What Do Audiences Think of "Omniscient Reader"?

How did Korean audiences receive this adaptation of one of Korea's biggest IPs?

“Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” is getting through its first weekend and we’ve got the first set of audience reviews in Korea and they’re thoroughly mixed.

I’ll be taking a look at the major cinema chains along with Naver’s own movie rating system to see how the film is being received in Korea.

First up, let’s look at the home of “Omniscient Reader”, Naver.

Homecourt Advantage, or Not.

Naver’s review system isn’t much different from Google or Rotten Tomatoes with one important aspect, users on Naver generally register their accounts to their Korean IDs. This has the added effect of tying one person to each username.

Right now, “Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” is sitting on a 7.91 stars out of ten with 64% of audiences giving the film a soild 64. The bigger surprise is the average rating according to gender with men giving the film a 6.73 on average while women gave it an 8.77.

There are only 660 reviews, but it looks like the reviews are skewing to female audiences. Spoiler alert: this pattern repeats itself below, too.

The overview shows relatively positive audience reactions to the film. But when you dig a bit deeper, the reviews are much more mixed. And when you get to the highest rated reviews, it really starts to skew to negative audiene reactions:

• leed****: “Why even bother if it’s going to turn out like this” (1 star)

• kimh****: “Director, this movie is the worst.” (5 stars)

• jwin****: “The director, screenwriter, and actors, no one understood the original or respected the original… I wonder any of them even read the source material.” (1 star)

I had to scroll down a page to find a review that was higher than 5 stars, but calling it a “positive” review would be a stretch.

• dram****: “I never read the source material, so I didn’t enjoy the film, but I think fans of the source material will enjoy it less ;;.” (7 stars)

Omniscient Reader Provides a Much Needed Push for the Domestic Movie Market

There are three major film chains in Korea: CGV, Megabox, and Lotte Cinema.

Unfortunately, film audience numbers have trended downward lately leading to the Korean government offering subsidies in the form ticket discounts to everyone this week (including me).

So far, “Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” is topping the box office charts. It’s blown past “Fantastic Four: First Steps” which had a much slower opening in Korea and is likely to hold the top spot until Wednesday when a new batch of films releases.

CGV

CGV has an “Egg” scoring system which counts down from 100%. At the time of writing, “Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” is sitting on 85% which puts it relatively high.

As far as ticket sales, “Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” has sold 280k tickets putting it firmly in first place for the weekend while “Fantastic Four: First Steps” has sold 130k tickets.

But, surprisingly, “Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” has a massive female audience with the vast majority of tickets going to women. Whether that’s due to the appeal of the IP or the actors, I’ll leave that to you to decide.

…Actually, no. It’s the actors.

Megabox

“Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” has a mixed reception over at Megabox. The overall review score here is 7.9 the lowest on this list. On the other hand, the movie’s sold over 280k tickets.

Based on the reviews, the actors and cinematography are the clear favorites in the film. The cinematography is a surprise, but the favoritism shown to the actors isn’t.

Just in case you might not be familiar, Lee Minho has long been a fan-favorite among romance K-drama fans in Korea. He alone commands a huge following, but the addition of Ahn Hyoseop who is still riding waves form his recent turn in “Kpop Demon Hunters” really pushes the star power of this film into the Star Stream.

The highest rated reviews on Megabox are… also not kind:

• jj**be88: “Oh… what are we going to do about this” (Score: 3)

• me**ry08: “I had high hopes because of how famous the original is” (Score: 2)

• mu**cstart12…: “Everyone, the webtoon and webnovel aren’t like this… please read the source… I feel bad thinking that people who see this movie will think this is ‘Omniscient Reader’…” (Score: 1)

Just like with Naver, I scrolled through a few pages looking for a positive review or just one that gave the film a score higher than 5. I gave up after the 10th page.

Lotte Cinema

Lotte Cinema is likely the chain hardest hit by the lack of moviegoing audiences, but it sold over 281k tickets making it the theatre of choice in Korea.

Lotte doesn’t have a scoring system or any stats to speak of, but they do have short reviews that people can upvote.

So, again, here are the most popular reviews for “Omniscient Reader: The Prophet” on Lotte Cinema:

• Kim *jin: “I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s worse that I imagined. This is the worst movie I’m ever seen and there’s nothing good about the adaptation. Everyone from Kim Dokja, Yoo Sangah, Bihyeong are completely wrong and it’s a mess. Waste of time.”

• Jung *gi: “I’ve read the original 10 times, but I left about half way through the movie. If it’d saved a key scene from the source, I would’ve watched it all the way through, but the director made a mess of the story. I’m so disappointed after waiting years for this.”

• Yang *seung: “There was this restaurant that made pork really well, but the building owner kicked them out and kept the restaurant name. They make beef there now, but haven’t changed the name.”

On a personal note, I don’t know if it’s because Lotte doesn’t have a simple scoring system, but the reviews are significantly longer. They’re also largely negative.

Omniscient, but not Omnipotent

The general vibe is that the film falls short of the webtoon and webnovel.

And, having watched the film on opening day, I agree. The acting is solid for the most part, but the script had some major issues. Most of all, film only cost 30 billion KRW to produce and you can see it in the CG.

The big finale set piece has the main characters being lifted out of the confines of Earth and placed into the star stream while fighting a massively winged demon/angel creature.

It must’ve looked great on paper. But on the screen, I could only imagine how high the hopes of the director and producer must’ve been to attempt such a feat. But the attempt falls short and the entire endeavor feels like wishful thinking.

I wrote about “Omniscient Reader” being a major webtoon IP that could possibly elevate the medium to “Star Wars” levels. There’s still a video game adaptation not to mention an anime in the works so hope isn’t lost.

But this movie? It ain’t it.