All of Us Are Dead review: Gory but genuinely heartfelt, Netflix’s zombie show is your new Korean obsession
Any zombie fable is going to be extra relevant in a put up-pandemic world. Or mid-pandemic, reckoning on the effect you is seemingly living. But something tells me that the lowkey apocalyptic match we’re all collectively surviving stands out as the valuable-wished shot of adrenaline that the genre has been rapid of for over a decade. There’s supreme so valuable extra mileage filmmakers would per chance be ready to acquire out of our newfound paranoia for contagious diseases. But what next? What occurs after we see at the awe on our monitors and shrug, having experienced something valuable worse ourselves?
The pandemic would per chance be to zombie storytelling what the Donald Trump presidency turned into as soon as to political satire—a advance extinction-stage match that demands a creative realignment. The closing time that the zombie genre witnessed such an overhaul turned into as soon as when Edgar Wright advised that it would per chance per chance also very successfully be silly. Now, it is time to overhaul as soon as again.
But All of Us Are Stupid isn’t the existing that’s going to make a choice the genre to the next stage. No decrease than now not for four episodes, for the length of which it plays (largely) by the foundations. Or so it makes you suspect. But a twist in episode 5 is something that I’ve really now not seen accomplished earlier than in a zombie fable. No longer supreme is it a frighteningly believable illustration of the coronavirus pandemic, but a successfully-timed mid-season boost to a existing that didn’t really favor one. You have confidence been already invested, All of Us Are Stupid looks to be announcing, now buckle up for the home stretch.
The 12-episode Korean series, out on Netflix, zeroes in on the social inequalities that have confidence been exposed by the pandemic, whereas at the the same time offering solid commentary on the toxicity of the teenage experience. It is miles, after all, position inner basically the most Darwinian of all playgrounds, and the iciest of all societal snowglobes—high college. It’s a persistently titillating and imminently bingeable existing that sticks to the syllabus, after which matches ahead and wins brownie points for extracurricular actions, too.
Zombies have confidence been shown to have confidence a diploma of sentience in the past—Zack Snyder did it stunning closing yr—but now not rather care for this. “What if everyone in the enviornment will get contaminated with the exception of us,” one teenage character wonders after just a few episodes. “Then we’ll be in the minority, and minorities have confidence a strategy of getting extinct.”
The pilot episode is kindly. It deftly devices up scheme threads that originate making sense supreme hours later. But because the total thing has been so fastidiously mapped out, the resolutions are immensely satisfying. The present additionally makes it rather clear very early on that dying is an steady eventuality that will strike most characters, despite whether or now not they’ve been positioned as protagonists, one of whom is the college jock Soo-hyeok, who saunters in care for he’s Brad Pitt arriving for a Vogue photoshoot. He has a crush on the enigmatic Nam-ra, who turned into as soon as ‘elected’ class president because her other folks bribed the college. Soo-hyeok’s simplest friend is Cheong-san, who harbours emotions for his childhood friend On-ja, whom he treats as one of the considerable fellows, in a classic case of juvenile deflection.
These are the four characters with whom you exhaust basically the most time, and fortuitously, they’re now not an insufferable bunch. For example, All of Us Are Stupid would have confidence been in terms of impossible to look had it been populated by the high-schoolers from HBO’s Euphoria. Hilariously, despite the indisputable fact that the young other folks in this existing are across the the same age because the ones in Euphoria, cigarettes are supreme ever talked about as soon as, when the characters create a gigantic deal out of it after one of them confesses to being a smoker.
In a technique, All of Us Are Stupid is form of the acceptable marriage of the messed-up Korean Modern Wave that began two many years in the past, and the extra healthful BTS-fuelled pop-tradition juggernaut that it is a ways largely perceived as now. The present is terribly violent, and additionally reasonably angry at adults of all shapes and sizes (for chewing up and spitting out the planet care for bubble gum and leaving future generations to jam it off their shoes). But it is a ways additionally silly, and when it wants to be, genuinely heartfelt.
Nothing is extra keen, for instance, than the fable of the one who ‘created’ the virus. He’s, care for per chance three other characters in the existing, a ‘villainous’ presence. But such is the energy of the writing that you won’t at the moment be ready to name who I’m talking about. They’re stunning other folks, pushed to the sting by an on a regular foundation motivator—survival. A thematically relevant plan, you’d agree, for a existing about a zombie apocalypse.
And since All of Us Are Stupid takes its time—rather so much of its 12 episodes race at over an hour long—it enables itself some asides that you’d in most cases wouldn’t quiz in a myth care for this. In an early episode, for instance, the trapped young other folks now not supreme have confidence a frank dialogue about the effect they’re going to bolt number two, but band together to position up a makeshift lavatory the effect they’re hiding out.
At any given moment, author Cheon Seong-il juggles 5-to-six separate subplots, none of which would per chance per chance be lifeless. Nor are all of them position inner the college. Among the many most appealing is the one who functions a valorous detective who goes on a mission to retrieve a notebook computer which would per chance attend the predominant to everyone’s survival. Along the model, he picks up an overzealous YouTuber, a comically cowardly ‘chowkidaar’ and 2 young other folks, one of whom is a brand contemporary child. In one other world, they would per chance have confidence been our protagonists.
But All of Us Are Stupid deliberately frames the apocalypse from the perspective of young other folks, because despite the indisputable fact that the politicians and navy chiefs would per chance per chance now not realise it, their days are numbered. They won’t favor to tidy up their mess. The young other folks will, and they’re most completely now not all appropriate.
All of Us Are Stupid
Creator – Chun Sung-il
Solid – Yoon Chan-young, Park Ji-hoo, Cho Yi-hyun, Park Solomon, Yoo In-soo
Rating – 4.5/5
