Television series
The Glory
A revenge thriller built like a chess match rather than an action movie: Moon Dong Eun spends years engineering the downfall of everyone who tortured her in high school and everyone who watched and said nothing. Song Hye Kyo plays her with a stillness that's almost frightening. Slow, elegant, deeply satisfying — and it never lets you forget what this cost her.
If you liked this
My Name2021
Same Netflix-Korean engine of a woman infiltrating the world that wronged her to take it apart from the inside — Han So Hee is ferocious, and the plotting is just as patient and cruel.
But It trades The Glory's classroom chill for gangland shootouts and undercover-cop mechanics — much more action, much less psychological dread.
Vincenzo2021
Song Joong Ki plays a mafia lawyer dismantling a corrupt corporation with the same long-game, everyone-pays-eventually structure, but wrapped in black comedy and outrageous style instead of quiet menace.
But The tone is broad and cartoonish where The Glory is austere — if you wanted the dread to continue, this will feel like a tonal U-turn.
Extracurricular2020
Korean teenagers running criminal schemes under their teachers' noses, with the same interest in how institutions protect the wrong people. Bleaker and less cathartic, but cut from the same cloth.
But There's no revenge arc to root for here — just kids sinking deeper into consequences, with none of the icy satisfaction The Glory delivers.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Promising Young Woman2020
Same architecture: a woman who was there when something terrible happened builds a meticulous, years-long plan to make every bystander answer for their silence — just filmed as an American indie with a candy-colored palette and a killer soundtrack instead of a Seoul melodrama.
Carey Mulligan is devastating as a woman who spends her nights testing exactly how far 'nice guys' will go, one calculated encounter at a time — funny, furious, and building to something you won't see coming.
But It ends in a very different place than The Glory does, and that ending has divided audiences hard — some find it exactly right, others feel betrayed.
More like this (8)
Sky Castle2018
A soapy, sprawling look at Korea's obsession with elite schooling and the parents who'll destroy anyone to protect their children's futures — the class rage under The Glory's plot, stretched to twenty episodes.
But It's a melodrama first, a thriller second — expect more shouting matches and fewer chess moves.
Beyond Evil2021no page yet
A small-town murder investigation that slowly reveals two detectives with very different, very old grudges. Same patience, same sense everyone's hiding something, same slow-burn dread.
But It's a procedural at heart, less interested in one woman's private war than in unraveling a whole town's secrets.
Kill Boksoon2023
A contract killer balancing a teenage daughter and a boss who wants her dead — less school trauma, more elegant, brutal set-pieces, but the same steely woman running the whole plan.
But It's a two-hour action film, not a slow-burn drama — you lose the sustained dread that makes The Glory so effective.
Oldboy2003
Park Chan-wook's revenge classic — a man locked away for fifteen years hunting down whoever did it. The genre's ur-text: brutal, operatic, morally filthy in ways The Glory only hints at.
But It's far more violent and grotesque, and its twists are the kind you can't watch twice the same way.
The Handmaiden2016
Park Chan-wook again, weaving a con, a romance and a long-buried grudge into one gorgeous, twisting plot. If you loved watching Dong Eun's plan click into place, this rewards that same patience.
But It's a heist film in period costume, not a contemporary revenge drama — the connective tissue to trauma is much looser.
Penthouse: War in Life2020
The trashy, unfiltered version of The Glory's rage — rich people doing monstrous things to each other in a luxury apartment building, revenge plots stacked on revenge plots, no restraint whatsoever.
But It has none of The Glory's discipline — this is maximalist soap opera, gloriously unhinged rather than quietly devastating.
The Virgin Spring1960
Strip away sixty years of gloss and K-drama polish and you get this: Bergman's spare, black-and-white telling of a father's calculated revenge after violence is done to his child — the same bones, none of the style.
One of Bergman's starkest films — beautiful, brutal, and far more interested in the moral weight of revenge than the satisfaction of it. Deeply serious filmmaking that still feels shockingly direct.
But Slow, austere, subtitled, and completely without The Glory's slick pacing or plot twists — this asks patience, not thrills.
Audrie & Daisy2016
The real-world version of the story The Glory dramatizes: teenagers, a school that looks away, and the long aftermath for the people who were hurt — except here there's no elegant revenge plot, just survivors trying to be heard.
A sober, careful documentary about two real teenage assault cases and the way small towns protect the wrong people. It's this story without the fantasy of a perfectly executed reckoning.
But It's genuinely upsetting and offers no catharsis — if you watched The Glory for the satisfaction of villains falling, this won't give you that.
People
Cast
Writing
- An Gil HoCreator
- Kim Eun SookCreator