Since the success of the movie “Train to Busan”, Koreans have fallen in love with the zombie theme.
Only in the last few years, Korean zombie-themed film and television dramas have become commonplace. The driving force behind this is Netflix, the most influential streaming media at the moment.
With the support of Netflix’s good money, Korean film and television creators have begun to cultivate the theme of zombie disasters.
The ancient costume zombie disaster drama “Kingdom”, which was previously invested by Netflix, combines ancient costume palace fights with zombie disaster themes.
Last year, Netflix collaborated with the director of “The Lonely and Great God” on the series “Sweet Home”, which was adapted from a well-known horror comic. The plot combines zombie disasters, human suspense, closed spaces and other elements.
Some people call this show: “Resident Evil” + “EXIT” + “Parasyte”.
“Sweet Home” was a big success again. In addition to renewing the show’s second season, Netflix continued to follow this model to launch more zombie-themed episodes, such as “All of Us Are Dead” which just started airing this week. “.
Like “Sweet Home”, “All of Us Are Dead” is based on well-known Korean horror comics, and both are zombie disasters.
It’s just that the story background of “All of Us Are Dead” is mainly placed on a high school campus, and the whole play has a sense of sight of the high school version of “Train to Busan”.
Although not as popular as “Kingdom” and “Sweet Home”, “All of Us Are Dead” is still worth watching.
“All of Us Are Dead” is adapted from the well-known Korean webtoon “지금 우리 학교는”, created by cartoonist Joo Dong-Geun.
Related Post: “All of Us Are Dead”: Briefly analyze the three major characteristics and three major flaws of the plot!
The series tells the story of the outbreak of a zombie virus from a high school, the school has become a battlefield, close friends have turned against each other, and the trapped students must try their best to escape from their lives.
Although the original comic is a zombie disaster-themed comic, many social issues and human elements are embedded in the story.
Therefore, as early as when the movie “Train to Busan” came out, many netizens commented that “Train to Busan” was probably influenced by the style of this comic.
The drama version is directed by Jae-kyu Lee, the director who has filmed “The Fatal Encounter”. Because the plot mainly takes place on a high school campus, the actors are generally younger, including Chan-young Yoon, Ji-Hoo Park, Yi-hyun Cho, Starring Park Solomon.
It is worth mentioning that Yoo-mi Lee, an actress who became popular last year for her role in the Korean drama “Squid Game”, also appeared in this drama.
Speaking of the plot, the title of “All of Us Are Dead” has already spoiled the basic story line of the whole play: when a zombie virus suddenly broke out on a high school campus, the survival of a group of trapped high school students.
At the same time, the show is not a simple zombie horror drama. The original comics themselves are dressed in horror and horror. The core is to reflect social issues such as school bullying, juvenile violent crimes, early pregnancy of high school students, and suicide.
This drama magnifies this point, so the whole drama is quite cold and depressing.
The story begins with a school bullying incident.
In a local high school in Hyosan, South Korea, there is a dedicated middle-aged biology teacher Lee Byeong-chan.
His son also attends this high school, but he is often bullied by Yoon Gwi-nam, a delinquent youth in the school. Yoon Gwi-nam often leads several gangsters to beat and insult Teacher Li’s son.
Lee Byeong-chan’s son was timid and weak, and he didn’t dare to resist or tell his father, which led him to attempt suicide before his father found out that his son had been bullied at school.
But the headmaster of the school refused to make matters worse for his own fame, fortune and status, and instead suppressed the matter. Although the students knew about Yoon Gwi-nam’s bad behavior of bullying their classmates, they dared not speak out.
Over time, Yoon Gwi-nam intensified and became more and more lawless. A female classmate reported his bad behavior to the teacher, but Yoon Gwi-nam retaliated by taking off his clothes and making a video as a threat.
Mr. Li learned that his son had been bullied at school, but there was no way to appeal. He wants to change his son’s character, make him braver, or at least dare to resist in the face of bullying.
To this end, Mr. Li used the school’s biological laboratory to carry out secret research.
Mr. Li used to be a Ph.D. in biology who studied abroad, and he has been engaged in the research of biological cells.
Over the years, he has discovered a viral cell that can drive organisms into madness. As long as it is injected into a creature, the creature will go into a rage state when it encounters danger.
Mr. Li’s idea is very good, injecting this virus into his son’s body, thereby changing his son’s personality and giving him protection.
Unexpectedly, the side effects of this virus were too great, so Mr. Li turned his son into the first zombie.
In order to find an antidote to cure the virus, Mr. Li has been doing research in the laboratory.
Unexpectedly, one day, a female high school student accidentally entered the laboratory and was bitten by a mouse injected with the virus, causing the female high school student to mutate.
In desperation, Teacher Li imprisoned the female high school student in the laboratory, but she was discovered unexpectedly.
Teacher Li was arrested for kidnapping a female student. The mutated female high school student was sent to the infirmary for treatment, but she bit the female school doctor in the infirmary because she lost control. As a result, the virus spread instantly.
The mad female school doctor started killing people in the school, biting people when they saw them. The result can be imagined, the zombie virus quickly ravaged the campus.
Seeing that his closest classmates turned into zombies one by one, the scene was chaotic for a while, and the children who were not familiar with the world were dumbfounded.
The students who were bitten by the zombies also quickly turned into zombies, and the zombies swarmed into the classroom, the dining hall, and the playground again. The entire campus fell into chaos in an instant.
Even the virus quickly spread to the city, and even the whole city was occupied by zombies.
