‘All of Us Are Dead’ review: Netflix’s new K-drama reinvents old school zombie genre

What would occur in case your college was attacked by zombies? Netflix’s newest hit Ok-drama, All of Us Are Useless, makes an attempt to offer us a strong reply to this query, as Hyosan Excessive Faculty turns right into a fast-sinking ship when a science experiment gone terribly flawed ends in a virus-induced zombie outbreak.

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For a couple of years now, South Korean leisure has been pushing the narrative boundaries of the zombie style. They’ve deftly used it as a automobile to discover not simply present-day political and social points (#Alive, 2020), however have additionally inserted the undead of their interval dramas (Kingdom, 2019).

Nonetheless, what makes All of Us Are Useless stand out amidst this rising checklist of Ok-Zombie content material are the central protagonists within the sequence. The motley crew of survivors will not be your gun-slinging, machete-wielding, adept zombie-killing protagonists, these are youngsters who fairly actually need to seize the thing nearest to them and rapidly vogue a weapon out of it.

That is additionally the place the present finds its sparingly lighter moments. Pals dole out recommendation on coping with highschool crushes as bloody zombies snarl within the background (!) However past these interactions, the sequence takes an enormous departure from the normal route of protecting a zombie apocalypse setting considerably comically chaotic. As a substitute, administrators Lee JQ and Kim Nam-su select to not shrink back from tackling the emotional weight of dying and mayhem.

One of the best instance of that is seen when the present offers with the zombification or “turning” of people. A shot often reserved to fulfil the horror quota is turned on its head to play out poignantly heartbreaking scenes. Instead of a hastened transformation, we get a drawn-out course of, by which the horror stems from the now-undead zombie reconciling with the lack of their humanity, typically proper in entrance of their classmates.

The administrators don’t whiplash the viewers again into zombie-infested actuality; as a substitute we sit with the scholars in numbing grief as they lose their pals, classmates and lecturers, over and over. The heavy storyline doesn’t really feel misplaced, as author Chun Sung-il richly fleshes out these teen characters to hold ahead the complicated story.

Nam On-jo (Park Ji-hu) serves as a story protagonist who bands collectively along with her childhood pal Lee Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young), her crush Lee Su-hyeok (Park Solomon), and the aloof overachieving class President Choi Nam-ra (Cho Yi-hyun) amongst different classmates to battle zombies and college bullies alike.

Director Lee JQ’s option to forged actors “unfamiliar to the viewers” pays off masterfully.

The makers additionally be certain that the layered storytelling doesn’t come at the price of high-adrenaline motion scenes, bounce scares and well-executed VFX gore. Mirroring the title sequence, the administrators slowly descend the viewers right into a zombie-filled actuality, and the sequence conveys the identical visually. What begins off as a brightly-lit, vividly vibrant college, finally transforms right into a nauseatingly boring place with the color saturation dialed again, because the virus spreads.

When required, the filmmakers additionally immerse us into the zombie expertise. The cinematography in the course of the zombie-human confrontation scenes strikes quick, by no means fairly fixating on a single character, which makes for fairly unsettling viewing. It’s havoc heightened for the scholars, in addition to the viewers watching, as we be taught together with them, who survived and who didn’t.

One other unconventional directorial selection comes within the type of how the present is paced out. With 12 episodes, every virtually an hour lengthy, the story stretches out the occasions of every day over a number of episodes. The fabric to fill this time comes from the pockets of survivors it creates all through town.

Although the storyline follows a core group of scholars trapped in highschool, we’re additionally given glimpses of a politician scrambling to flee her workplace; a social media influencer making an attempt to farm the disaster for viral content material; and two law enforcement officials, mismatched of their ranges of braveness, racing to retrieve the antidote.

These completely different dynamics are crafted for the sequence to additionally handle a number of systemic points. With the origin of the zombie virus itself rooted in a historical past of bullying, the varsity turns into floor zero for the present to discover social class hierarchies.

Moreover, for the senior college students of Hyosan Excessive, the zombie apocalypse doesn’t even determine as a precedence stressor. With the college entrance exams looming over, Park Mi-jin, a scholar, laments, “It’s unimaginable for me to get into faculty even when I dwell,” whereas practising her zombie killing strategies.

The dynamic between how the State handles this disaster and its impact on college students additionally serves as a microcosm for a way authorities react to apocalyptic conditions. Sadly, that is additionally the place the plot wavers a bit. The sequence typically makes an attempt to pack in an excessive amount of, because it stretches two separate storylines involving teenage being pregnant and sexual assault throughout a number of episodes. Not sufficient time is spent on both narrative to create significant conclusions or present these characters with a kinder, extra humane ending.

Finally, in a style teeming with Hollywood’s timeless want to supply the proper post-apocalyptic male-hero zombie killer story, South Korea has bravely put forth a narrative of survival. Oscillating between the alive and the undead, the present makes an influence by centering the truth that endurance doesn’t all the time imply power, generally it’s born out of repeated acts of kindness.

All of Us Are Useless is at the moment streaming on Netflix