Mousetrap

What it is about

Mousetrap (들쥐, Deuljwi — “field mouse”) is a ten-episode Netflix mystery thriller released in full on 28 August 2026. It adapts the Kakao webtoon Field Mouse by Ludovico and takes its motif from the Korean folktale 손톱 먹은 들쥐 (sontop meogeun deuljwi), in which a rat that eats someone’s clipped fingernails turns into that person — a point SPOTV News made when the title was announced. Kim Hong-sun (Voice, The Guest, Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area, Dear Hongrang) directs from a script by Lee Jae-gon (Special Affairs Team TEN). Netflix rates it 19+.

Moon-jae (Ryu Jun-yeol), a reclusive novelist who writes under a pen name, finds one day that his fingerprint is rejected, his passwords are dead and the money in his account is gone. Noja (Sul Kyung-gu), the loan shark who has been chasing him over an unpaid debt, arrives at the same moment, and the two set off together after a figure who calls himself “The Rat”. Detective Sun-yong (Lee Kyoo-hyung) is pursuing the same target.

At the press conference on 20 August 2026 Sul Kyung-gu said the script was the most entertaining he had read at the time, and added that the story has neither heroes nor supernatural powers. It is the first project the two leads have made together.

What it did after release

Because it was released on a Friday, Mousetrap’s first chart week, 24 to 30 August, held only three days — enough for fifth place on Netflix’s non-English TV list with 2 million views. Its first full week, 31 August to 6 September, brought 4.4 million views and first place, and 7 to 13 September brought 1.8 million and sixth. By Netflix’s weekly figures the three weeks total 8.2 million views.

일간스포츠 reported on 9 September that the series had reached the Top 10 in 45 countries in its second week, naming South Korea, Japan, India, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia among them, and that this was 32 countries more than in the first week.

What was written about it

Park Jin-young of 조이뉴스24 wrote in a review on 30 August 2026 that “반전과 반전의 끝에 마주한 결말은 통쾌함 없이 허무하고 아쉽다” — the ending arrived at after twist upon twist is hollow and disappointing rather than satisfying — and that the series chose to leave its ending open rather than close it.

Where to watch

Mousetrap streams worldwide on Netflix. The official trailer with English subtitles is on the Netflix K-Content YouTube channel.