Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Abyss’ On Netflix, A Korean Mystery Drama Where An Orb Revives Two Friends From The Dead

Wouldn’t you love to have the power to bring loved ones back to life? But what happens if you bring them back to life, but they look completely different? Would you even know that they were back from the dead? That’s the launching point of Netflix’s latest Korean drama, Abyss. Read on for more….

ABYSS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man in expensive clothes stands on the ledge of a tall building, guzzling booze and looking to jump. His fiancee just dumped him, saying she couldn’t stand to look at his “ugly face” anymore.

The Gist: Cha Min (An Se-ha) is the man on that roof. He’s a good guy, from a prominent family, but he’s relatively short and unattractive, and definitely not a physical match for his ex-fiancee Jang Hee-jin (Han So-hee). He’s about to rethink jumping when a breeze blows him off, leaving him hanging by his fingertips. He calls his friend, Go Se-yeon (Kim Sa-rang), who set him up with Hee-jin, ostensibly to get him to stop crushing on her, which he has since they were kids.

Just as he’s about to plummet, he’s caught by a mysterious wave and deposited in a field. He’s dead, and his soul starts to float above him. Then the wave lands, becoming aliens in human (and canine form). They use an orb called the Abyss to bring Cha Min back to life. But when he comes back, he looks different; he’s taller, more chiseled and has a new, more handsome face (Ahn Yo-seop). He goes to find Se-yeon, but she doesn’t recognize him. She does however, become immediately attracted to him.

Se-yeon is a prosecutor who is investigating a serial killer case, taking over the case from her colleague and friend Seo Ji-wook (Kwon Soo-hyun), who is afraid that Se-yeon is going to be in danger, either from the killer him/herself or from the parents of distraught victims who want to see the killer caught. Se-yeon, though, feels she’s onto something; she sees the same sutures on the last victim that she sees in the office of prominent surgeon Oh Young-cheol (Lee Sung-jae).

After a night of drinking, she goes home, but Cha Min has to talk to her about his new identity. He gets her energy drinks, inadvertently revives a dead vagrant with the Abyss, then waits outside her apartment. When the light goes off, he goes home, where is mother and aunt wonder who he is.

The next morning, Se-yeon is found brutally murdered, and Cha Min is being tracked as a person of interest. The police follow Min as he uses his credit card, but since he doesn’t look like his old self, he keeps evading them.

He goes to the funeral parlor to mourn his friend, and uses the Abyss to try to try to revive her. He leaves, thinking it didn’t work. But Se-yeon does wake up, and the beautiful prosecutor now has an equally beautiful, but different, face (Park Bo-young). She encounters Min, but he doesn’t recognize her at first. Then she runs and sobs when she sees her funeral procession, her father (Ha Sung-kwan) shoving her aside because he thinks she’s a stranger. Min grabs her and tells her who she is and what happened; he shows her the Abyss, that says “An Abyss Revives The Dead In The Form Of Its Soul.”

Our Take: Abyss, like most Korean dramas, plays like three different shows. We have a bit of light comedy in the form of the odd relationship between Min and Se-yeon, where she essentially scoffs at his every call. But, of course, when the revived Min shows up in her life, Se-yeon and everyone around her, male and female, swoon. When she tries to get him a dry shirt after their encounter, he tries to cover himself up with a protest placard; when the person holding the placard grabs it, Min’s shirt opens to reveal his chiseled chest. Even the placard’s owner swoons.

We also have a little science fiction in the form of the aliens who use the Abyss to revive Min, and of course he uses it without the faintest clue as to what it does or how it works, despite the aliens leaving him a manual. But the show isn’t as sci fi as you might think, as the Abyss is used sparingly in the first episode, just to show what it can do, and — somewhat predictably — for Min to revive the love of his life, Se-yeon.

But, at the heart of things, Abyss is a murder mystery, as we know the subsequent episodes (dropping every Monday on Netflix) will have Min and Se-yeon investigating her murder, somewhat undercover, since they both now look like different people. It’s an intriguing premise, one that promises to have a lot of story ideas, especially as Se-yeon tries to convince people like her beloved father or her colleague Ji-wook that she is who she is.

Sex and Skin: Besides seeing Min’s nipple, nothing.

Parting Shot: After Cha Min shows Se-yeon the Abyss, he goes, “You’re Se-yeon.” She goes “Who are you? A ghost? Or the Grim Reaper or something?” Cha Min replies, “It’s me. Cha Min.”

Sleeper Star: We like that the Abyss explains itself, in Korean, no less. Very friendly and convenient, no?

Most Pilot-y Line: A convenience store clerk says “He’s crazy handsome” after Cha Min buys the energy frinks for Se-yeon.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The show’s name, Abyss, sounds more like the name of a dark sci fi adventure than a light mystery drama, but once you get past the name, the show is entertaining, albeit somewhat predictable.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Abyss on Netflix