According to the usual way of expression in Korean film and television dramas, the bureaucrats of the Korean government at this time, in order to minimize the big things, not only gave up the rescue, but sent an army to surround the whole city, and the city of Hyosan, which was occupied by zombies, was besieged and turned into an isolated city.
The story unfolds from here. The protagonist group is a group of high school students-they want to find a way to escape the zombie-infested campus without any support.
This drama is a group drama, so the protagonists have multiple groups, led by kind-hearted high school student Lee Cheong-san and former school bully Lee Su-hyeok.
Lee Cheong-san is kind and honest. When the zombie disaster came, he led the students in the class to escape and became the backbone of the team.
Lee Su-hyeok used to be the school bully, but now he has changed his mind. He is extremely courageous, and his combat effectiveness is outstanding, which is the team’s force value.
However, Lee Cheong-san and Lee Su-hyeok are both friends and rivals.
Lee Cheong-san has a crush on his childhood sweetheart female classmate Nam On-jo, but Nam On-jo admires the handsome Lee Su-hyeok, while the school bully Lee Su-hyeok has always had a crush on the school bully female monitor. Relationships are very complicated.
When the zombie crisis occurred, Lee Cheong-san and Lee Su-hyeok took a group of students and fled into the teaching building, resisting the attack of the zombies while looking for outside help.
But in the face of disaster, sometimes it is not the zombies that are scary, but the dark side of human nature.
In the team originally formed by Lee Cheong-san and Lee Su-hyeok, there has always been an unstable factor, Lee Na-yeon, a female classmate who is keen to make things happen.
Lee Na-yeon has a selfish and narrow personality, and she will do anything to survive. And it is clear that in the face of disaster, everyone must unite as one, but when she encounters something, she will only blame others, and instead take the lead in excluding her classmates, especially Han Gyeong-su, a male classmate from poor background.
Han Gyeong-su was originally a kind and honest male classmate. In the face of disaster, he and his friend Lee Cheong-san led the classmates to escape.
However, Lee Na-yeon looked down on Han Gyeong-su, who came from a humble background, and often dismissed discrimination against each other based on his family background, and even took the lead in suspecting that Han Gyeong-su was infected by a zombie virus.
In order to prove his innocence, Han Gyeong-su locks himself in the broadcasting room by himself to prove that he does not mutate.
It turns out that Lee Na-yeon deliberately wronged Han Gyeong-su because he looked down on him. Therefore, after the truth was revealed, she was criticized by her classmates and asked her to apologize.
But this is when the most infuriating scene happened!
When the quarantined classmate Han Gyeong-su proved not to be infected, Lee Na-yeon used a handkerchief with the blood of the infected person to stick to Han Gyeong-su’s wound in a frenzy in the face of accusations from others. Forcibly turned a healthy him into a zombie.
And Lee Na-yeon did this just to get revenge on him, thinking that Han Gyeong-su caused himself to be blamed and humiliated by his classmates.
In addition to Lee Na-yeon, the other villain of the show is the bad youth Yoon Gwi-nam.
Compared to Lee Na-yeon’s selfish and vicious personality, Yoon Gwi-nam, a bad boy, is a blatant pervert.
Before the zombie crisis came, he did all kinds of evil in the school, bullying weak students, but the principal helped him cover for his status.
As a result, after the zombie crisis broke out, the principal became the ghost of Yoon Gwi-nam’s sword.
But the most terrifying thing about this character is that he turned into a more terrifying monster because he was infected with a zombie virus.
According to the settings in this play, the zombie virus developed by Mr. Li will have the ability to learn and evolve by itself. Therefore, some infected people who have great anger themselves will merge with the virus.
Just like Yoon Gwi-nam, although he was infected by the zombie virus, he did not mutate completely and became a half-human, half-corpse monster.
Because of the help of the zombie virus, he obtained the ability of immortality, but he was vicious and evil, and the zombie virus further contributed to his inner evil thoughts.
Therefore, in a school full of zombies, it has become a “paradise” for monsters like Yoon Gwi-nam.
This is where the story goes.
On the campus of Xiaoshan High School, there are zombie monsters madly raging outside, and human desires are intriguing.
The protagonist must not only fight to the death with zombies, but also face the complex and treacherous dark side of human nature…
The creative idea of this “All of Us Are Dead” is obviously closer to the previous “Sweet Home” produced by Netflix. It takes the zombie disaster as the core of the genre, and at its core is the social criticism and human reflection that are commonly used in Korean commercial films.
In this play, the source of the disaster is school bullying, but it is the indifference of adults headed by the school principal that fuels the evil behavior of school bullying.
With the generous blessing of Netflix, “All of Us Are Dead” has excellent audio-visual effects. The special effects makeup of zombies and the scenes of zombie tide can feel the shock and fear across the screen.
However, “All of Us Are Dead” isn’t perfect, and it certainly has its flaws.
For example: the plot is cliché, the story is almost lacking in the story, the plot twists are lacking in new ideas, the characters are not likable enough, and the relationship between the bloody characters in polyamorous love is very negative.
And the rhythm in the later stage is a bit procrastinated. There is really no need to drag the story of a season to 12 episodes. Many side characters can actually be skipped.
Overall, the show isn’t quite as well-produced as “Kingdom,” and it’s not nearly as exciting as “Sweet Home.”
But as a frightening drama, “All of Us Are Dead” is still worth watching for zombie fans!
Related Post: “All of Us Are Dead” IMDb is only 7.7 points, it’s a pity that this Netflix zombie drama was broadcast at the beginning of the year.
