Director: Sang-ho Yeon
Cast: Seung-ryong Ryu, Shim Eun-kyung, Jeong Min Park

Although many of us here in the western part of the world have, when you think about it carefully, lives that are extremely satisfying and more fortunate than millions of other people in the world, it's interesting to consider the fact that a great deal of us westerns don't consider themselves satisfied with their lives. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and also once you have some sort of taste of power or fortune, there's a part of you that wants to have more and more. It could be considered some kind of addiction, albeit a different one than drug addicts have. For example, there are many people who when seeing their favorite actors or actresses in a movie or in the journalism field, wish that they themselves could have such a great status. Another way many people wish were better with in their lives would be to be in possession of great wealth and assets. No wonder - I once read an article that stated that eighty percent of American adults are in debt, and over sixty percent of American adults are living paycheck to paycheck. To have much wealth and possessions at your disposal would take you away from the depression coming from financial problems, and make you feel powerful. There is one particular kind of "What if I were..." that I am very confident has passed through the minds of practically everyone for well over half a century, and that is to have special abilities that individually or together would make one be labelled as a superhero. I admit that this particular thought has gone through my mind many times, and for good reason. One reason is that for well over half a century, having the ability of being labelled a superhero would more likely than not give the individual coolness, as well as respect from his or her peers.

That sounds all well and good at first glance, especially when you consider things like superhero movies in this day and age being insanely popular with the world public. But hang on a minute - I want to point out that for many people, having superpowers would do little to nothing to make them feel that their lives have improved. That may sound hard to believe, so I have decided to bring my life in focus to show that if I were possessed with great powers, it wouldn't make much difference, if any at all. For example, say I was sudden possessed with great strength. Well, it would be easier for me to open jars of pasta sauce for sure, but apart from that, I can't see how my life would be improved. My current lifestyle demands almost nothing regarding physical strength. How about the ability to fly? I admit that there may be some initial thrill, but if anybody in the public was able to see me fly, I would soon be bombarded with the kind of publicity that I simply wouldn't like getting. Finding somewhere that could fly without anyone seeing me would be extremely difficult. As well, there aren't that many places that I desire to fly to. Then there's the ability to be extremely speedy, like The Flash. Although nobody would be able to see me racing down the streets, they would definitely feel the turbulence that I would generate, and it wouldn't take long to track me down. And in my private life in my apartment, there are very few tasks that I would want to do quickly, and I wouldn't want to risk damaging my possessions like my computer keyboard. Then there is the ability of being able to fire lasers from my eyes. Try as much as I can to think about, I can't think of any reason in my life where having that ability would be helpful for me.

So unless I had a kind of vigilante attitude, like practically every comic book superhero has, I think that superpowers in general would be wasted on me - I would either not want to use them, or I would simply find no use for them in my kind of ordinary life. As you can see, someone who has some kind of great ambition or resolve would most likely find them useful. Superman has that, for example, but to tell the truth, I find him a pretty boring character despite his powers. He doesn't have to struggle too hard to get through his obstacles, unless it's flying through multiple floating rings above Metropolis (let me know if you get that reference.) I prefer superheroes that despite their powers, still have to struggle to reach their ambitions and resolves. That's why I have always had somewhat of a fondness for Spider-Man. He has superpowers, but more often than not his personal life is in a mess, and even he has trouble at times using his powers to improve his personal life. When I learned about the Korean movie Psychokinesis - which concerned a sad sack of a man suddenly getting superpowers - I had a lot more desire to see it than whatever new Marvel movie is being released in the near future. The character with superpowers in the movie is a Korean man named Seok-heon (Seung-ryong Ryu, Extreme Job), a lowly, unreliable, and occasionally questionably motivated man who scrapes by being a security guard. He is estranged from his ex-wife and his adult daughter Roo-mi (Shim Eun-kyung, Train To Busan), who run a fried chicken restaurant in a neighborhood of the city that is under redevelopment by the Taesan construction firm. The go-to fellow of Taesan, a man named Min (Min-Jae Kim, My Sassy Girl) is desperate to kick the residents out of the neighborhood so that construction can start post-haste, and employs thugs to use violent methods to drive the residents out. During one of these violent encounters, Roo-mi's mother is accidently killed. At the funeral, Seok-heon tries to reconnect with Roo-mi, but she still resents him for abandoning her and her mother. But a meteor that earlier fell on Korea put an unidentified substance in the drinking water, and Seok-heon unknowingly drinks the water. In short notice, Seok-heon discovers he now has great mental powers that enable him to manipulate objects, people, and himself to great effect. It would seem that now he also has the power to quickly fix the estrangement with his daughter as well as speedily quash the threat of Min... but that's not what happens.

