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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Hello Monster" Episode 1

Hyeon (played by Seo In-guk) is a strange man who investigates unusual events just for the fun of it, and likes to mess around with people without ever changing his eerily vacant expression. Ji-an (played by Jang Nara) is a perky detective who is easily provoked by actions obviously intended to stupefy her. Together they...don't actually fight crime just yet. After a rather peculiar opener most of the runtime is dedicated to Hyeon's backstory.

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And as befits Hyeon's character, his backstory is just as unsettling and just plain weird as the modern day Hyeon. Little Hyeon (played by Hong Hyun-taek) is extremely precocious, to the point of being a little disconcerting. Most kids do stuff like, well, play. Little Hyeon instead performs tasks that are obviously physically impossible, and doesn't even seem to appreciate just how unusual he is. But that impression changes when little Hyeon meets Joon-yeong (played by Do Kyung-soo).

"Hello Monster" appears to be going for a theme of whether or not supervillainy is something that can be genetically and psychologically predicted. What makes the drama unusual is that the romantic comedy mystery genre turns the rather nihilistic assumptions of this question upside down. Can Hyeon really be secretly evil when we all know the whole point of the drama is for him to get together with Ji-an?

The production team seems determined to make this as muddled a question as possible. I don't know what's going on with the music. Try as I might I can't think of any genre where that kind of strange, mildly upbeat, rather mysterious, occasionally cornball and equal parts ominous music could possibly be appropriate. Consequently I watched this episode with my head mostly askew, completely at a loss as to where this story was supposed to be going.

That's a good feeling to have, just to be clear. While "Hello Monster" is rather front-ended with the backstory, we're given so much information about Hyeon here that one fact is very clear. We know pretty much nothing about Hyeon, and that isn't likely to change any time soon. So when Ji-an ruminates over what kind of person Hyeon really is, completely unable to come up with any kind of satisfying answer...well, I'm right there with her, even though I have access to way more information than she does. It's still too early to make any definitive statement about "Hello Monster", but for now I'm cautiously optimistic.

Review by William Schwartz

"Hello Monster" is directed by Kim Jin-won-I and No Sang-hoon, written by Kwon Ki-yeong and features Seo In-guk, Jang Nara, Choi Won-young, Lee Chun-hee, Park Bo-gum, Min Sung-wook and more.

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