Bullet Point Review: He is Psychometric
Published in
4 min readSep 30, 2019
- The latest fantasy thriller from tvN, He is Psychometric, is quick to get all the details (which usually are leveraged for suspense and tension), out of the way in the first episode itself. There is the incident — Yeongseong Apartment arson and murder case, that links our three main characters, Lee An (Got7’s Jinyoung, with a phenomenal screen presence), Yoon Jae In (an admirable Shin Ye Eun), and Kang Sung Mo (an enigmatic Kim Kwon). We are shown where they were, and what they were doing at the time the incident occurred and how it personally affected each of them. The subsequent episodes also reveal their short interactions before and after the incident.
Then, there is Lee An’s ability — when we are introduced to him, he is already performing psychometry on a corpse, and people close to him are already aware of his strange ability, so we are spared the coming-to-terms with the power, people finding out, reacting sequences. Even Jae In is quickly in on the secret. - Lee An possesses the power to see a person’s memory when he touches them. It is a product of the head injuries sustained from jumping out the building during the fire, but sadly we don’t get to know anything more than that. Why did he only gain this ability, and why not Sung Mo, who also jumped with him? Why only psychometry, why not telekinesis, or something else? Your guess is as good as mine, because writer Yang Jin A, takes the traditional route of telling us how this ability is used to solve the mystery of who caused the accident and why.
- Even so, one particular aspect is explored here which we don’t see much of in fantasy dramas, which is watching Lee An honing his abilities.
At the beginning of the show, he is a super excited, and cheerful high school student, who wants to use his ability for the greater good, in other words, become more than just a neighbourhood spiderman. His visions even though quite clear, aren’t very helpful to him, as he has no understanding of what they could represent. It was amusing to watch him try to touch various objects, device plans to stroke people unsuspectingly, and still not come up with anything helpful. Even so, Sung Mo and Jae In encourage him to better and strengthen his psychometric capabilities and help keep him grounded. - I quite liked the use of a time jump in the initial stages of the plot. Though the show balanced the tone oscillating between murder and high school pretty well, it was getting a little boring. Thankfully, the writers only used this time to establish characters, relations, the arson cases, a few other conflicts and moved on.
- The whole staying right next to each other, studying in the same school, same class cliche is generally contributed to coincidence in most dramas, but here it is a nice little set up by Sung Mo himself, to purposefully get Jae In and Lee An to meet each other. I couldn’t help chuckle when characters kept gesturing this contrived plan to fate.
- The show’s running theme is similar to the 2015 drama Hello Monster, which explored the question of whether monsters are born or made? In Hello Monster, the elder sibling is locked in the basement as a child by his own father, while the younger one is kidnapped and raised by a serial killer. The show then explored whether humanity can be still be found in such tortured beings. Similarly, He is Psychometric, discusses this question set against a relationship between a father and his son, where the former himself is a victim of an abusive childhood, yet inflicts the same pain on the latter. When the son seeks revenge, is he still a monster that his father intended to create or humane enough for feeling rage, disgust, and anger towards him?
- Much like in Just Between Lovers, the show also explores the implications of a tragic incident on an individual, and a victim’s families never stop suffering. Jae In regularly suffers from panic attacks and has to keep transferring schools and homes as to not get bullied for being the daughter of a murderer and Lee An, though a jovial character, has an ability which is a repercussion of the accident. That in itself is a constant reminder that he must carry with him every day.
- Towards the second half, the initial brightly lit settings give way to neon-lit tunnels, green-tinted hospital rooms, abandoned stations, as the plot focuses on issues of human trafficking, abusive relationships and panhandling rings. As a consequence, the steady pace of the plot seemed like it was jolted to suddenly cramp all these issues, (including its link to corruption) in just the last few episodes. The drama also begins to suffer from a very common trope (in a fantasy drama), where the protagonist's unique ability suddenly provides answers to all the problems.
- Kang Sung Mo as Lee An’s adoptive elder brother is an enigma. He is sincere, sweet and nice, but you can’t help thinking that he is hiding something, and Kim Kwon plays him wonderfully, his reactions rarely giving away anything. There is even a shot in one of the initial episodes that frames him in the foreground, with a poster of a man unfastening a mask in the background. Eun Ji Soo (Dasom of Sistar) is similarly trying to mend her father’s incompetence. Dasom is in parts satisfactory, but I never bought her as a cop and was unable to see her more than Sung Mo’s friend.
