Inside the Nightmare of Netflix’s First Young Adult Horror K-Drama ‘If Wishes Could Kill’

Unless you’re just a fan of genuinely good K-dramas, you might want to skip the “rosy,” “fluffy” high school campus vibes for this one. 

If Wishes Could Kill moves beyond love triangles and the second-lead syndrome to deliver something really dark: Netflix’s first-ever Korean young adult horror series. Set in a hyper-digital world where every wish can turn into a nightmare, this eight-episode drama from CJ ENM Studios and Kairos Makers is as chaotic and unfiltered as it is unsettling — blending the psychological depth of classic K-horror with the modern anxieties of our online lives. Scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2026, the show is a chilling reminder to be careful what you wish for in a world that’s always and often dangerously connected.

The plot follows a group of high school students at Seorin High who abruptly find themselves at the mercy of a mysterious app called Girigo, where you can upload a video of your deepest wish and wait for it to come true. Sounds like a dream for a stressed-out teenager, except for the fact that the terms and conditions on this app are written in blood. It turns out that every wish granted triggers a literal countdown to death for the user. And what starts as a shortcut to popularity or victory quickly spirals into a desperate do-or-die situation, with the students facing off against the supernatural. It is, in fact, a technologically powered curse that turns their own ambitions against them.

The cast of up-and-coming actors includes Jeon So-young as Se-ah, a star athlete who becomes a target after she begins to chase the app’s dark secrets, while Kang Mi-na has Na-ri plays the popular girl whose mistrust of the app puts her at greater risk. There’s also Baek Sun-ho’s Geon-woo, Se-ah’s lover, who witnesses their world crumble as her obsession with the curse grows, while Hyun Woo-seok’s Ha-joon, the group’s tech genius, tries every hack possible to stay alive.

This horror K-drama is a welcome change of pace, moving away from the usual zombie tropes and survival games we’ve seen so much of on Netflix. Even though the school backdrop naturally brings All of Us Are Dead to mind, If Wishes Could Kill trades in the virus-driven action for something much more psychological and supernatural. It replaces the frantic escape from a zombie apocalypse with the internal tension of a fatal risk tied to one’s own desires.

Directed by Park Youn-seo, the show is as much about the intensity of growing up as it is about visceral scares, told through Park’s beautiful, character-focused storytelling style, reminiscent of the superhit superhero action drama Moving (2023). To put it simply, If Wishes Could Kill highlights the intense pressures a generation addicted to their phone screens lives with every day, telling its story through a cursed app. It’s just the thing to freak you out and give you food for thought at the same time.