The Judgement

The Judgement is a 13 episode 2018 TV series from Thailand, currently airing on Netflix. It's another Asian drama about the life of young school kids. Unfortunately, it has a lot of problems.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Here's your basic story: Young college girl's dad gets in a car accident and is in a coma. This leaves her alone with her stepmom whom she doesn't get along with. In order to get some breathing room, she (Lookkaew) goes to a party where she gets drunk, passes out, and is raped by her boyfriend. Somebody filmed the incident and uploaded it to the internet and her school chat boards. So yeah, things aren't going too good for her. Following the assault, it's a matter of Lookkaew dealing with the aftermath and eventually healing and moving on.

There are several side stories as well that primarily entail other students dealing with their own problems of assault, shame, fitting in, bullying, sexual orientation, etc...some of these stories work well at times, but only rarely. Overall, I really like what they are trying to do here with the stories they are telling, but this show is vastly hindered by everyone working behind the scenes on this production.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the director and production crew working this show are either VERY inexperienced and/or VERY incompetent, and that is a huge problem. The budget here is small, and that's not uncommon for similar shows of this nature, but that's no excuse not to have somebody on set who knows where to place a boom mic. I can't believe I'm watching a show in 2018 that can't figure out how to properly record sound; incredibly, they seemed to have put microphones on shoes and in student's backpacks because I can hear every foot shuffle across a floor and every backpack whooshing up against a wall, but, a person speaking more than a meter away from the main conversation is barely audible. And that's not the only production related problem with this show.

I don't mean to be rude, but this entire effort frequently looks like it was put together by first year film students who've never been on a production set before. Aside from the inexplicable sound issues, this show is very poorly directed as a whole; scene pacing is frequently abysmal, there are numerous long pauses and lots of extraneous scenes and shots that serve no purpose, and the director provided little in the way of direction to the cast. Editing is equally terrible...forget sharp and snappy cuts, this show can't even get the basics of Editing 101 down, for example; when a scene is supposed to start/end by having a character enter/leave a room, it shouldn't look like someone is standing or wandering around waiting for the director to yell "action" or "cut"...not so here, as it often seems everything that was filmed makes it on screen.

As for the plot and writing; the overall story lines aren't bad at all, but the dialogue and screenwriting is a bit lacking for the bulk of this series. A second unit writing team would have certainly helped, but this department is the least of this show's problems.

Acting; I don't recall seeing any of these actors or actresses prior to this show, and I've seen numerous recent productions from Thailand. Some of the older actors portraying the parents and school officials are really bad (like "they need to find another profession asap" bad). The lead, numerous students, and the one crusader teacher, fair a little better, but they too are often lacking. It's hard to blame them for their performances though; they are young and inexperienced and need guidance and DIRECTION, but, they just aren't getting much of any of that here. I would like to see several of them given other opportunities in better productions before judging their acting abilities.

Summary: This series is not ready to compete on Netflix with recent similar shows like On Children & Girl From Nowhere. It wants to tell a meaningful timely story about teens/young adults, but just doesn't really know how to do it. The director and entire production team needs to up their game A LOT if and when they ever get another shot at this. In the meantime, their efforts on this particular show results in the rating it deserves.

Bottom Line: Alas, 5 out of 10 stars. Come on Thailand, I know you can do better than this!

There once was a girl named Lookout. She went to Aud's night cookout. When Lookout was sound a sleeping, Aud came up a creeping. Aud gave Lookout his sausage. Later on Lookout got naseus. There was also a girl name Som. She promised her online viewers yum yum. A viewer whose name was Fatty. Trapped Som and pumped her patties. Som didn't promised anymore yum yum. She took odd jobs when she found some. When Lookout thought she was pregnant now, Aud said why and called her Cow. Anyway this series was okay for what it was which is a low budget teeny bopper flick. The actress that played Som should have been Lookkaew. She is more mature and seems to be a better actress than the one that played the lead role. The one who stoled this series is the actress who played the teacher Ms. Manita. When should argued with the male teacher on behalf of Lookkaew I thought she was actually going to hit him. She got into character really well like she must of thought it was real. Her voice and the way she looked at the male teacher was very convincing. I would like to see her in more series to get a better idea if she is the real deal and it doesn't hurt that she is super attractive also. The father of Lookkaew was only there at the beginning and at the tail end of the series so I couldn't judge his acting ability. Would I recommend this series, for what it is I would recommend this for teenagers. This would be kind of boring for young and older adults.

This TV show was suppose to be an LGBTQ series but nothing on the show that really demonstrated as such. This series should not have been added as an LGTBQ selection. I was very disappointed because the whole series was just mainly about this young college student that had a very serious personal problem. This series need to be removed from the LGBTQ selection immediately. A very disappointed viewer 😩😩😩😩

The series is set in such an important premise with an important plot to boot - the struggles of young women and men in college who make their own mistakes, the pressure of social media, the diversity of characters, how adults treat kids.

All of that is fit into the 13 episodes of this series, and the way it was difficult to watch because of how much it reflects real life makes it an eye opening must watch for everyone in this generation.