Nam Ji-hyun investigates fatal desserts in High Cookie

by solstices

Unexplained happenings are the bread and butter of any thriller worth its while, and upcoming high school mystery High Cookie certainly has them in spades. Slated to be LG U+’s first original drama on their streaming platform, this delectable thriller has dropped more crumbs for us with its first teaser.

Opening on an ominous shot of an innocuous-looking smiley face cookie, a hopeful voiceover espouses the benefits of this frosted treat: “One bite gives you improved concentration, and finishing it all grants your wish.” It’s certainly a tantalizing opportunity to turn your life around. “However,” the voiceover warns, “eating more than one is not recommended.”

The side effects of cookie greed are stark. As a man makes a call in a hospital’s emergency ward, we see a bloody gash on his hand. Cut to the hallway of a high school, where panicked students run past an unconscious schoolmate, desperate to flee the school compounds. This is the very location where student Choi Min-young — played by Jung Da-bin (Glitch) — gets tangled up in this sugary magic, having succumbed to the temptation of the peculiar desserts.

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Luckily for Min-young, she has a loving older sister who will do anything it takes to protect her. Played by Nam Ji-hyun (Little Women), factory worker and family breadwinner Choi Soo-young is fiercely independent. With their parents out of the picture, the girls only have each other to rely on, and Soo-young’s determined to rescue her little sis from the clutches of the cookie’s curse — even if that means diving headfirst into danger by picking physical fights and getting herself kidnapped.

At school, there’s another variable to this sticky-sweet puzzle. Choi Hyun-wook (Twinkling Watermelon) plays top student Seo Ho-soo, whose stellar grades belie his family circumstances. With a terminally-ill mother and a missing father, Ho-soo’s life has been far from easy, yet he’s still guilelessly kind, helping out his fellow schoolmates even though they view him as a pushover.

Last but not least, Kim Mu-yeol (Trolley) rounds out our main cast as the school’s admissions consultant Yoo Sung-pil. Unscrupulous in his methods to make his students’ dreams possible, Sung-pil is shrouded in a veil of mystery that is as suspicious as it is intriguing. The teaser gives us a glimpse of him shoving a guy’s head right through his car window, though it’s still too early to tell whether he’s punishing evil, or committing evil himself.

Helmed by PD Song Min-yeop (Youth of May) with scripts penned by Kang Han (Silence of the Lambs), the 20-episode drama High Cookie will be released on October 23.