Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Move To Heaven’ On Netflix, About A Young Man On The Spectrum Who Runs A Trauma Cleaning Business With His Uncle

Do you know what a “trauma cleaner” is? It’s a company that comes in after someone dies, collects and disposes of their belongings, and cleans and deodorizes the space. A South Korean essay by someone who worked as one of these “trauma cleaners” sparked the idea for the unique series Move To Heaven, which layers in autism and family tension along with the spiritual business of cleaning up after the dead.

MOVE TO HEAVEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A young intern enters a darkened factory to inspect a broken piece of machinery. When the machinery starts accidentally, his leg is trapped beneath it. He manages to get himself free, limps back to his dormitory, and plops into bed.

The Gist: We first see Han Geu-ru (Tang Jun-sang) at an aquarium, studying the aquatic life in the tank and telling an employee all of the little details he sees that may need attention. Geu-ru has ASD, likely Asperger’s syndrome. He has amazing attention to detail and his observational skills are top notch. His best friend, Na Moo (Hong Seung-hee), who works there, loves how his brain works.

Gen-ru lives with his father Jeong-u (Jin-hee Ji), who cooks him fried eggs the same way for every meal. Jeong-u suggests that maybe it’s time for Gen-ru to fry his own eggs, in case he’s not around. When Gen-ru dashes to the kitchen to start learning, they get a call. An intern has died in his dormitory room.

The two of them operate a business called Move To Heaven. They’re “trauma cleaners,” who go to the scene where a person has died, collects and throws away most of their possessions and cleans and deodorizes the room. But, because they have the utmost respect for those who just died, they collect the most precocious belongings in yellow boxes so they can be returned to the deceased’s families. They try to construct a story about the person’s lives from what they find.

At the dorm, they see he has a family, eats spicy ramen and goes to a convenience store every day to buy a sandwich. He keeps all the receipts. At first, they think it’s because he can’t afford any better. Fabric refresher told them he doesn’t like strong smells. But Jeong-u sees a girl at the register of the convenience store and realizes that’s why the guy went there every day and spritzed himself with the refresher.

They track down the young man’s parents at the hospital, where the funeral is being held. There, a rep from the company the guy worked for is trying to pay them off and not claim responsibility. The young man’s cell phone reveals more culpability than that. Realizing the parents are deaf, he intervenes and lets the young man’s mother tell them how reprehensible their actions are.

On the way out, Jeong-u tells Gen-ru he can look at the fish tank while he goes to the lawyer to sign some contracts. But on the way out of the lawyer’s office, he suffers a massive heart attack. Gen-ru waits as long as he can, then remembers he has a driver’s license. His panicked search for his dad goes all sorts of wrong, and Na Moo finds him in the middle of a bridge, stopped by police. She tells him the devastating news.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Move To Heaven is in a lot of ways a procedural, with the trauma cleaning company facing new cases every episode. It’s very spiritual in nature, reminding us of Touched By An Angel in a bunch of ways, with the character’s ASD reminding us of The Good Doctor (which was based on a Korean series, by the way).

Our Take: Directed by Kim Sung-ho and written by Yoon Ji-ryeon, Move To Heaven is equally about how Gen-ru copes with his father’s death — and the fact that his estranged uncle, Sang-gu (Lee Je-hoon), takes over the business — as it is about all of the stories people leave behind when they die. It’s based on an essay about a trauma cleaner, and the scenes where Gen-ru and his father clean up the dorm, constructing the intern’s story as they go through his stuff were fascinating to watch.

The show is definitely more spiritual and emotional than the average K-drama, and in construction it feels more like a Netflix series made for Korea than a Korean show licensed to Netflix (no dramatic music cues, no montage of stills reviewing the episode at the end, that kind of thing). It just has that pacing and those beats. And it’s better served because of it; the pace is deliberate but no time is wasted in the first episode, and the story is surprisingly moving, both from the perspective of Gen-ru’s relationship with his father and the case they take on of the factory intern.

We were especially sad when we realized the relationship between Gen-ru and his father would be severed in the first episode. We saw it coming, of course; when Jeong-u left Gen-ru at the hospital to see the lawyer, we knew he wouldn’t be coming back. But that relationship felt like a good through-line to tie the different cases they work on together.

But, judging by the little we’ve seen of Sang-gu, that dynamic will be interesting, too. Gen-ru likes things ordered and organized, and it seems that Sang-gu is anything but. As Gen-ru teaches Sang-gu the business, will Sang-gu teach Gen-ru to open himself up to life a little bit?

Tang Jun-sang is not autistic (in fact he looked at the original Good Doctor to help prepare him for this role); we’ve seen him in the very popular Crash Landing On You. The fact that he isn’t autistic may rankle some people, but even those people can see that his performance as Gen-ru is authentic. It’s tough to convey an inability to show emotion even as you’re feeling it, and Tang does a fine job with such a tough task.

The hope here is that the remaining 9 episodes in this first season show the tough relationship between Gen-ru and his uncle and how that translates to such a unique business.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Gen-ru and Na Moo find Sang-gu sitting in Gen-ru’s living room lighting up a cigarette. “As of today, this house belongs to me,” he says. It’s obvious that Jeong-u knew something was coming health-wise, did the papers he signed give the house and business over to his ex-con brother?

Sleeper Star: Hong Seung-hee plays Na Moo as your typically peppy Korean young woman, but she’s also a good contrast to Gen-ru’s lack of emoting. As his best friend, she’ll likely serve as a good ballast to him (the Penny to his Sheldon, as it were).

Most Pilot-y Line: The cackling middle manager from the intern’s company was a bit over the top, and it didn’t seem like the story got a conclusion that was any better than the mom getting to tell them off, but there was a lot of ground to cover in that first episode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Move To Heaven is not just about a unique profession, but it treats the dead and those with ASD with the utmost respect.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Move To Heaven On Netflix