REVIEW: ‘The Glory’ is a Brutal Watch

Cycles of violence are great inspirations for telling stories, particularly when revenge is involved. And with Netflix Original The Glory, we see a cycle, opened and retribution sought with an intensity that leaves you pinned to your seat. Directed by Ahn Gil-ho and written by Kim Eun-sook the eight-episode series follows a woman seeking revenge on the high school bullies who eventually forced her to quit school and left her body scarred for life.

The series centers on Moon Dong-eun (Song Hye-Kyo), a high school student who dreamed of one day working as an architect. That is until she became a victim of high school violence perpetrated by her fellow students. As the violence escalated she was forced to drop out of school in order to save her life. As an adult, Dong-eun’s life is one calculated plot for revenge that looks to deliver justice to her tormentors and the bystanders who allowed it to continue. Dong-eun has waited, picking each career step, and watching her tormentors as they grew. From drop-out to teacher, Dong-eun has waited for the leader of her tormentors to get married and have a child, to essentially achieve the perfect life in order to rip it away. Now, the woman was once a victim of school violence, is now the homeroom teacher of her tormentor’s child, and we watch as her plot unfolds.

I’m usually good with tough watches. Violence usually doesn’t phase me, and I thank my love of horror for that. Yet, Netflix Original, The Glory shattered my expectations of brutality and made me viscerally uncomfortable from the first minute to the last—and it was good. But when I call The Glory brutal, I don’t mean it because ti shows excessive gore, the violence in this series is the chilling kind. The small acts over time, the tension driven by abject loneliness and worthlessness created by other people. The Glory doesn’t offer buckets of blood or constant death, but it does manage to systemically break down its characters mentally and emotionally. It’s watching people in a trap as the walls tighten around them, and it’s done in a way that constantly drives tension with no clear sign of release.

In the US-context, we’ve desensitized ourselves to school-place violence so much that we’ve devalued the term bullying, often dismissing a bully as some comic book character calling someone names. However, this ignores the violence that an act can take and the trauma it can cause. American media has turned bullies into main characters and belittled the act itself. But the same can’t be said for South Korean media.

We’ve seen bullying tackled as a form of trauma in other South Korean Netflix series in series like Sweet Home, Lookism, and All of Us Are Dead. Each one has a character or characters whose paths are shaped by the violence—both physical and emotional—that they were put through. But all of these are still from the perspective of young people. The wounds are fresh, still healing, and immediately causing harm. But in The Glory, Moon Dong-Eun’s wounds are old and festering and have shaped every single choice she has made in life. Each job, each test, each relationship, everything has been chosen as a part of a heavily curated plan to get revenge.

The build-up to the finale is brutal and uncomfortable. Moon Dong-Eun is our lead, and through flashbacks, we feel for her. We see her body burned, her money stolen, and sexually assaulted. And in seeing that violence on screen, we see the joy that the group of bullies gets from it. The fact that each bully feels joy from their violence makes the audience root for __ even as her plan for revenge becomes more dangerous, specifically as she circles Park Yeon-jin (Lim Ji-yeon), the leader of the bullies, and her child.

The Glory is gripping. The flashbacks hurt to watch, and yet, you just keep watching as Dong-eun aims to get the justice she deserves. From adults who ignored her torment or added to it themselves, and of course, the bullies. Regarding the subject matter, The Glory nails a tension-filled and surprisingly fast-paced narrative. That said, it’s the acting in this series that pushes it over the top.

As our lead actor, Song Hye-kyo brings Dong-eun to life with care. Her performance is moving, calculating, vulnerable, and even terrifying. She is able to show the determination and grit so often denied female characters in storytelling, and she does so by understanding how to act in silence as much as delivering her dialogue. She feels her rage and fury constantly, and she is allowed to.

From wide shots to close-ups, Song Hye-kyo showcases determination, rage, and loneliness that reverberate through every moment, even those where traditional romance is set by the score. Truly, Song as Dong-eun is one of the best performances in television this year. She is strikingly gorgeous and unwaveringly vengeful, and she captures the spectrum of grief that comes with trauma.

While Song Hye-kyo is clearly the series’ star, the supporting cast of Lee Do-Hyun, Lim Ji-Yeon, Park Sung-hoon, Jung Sung-Il, Kim Hieora, Cha Joo-Young and of course Kim Gun-Woo gives the quest at the heart of the series a dynamic quality that has to be applauded. Not to mention the series’ young cast who’s acting talent is undeniable, specifically in regards to Jung Ji-so who plays young Dong-Eun, Shin Ye-Eun and Bae Gang-hee, who play teenage Yeon-Jin and Sa-Ra.

On the whole, The Glory is a revenge story with depth that pays off in spades. It’s thrilling, gripping, deeply unnerving, and offers a catharsis that only good revenge stories can. With season 2 reportedly already filmed, we can hope to see the conclusion soon.

The Glory is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.