Korean drama All of Us Are Dead (2022) Review

 

This Netflix Korean drama has an impressive size, but the survival story seems too thinly spaced across 12 episodes.

Real-time zombie outbreaks are among the most dreadful on-screen scenarios. The prospect of watching one disease grow exponentially before our eyes and tear through a population is an anxiety-inducing experience almost never pleasant to watch. In its opening episode, "All of Us are Dead," the latest Netflix drama to tackle a widespread catastrophe, shows how a school is transformed from the inside out. After one errant bite, the massive Hyosan High School complex is thrown into chaos one afternoon after an irreversible chain reaction starts.

'All of Us Are Dead' achieves its primary goal by illustrating the scope of the zombie outbreak. Director Lee JQ sets up the geography of the school well, swooping through hallways and around rooms spanning several floors. As fearful as potential viewers might expect, the opening moments of the series are as harrowing as the number of students present in any given rehearsal room, cafeteria, or lobby.

Although, as the Hyosan population gets whittled down in record time, "expectations" are a keyword looming over much of what is left of the 12-episode season. In spite of setting up and executing a disintegrating society in detail, "All of Us are Dead" picks up the zombie story playbook and follows it. It's delivered in an oddly-paced season that's as athletic as these students battle against crowds of uniformed students for attention.

Although Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young) and On-jo (Park Ji-hoo) are childhood friends, the group of people fighting the undead changes over the course of the series. The teenagers are in high school, so naturally, mutants trying to consume their flesh are merely slightly more on their minds than the crushes they have on their classmates. While trying to keep their emotions in check and their previous social standing in mind, they go through the standard trial-and-error process of figuring out what works for them to create distractions, alert doors rescue forces, and weigh the deserves of hunkering down vs. escaping.

Due to the zombies in "All of Us are Dead" being the relentless feed-at-all-cost variety, there are few options for students. " All of Us are Dead" is a game of survival for Dae-Su (I'm Jae-hyuk) and Su-hyeok (Lomon) and Nam-ra (Cho Yi-Hyun) revolving around a wheel while barely containing their feelings, while they are attempting to stick to the familiar ground of their previous relationships. Each time the series switches to a video taken from a historical archive of the virus' architect, it emphasizes that the virus is a product of human nature.

"All of Us are Dead" makes the point that, regardless of the fact it uses such a vast canvas, it is only sparingly using its storytelling tools. Using elaborate escape plans, the survivors hop from room to room. 

Yet, the creativity of these patchwork life-saving inventions is noway really reflected in the scholars themselves. Encumbering them with simple, unrequited passions and bitsy, face-position distinctions, “ All of Us are Dead” doesn’t have nearly as important to offer about these kiddies, given the expansive time the show spends with them. Torn between showing them trying to figure out how these zombies are performing, how to take care of diurnal musts, and how to deal with implicit troubles inside their own group, there’s a lot in this show that functions simply to move this group between narrative checkpoints. 

It might be one factor if “ All of Us are Dead” changed into truly looking to cellphone into the humdrum of outliving a hoard of brainless former classmates lurking around each corner. When the show’s attention shifts down from that main group, however, it always seems like a more effective use of time. A chip group of Hyosan survivors substantially made up of the lasting members of the archery platoon ( cross “ bow-and-arrow munitions' ' of the zombie story roster!) has a more distinct spread of personalities and intentions. One deep freeze tells more in many twinkles about a single soldier than we learn about the utmost of the Hyosan crew. By the time the show zooms out to bigger executive forces beyond the star and English schoolteacher, there’s almost a wordless acknowledgment that the students have been no manner going to be sufficient to preserve a whole display on their own.

Still, for as repetitious as “ All of Us are Dead” becomes, it’s at least erected on an effective foundation. The trick work and sheer quantum of logistical choreography demanded to make this a credible hellscape is emotional. Though some of the inconsistencies in zombie geste occasionally feel a little lazy from a story perspective, the overall balance between hivemind movement and randomness makes every peep out the window at the academy’s swarmed frontal field both sad and creepy. The distortion of grated branches and bites of hunks of meat (this has to be a contender for the series with the most unrestricted captioning uses of the word “ squelching”) makes this a physical, visceral experience, indeed when the show’s plot seems happy to goof. 

The story at the outbreak’s center takes up the most energy of “ All of Us are Dead,” which doesn’t leave important room for the eventual casts into how those grown-ups in charge are responding. Whenever the attention turns down from the high academy, it reinforces the idea that scale is what this show does stylish. As it becomes clearer that the scholars are far from the only ones having to deal with this inviting problem, it’s hard not to imagine what an interpretation of this show would look like if it weren’t so tethered to a single position. 

There are faint touches of a slender, more confident show that peep through. At one point, the Hyosan scholar record farewell dispatches for their families, a memorial that the kiddies whose parents don’t get their own separate stories to have a commodity to live for, too. There’s no important room for non-gloominess then, yet the occasional light-hearted distraction and badinage makes for a commodity other than the living hell unfolding just beyond the walls of each engaged room. These moments are welcome after they pop up. For a display with almost a 12-hour coping with time, however, there aren’t almost sufficient to interrupt an acquainted story’s repetitive cycle.

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