The fact that in the previous paragraph I illustrated that Psychokinesis is set in Korea with Korean characters almost certainly (and sadly) has immediately made some of my readers instantly put up a defense. Why, they are saying, foreign movies are cheap and boring, and you can't relate to them easily like good old Hollywood movies! So I feel I have to put in this review evidence that this foreign movie way surpasses those low expectations by those particular reasons. For starters, the movie looks great. While my report that the photography and lighting in Psychokinesis are extremely professional may not be a game changer, the fact that the special effect sequences are excellent may be a surprise. The effects, ranging from various items floating in the air to cars being crushed to bits, are just as good as in Hollywood films. The F/X team in this movie went to the trouble to add many little touches, like little bits of ash coming off of an ashtray that Seok-heon lifts in the air with his powers. Yes, sometimes a CGI thread or two shows on the screen, but isn't that also found with almost all Hollywood movies that use CGI, often even more so? While some of those closed-off readers may begrudgingly may accept the special effects, they may then object to the fact that there aren't quite as many displays of special effects as in your typical big budget Hollywood movie. There are special effects spread out during Psychokinesis, though it must be admitted that the bulk of the total effects are brought out in the lengthy climax of the movie. But that is a good thing in my opinion, because the movie never suffers from overkill in the special effects arena. We may have to wait for some time for the special effects to make a reappearance, but when they do appear, you see that they are really needed for the sequence and are in no way gratuitous.

Usually, the special effects only come out during one of the action sequences, and it's like icing on the cake, because the cake - the action itself - is also very well done. Writer/director Sang-ho Yeon (Train To Busan) certainly makes the action sequences themselves exciting - the flying sequences are thrilling, the combat sequences have a high brutality factor, and so on - but he is careful to put a human element into the action that I think any viewer from any country will appreciate. Just before there is a moment when Seok-heon is called into action, there will be something that happens that provokes the viewer to having strong feelings like outrage about what is happening to the characters. When the action then starts bubbling, we have an emotional investment, and we desperately want to see a good outcome to the action that commences. That gets us swept up in the action, and we are definitely excited and moved. But another reason why the action works is another human element - the movie's characters. The characters in this movie are more memorable than you usually get in superhero movies. The villains in the movie, the aforementioned Min as well as his superior Hoon (Yu-mi Jung, Train To Busan), are in part because of the actors playing them (as well as some sharp writing) really slimy characters that you will just love to hate, without them ever crossing the line and becoming comic buffoons. Roo-mi, Seok-heon's estranged daughter, also is memorable, in her case being that she is more complex than you might think. We do see clearly why she doesn't want anything to do with her father, but there are scenes where you can tell that deep down, she hopes something may happen that may repair the connection with her father. However, circumstances and bad thoughts of the past often get in the way of that happening, and you understand why even when she knows for sure her father has superhero powers and is trying to help, she is reluctant to warm up.

The most interesting character in Psychokinesis is, of course, reluctant superhero Seok-heon himself. One thing that is especially interesting about him is that like Roo-mi, it takes us some time to warm up to him. He's initially selfish and uncaring to those around him, and when he finds he has new powers he can control, his first action is to use them for personal gain. He does start being portrayed in a more positive light as the movie progresses, one reason being that when he does start doing good with his powers, he still has to struggle. Not just the expected with controlling his powers, but also with the fact that it eventually becomes clear that the evil he is trying to battle may be too much for him despite his great powers. The script injects a strong undercurrent about modern Korean society, or just about any other society for that matter. "Everyone sides with money", one character says at one point, and later it is brought up that most people can only choose to be either a criminal or a slave. Also, it's shown several times that the rich with their power can (believably) manipulate politicians, the media, the police, and even ordinary people. Plus, it is brought up that the guilty aren't always punished. It leads to an ending that is kind of bittersweet, but in a way that doesn't feel false or contrived. However, as insightful as the screenplay to Psychokinesis is to its characters and its political feelings, it does stumble a few times when it comes to basic storytelling. There are a lot of glaring unanswered questions in the movie, not just why nobody else get affected by the contaminated drinking water. Most of these unanswered questions are confined to the last scene, when after the climax we are expected to swallow the fact that characters were totally out of the loop with others and various subsequent events for a really long time, as well as that Seok-heon's abilities are apparently not the least bit of interest to the medical community or The Powers That Be. However, if you can look past such glaring questions, you should enjoy Psychokinesis a great deal, and find it definitely above average when it comes to the superhero film genre.

(Posted January 3, 2026)