If Wishes Could Kill is being billed as Netflix’ first Korean YA horror series, and its bloody conceit is interesting: Users of an app that grants wishes end up being violently killed 24 hours after the wish is granted.

IF WISHES COULD KILL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: In a darkened room, a girl in a school uniform scrapes her name and birthdate on a wall. Then she records a video on her phone: “I truly wish every one of you would drop dead.” Then she cuts her throat open and collapses.

The Gist:  We then see Yoo Se-ah (Jeon So-young), getting up and getting ready for another day at Seorin High School. She waits at the elevator of her building for her upstairs neighbor Kim Geon-woo (Baek Sun-ho), who runs down minutes after literally falling out of bed. Se-ah kisses Geon-woo, and he likes it; it’s the first indication that they are into each other.

Another classmate who has a crush on Geon-woo is Lim Na-ri (Kang Mi-na); on their way into school, Choi Hyeon-wook (Lee Hyo-je), who likes to be goofy, susses out that crush, annoying the hell out of Na-ri. In their homeroom, Hyeon-wook asks the smartest kid in the class, Kang Ha-joon (Hyun Woo-seok), to fix his laptop again.

When the scores for a recent math test are announced, everyone is shocked when Hyeon-wook gets a perfect score — including Hyeon-wook. During lunch, he tells his friends about a secret app he got called Girigo, where you write your name and birthdate, hold it up to the phone’s camera, and make a wish. He’s just shocked that it came true. The other four friends all dismiss the app as another silly scheme by Hyeon-wook. When a 24-hour countdown clock appears on Hyeon-wook’s phone, he dismisses it.

Over those 24 hours, Hyeon-wook’s behavior changes, and he gets a call from Se-ah which plays audio of his friends basically being cruel to him. In the meantime, Se-ah finds out she’s going to be on the national youth track team, which means weekend practices. As she has dinner with Geon-woo, he uses the Girigo app to wish for her practice to be canceled so they can spend time together. What happens the next day in class, though, as the countdown clock on Hyeon-wook’s phone approaches zero, changes things.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Written by Park Joong-seop, If Wishes Could Kill has a similar vibe to another Korean YA horror series, Girl From Nowhere. It also kind of feels like a cross between J-horror mainstays Death Note and Ringu (aka The Ring).

Our Take: If the first episode is any indication, If Wishes Could Kill is more interested in the relationships among this group of friends than actual blood. Sure, there is blood at some point in the first episode, but the relationships and general high school goings-on get a whole lot more story weight.

What that tells us is that there is not going to be a huge body count on this series, which is fine if the threat that one of the core friend group is going to die is there. We already know that Geon-woo has used Girigo, to make a relatively minor wish. And it feels like Se-ah is going to lead the charge to find out more about Girigo, why it’s cursed and where it came from.

Another indication that the show is going to dive into the curse behind the app is a scene with as Ha Sal (Jeon So-nee), a shaman who announces to her partner Bang Ul (Roh Jae-won) that someone is coming to visit. It feels random, but there’s a purpose to the scene, as was the cold open showing a student killing herself. The birth date she scrawled on the wall was in 2005, but she was in a high school uniform. So that means that the app has been floating around for a few years, leaving dead students in its wake.

All that being said, though, the friend group that’s going to look into this app has good chemistry, and it’ll be fun and scary to see them race against time to help whichever member of the group that comes under the app’s spell.

Performance Worth Watching: Jeon So-young’s character Yoo Se-ah will be leading the friend group, as we mentioned, and she’s probably the character we know the most about by the end of the first episode.

Sex And Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Se-ah witnesses what happens when the timer runs out on Hyeon-wook’s phone.

Sleeper Star: We know the least about Hyun Woo-seok’s character, Kang Ha-joon, other than the fact that he’s wicked smart. But there are aspects of his family that will help the friends figure out where this app came from.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s a scene with an annoying fake-out jump scare that we won’t give details about, but really didn’t like after it happened.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We get the feeling that If Wishes Could Kill is going to have a relatively low body count, which is OK if there is tension throughout the season and the teens at the show’s center get some interesting character turns.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.