea? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!
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