Copycat Killer Review: Netflix Taiwanese Thriller Series Comes With Constant Twists

Cast: Kang Ren Wu, Ruby Lin, Tsung-Hua Tou, Cammy Chiang

Creator: Yukihiko Tsutsumi

Streaming Platform: Netflix

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Copycat Killer is a Taiwanese series directed by Henri Chang and Chang Jung-Chi starring Kang Ren Wu, Ruby Lin, and Fandy Fan. Copycat Killer takes us down the already familiar path of serial killers in this entertaining Taiwanese series that mixes thriller and terror, nothing original. The crime genre is all the rage on Netflix, especially when we talk about Asian TV series that now seems to have taken a liking to stage amazing hunts for ruthless serial killers. This is the time of Copycat Killer, a Japanese production show (but set in China) inspired by the 2001 novel Moh? Han, by the writer Miyuki Miyabe, is well-known in her homeland.

The 10 one-hour episodes that make up this ambitious production take the viewer on a journey into the sick mind of a serial killer who transforms his murders into real media shows. The relentless hunt that will set up the irreproachable prosecutor will give rise to a ruthless game of cat and mouse; but who is one and who is the other? As we will see in our review of Copycat Killer, the series directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi certainly wants to be a dark and suspenseful entertainment show, but it also represents a sort of denunciation of an increasingly present phenomenon in our society: the spectacularization of death. A thriller that, thanks to its continuous (sometimes a little improbable) twists and turns, doesn’t easily let you guess how it will end.

Copycat Killer Review: The Story Plot

The first episode opens with a masked killer known as Noh sending a videotape to every television network in the city. In the video in question, the killer issues a challenge to Chief Prosecutor Kuo Hsiao-chi (Kang Ren Wu), while ending the life of a young woman at the push of a button. The narrative then jumps back eight weeks. It is 1997 and Kuo Hsiao-chi is a prosecutor in Songyan (Taipei); honest and extremely dutiful, he works late in the office and puts all of himself into solving the cases entrusted to him. After having a colleague in his department arrested for crimes of speculation and disclosure of inside information, the man hits the headlines of the local news, attracting in particular the attention of the sensationalist network TNB and its host Ya-chi (Ruby Lin).

However, the case of corruption within the prosecutor’s office is overshadowed when, in the middle of a public park, a severed woman’s hand is found inside a red box. Kuo, who has been entrusted with the case, immediately makes an incredible discovery: the hand found in the park has a sprained thumb, exactly like the one presented by a young woman killed two years earlier. The perpetrator of this last crime, however, had already been incarcerated: is it, therefore, the work of a Copycat Killer or, instead, was the wrong man arrested? The investigation brings Kuo and veteran detective Lin Shang-yong (Tsung-Hua Tou) together but also attracts the attention of intrepid reporter Lu Yan-Chen (Cammy Chiang).

Copycat Killer Review and Analysis

As news of more missing young women begins to fill the front pages of local tabloids, pressure mounts on both prosecutor Kuo and anchorwoman Lin. Justice on one side, the media on the other: the first with the aim of securing the killer behind bars, the second with the sole purpose of making ratings, even if this means making death a real television show. Then when the killer starts contacting the families of the tortured girls and subjects them to cruel humiliation to make them appear on the TNB network, the case begins to become a real media circus, in which more attention seems to be given to the executioners moves than to the victims. From here begins emerges what is one of the crucial points of the show:

From the first introductory minutes of the show, the viewer is led to wonder what is the “motivation” behind the behavior of the masked killer. Because, more than on the killing of his victims, the killer seems focused on the communicative scope of this act and on the desire to be seen. The videos, the clues scattered around the city, and the public humiliation of the girls’ families are all elements that bring out his need to be put at the center of media attention. For what? Probably out of a desire for revenge, to demonstrate one’s intellectual superiority over the local justice system which, in fact, immediately proved to be confused and unprepared. We can therefore ask ourselves: this desire for popularity on the part of the serial killer.

Copycat Killer‘s cast includes faces that are quite popular at home, including Kang Ren Wu, Ruby Lin, and Cammy Chiang, all three of whom starred in the 2021 hit show, Light the Night. The main characters are very well characterized, and their interpreters seem to fit the role perfectly. Kang Ren Wu in the role of the prosecutor is the emblem of the righteous man, capable of going against everyone to make justice triumph; a mission he pursues despite his inner demons. Ruby Lin almost seems to enjoy playing the unscrupulous TV host while Cammy Chiang, playing the upright reporter Lu Yan-Chen, perfectly represents what should be the ethics of journalistic communication. The other characters, on the other hand, are given little attention, perhaps due to the constant twists and improbable changes of course of the show’s script, of which the veteran detective played by Tsung-Hua Tou also falls victim (but we don’t tell you how).

Copycat Killer Review: The Last Words

Copycat Killer, the series directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi aims to be a dark and suspenseful entertainment show, but it also represents a sort of denunciation of an increasingly present phenomenon in our society: the spectacularization of death. A thriller that, thanks to its constant twists (sometimes, however, a little improbable), does not easily let you guess how it will end.