The chase is on for a killer with a smile in spine-tingling Voice teasers

Thursday, January 12, 2017

The January 14 premiere date is fast approaching for OCN’s new thriller Voice, and two bone-chilling teasers have been released, one of which is five minutes long and serves as a proper introduction to the characters at play and the harrowing stories ahead. Lee Hana (Unkind Women) plays a voice profiler named Kang Kwon-joo, whose unique ability to identify sounds allows her to pinpoint the location of victims in danger. She works at the emergency call center where she assembles the “golden time team” to swiftly rescue endangered individuals within the golden time of three minutes, which can determine their life or death.

Jang Hyuk (Beautiful Mind) stars as Moo Jin-hyuk, a volatile ex-violent crimes detective who’s never been the same after his wife was murdered by a serial killer, the same one who took the life of Lee Hana’s father and has yet to be caught. Together, the unlikely pair use their strengths to save innocent lives and bring criminals to justice. Yesung (Awl), Baek Sung-hyun (Doctors), and Sohn Eun-seo (Bring it On, Ghost) costar as members of the golden time team.

Warning: The five-minute teaser is a disturbing watch. On a snowy evening, a battered woman staggers on barefoot through dark alleyways, as a hooded figure stalks her from a distance. Meanwhile, Jang Hyuk’s fending off a group of thugs on a dock when one of them pulls a knife on him. We see the menacing cheshire grin of the hooded figure before he knocks the woman from earlier to the ground and bludgeons her to death with a kettlebell. We cut to Jang Hyuk at her funeral; the victim was his wife. His colleague Baek Sung-hyun is there, too, and a grief-stricken Jang Hyuk declares that the murderer must be locked up forever: “If by chance he gets out, then I’m going to kill that guy. Understand?”

We see Lee Hana at the funeral of her cop father whose death she wasn’t able to prevent while working at the call center. She’s still in mourning when she contends in court that her father’s convicted murderer was not the voice she heard that night. Jang Hyuk gets up from the back and hollers at her to stop lying before being forcibly removed. Three years following the serial murder case, Lee Hana gets the okay from her boss to form her “golden time” rescue team and recruits Sohn Eun-seo, who can speak five languages, and Yesung, an eager do-gooder. Jang Hyuk goes ballistic on a criminal at the police station and sarcastically thanks Lee Hana for wanting to hire him as leader of her team before demanding to know why she said she heard something she didn’t hear three years ago.

Meanwhile, a young girl follows a shady man and contacts the call center to save her; she’s been kidnapped, a “code zero,” and Lee Hana and her associates get to work. She guides Jang Hyuk to the kidnapping victim’s possible location and concludes that the kidnapper is likely a serial killer and proceeds to hone in on a sound she can’t readily place. As the kidnapper raises a bloody hammer to kill his victim, Jang Hyuk arrives in the nick of time thanks to Lee Hana’s deductions, and the girl frantically escapes. Back at the call center, Lee Hana addresses her boss: “The purpose and duty of our golden time team is to save the victim while (s)he is still alive.” At the end, Jang Hyuk realizes that sound played an important factor, just like it did three years ago.

In the thirty-second teaser, the copy reads, “The first ever sound-chasing thriller is beginning. Criminal golden time of three minutes. Save the victim standing at the crossroads of life and death.” *shudder* I’ll probably be watching Voice through my fingers and praying that there won’t be too much gratuitous violence. There’s only so much my heart and eyes can take!

Voice will air on Saturdays and Sundays on OCN, and premieres this Saturday, January 14.