The Haunted Palace is a fantasy historical about a spirit with a grudge against the king (Kim Ji Hoon), a shaman (Bona) who goes against it, and a royal inspector (Yook Sung Jae) who gets possessed by a mischievous spirit.
Bona plays Yeo Ri who is able to see spirits. She has tried to avoid her fate of being a shaman, but a spirit keeps hanging around her, and she soon has to help with the spirit problem in the palace.
Yook Sung Jae is Yun Gap who is a royal inspector that gets possessed by Gang Cheol, a spirit trying to ascend to heaven by possessing a body.
Then we have Kim Ji Hoon as King Yi Seong. He dreams of building a better nation, but spirits causing trouble in the palace put the royal family in danger.
The Haunted Palace was a bit all over the place for me. It’s a drama that did quite a few things that I liked, but it also did quite a few things that I didn’t. And this mixture starts with the plot itself. Initially, I really liked the plot of Gang Cheol possessing Yun Gap and all of the trouble he caused with that. We get some humor and fun shenanigans.
We also get a complicated relationship between Yeo Ri and Gang Cheol and Yun Gap. There are a lot of feelings to explore by all three of these characters. The relationships have some complexity with the difficult situation they are all in. But the romance itself ended up falling completely flat for me. I just wasn’t particularly invested in the characters and didn’t feel much chemistry between them.
While this initial plot was interesting, it ended up really not having that much to work with which resulted in some dragginess. This plot is running throughout the drama, but it’s the secondary plot of the spirits causing trouble in the palace that ends up being much more engaging.
An evil shaman (Kim Sang Ho) helping a powerful spirit with a grudge causes havoc for the king and the royal family. This aspect of the story brings most of the suspense and action. We see Yeo Ri team up with Gang Cheol and the King to take on this spirit. This is what drives most of the plot and happenings throughout the show.
Now, Kim Ji Hoon was easily the shining star of the drama. He stole every scene he was in, and he brought so much emotional depth and passion to the character of the King. His intensity was captivating, and honestly, the latter half of the drama really did feel like his story.
There is a love/hate bromance between Gang Cheol and the King. They fight a lot but also develop a fun banter between them. They have to reluctantly work together to take on the evil spirit which allowed their relationship to go through a lot of twists and turns with some interesting developments.
Overall, The Haunted Palace was a mixed bag. It suffered from quite a few pacing issues. At times, it was suspenseful, while at other times, it felt draggy. The body possession story started off promising but kind of fell off. Yeo Ri had a lot of promise as a shaman character but sort of fell flat. The story of the king was very engaging especially due to Kim Ji Hoon.
I had a hard time figuring out my feelings towards this one because of how all over the place it was. It has enough going for it that I would say give it a whirl to see how you fare.
My Rating: 6/10
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