The Fourth Floor
After a week’s hiatus, we return to Strangers From Hell with episode 5 which opens with Jong-Woo passed out in his room. Feeling nauseous and spaced out, Moon-Zo chuckles to himself from the room next door as he whispers something to Deuk-Jong while our protagonist sleeps off the effects. After awakening some time later, Jong-Woo realizes someone has broken into his room, especially given the laptop didn’t have the clump of dust when he opened it. Needing to get to the bottom of this, he speaks to Bok-Soom who checks the CCTV footage only to see those moments conveniently missing from the cameras. Deciding the culprit must be Nam-Bok, Moon-Zo breaks up a heated confrontation as Jong-Woo squares up to him and confronts the man about his perverted past-times Getting nowhere and unable to ride a wave of drama to hide these issues, Jong-Woo heads back in his room and tries to get his mind right. After a talk with Moon-Zo, he heads back to his room and gets some sleep, pushing the events that occurred to the back of his mind. Midway through a work meeting, Ji-Eun receives a call from Jong-Woo, prompting her to blow him off while Jung-Hwa approaches him in the street and asks him if anything strange has happened at the studio. He mentions the strange noises coming from the fourth floor but before he can go into detail, he spies Bok-Woon in the distance, who feeds back the information to Moon-Zo. Upon hearing the news, the dentist tells her that he’ll take care of the problem. Heading up alone, Jung-Hwa arrives at Eden Studio and immediately heads up to the fourth floor. Dressed in her police gear, she heads in with no back-up and begins searching through the various rooms. Nam-Bok puts a knife up to his victim’s throat and tells her to keep quiet and not say a word as Jung-Hwa creeps past. As she continues to search, she finds a dentist chair while Nam-Bok abandons his victim and begins stalking her. It’s a tense segment and one that results in Jung-Hwa finding nothing and heading out the building while Nam-Bok goes back to his victim, only to find her missing from her room. She manages to get outside and finds a random person walking by whom she convinces to help her. Unfortunately that random person is Moon-Zo. He leads her back inside and into the same room as before, now captured again. Jong-Woo heads out for another team meal where he gives Yoo-Jung a rose while both him and Ji-Eun begin to explore the possibilities of other avenues of romance. As he gets drunk, he tells Byeong- Min that he’s a pervert before the group leave and fight, as Jong-Woo stumbles down the corridor and picks a fight with a random punter in the bar. Deciding enough is enough, a drunk Jong-Woo is forced to head home, however on the way he gives the wrong address and drools over the man’s backseat. Bringing him in to the police station, Jong-Woo passes out on the table until Jung-Hwa wakes him up. It’s here he tells her that he’s very scared of the Studio as he stares wide-eyed at his phone. Ji-Eun has decided to visit Eden Studio, where he’s greeted by Moon-Zo who figures out she’s there to see Jong-Woo. As we approach the halfway point of this drama, Strangers From Hell does well to keep things interesting and unpredictable. The scenes on the fourth floor were by far the most tense and throughout the episode there’s a great balance of horror and mystery as our characters try to figure out just what’s going on. While there are some changes to the webtoon itself, for the most part Strangers From Hell continues to deliver a decent enough drama across its hour long run time. Quite what’s in store for Jung-Woo for the second half remains to be seen but one thing’s for sure – Ji-Eun’s life is very much in danger at the studio.
