Is All of Us are Dead worth the hype?
By Kristen Chan
On January 28 2022, All of Us are Dead was released on Netflix for the world’s viewing pleasure. As soon as it was released, I watched it in one sitting. I didn’t think it would reach the popularity that it did, ranking No.1 in Netflix Worldwide Top TV shows right after the release. It was like Squid Game all over again, except there was no complimentary merch, or memorable quotes (at least in my opinion).
All of Us are Dead takes place in a high school in South Korea, where a sudden zombie apocalypse breaks out and students are forced to use their wits and knowledge to protect themselves from getting infected. It is a coming-of-age, zombie, and horror television series that is based upon the Naver Webtoon Now at our School by Joo Dong-eun.
The main cast includes:
Park Ji Hu as Nam On Jo, an outdoing and down-to-earth student, she is also Cheong’s san childhood friend and neighbour
Yoon Chan-young as Lee Cheong-san, a loyal friend and quick thinker when it comes to unpredictable events, Onjo’s childhood friend and neighbour
Cho Yi Hyun as Choi Nam-ra, usually silent but smart class president
Park Solomen as Lee Su-hyeok, a reformed bully, and like Cheongsan he’s willing to sacrifice anything for his friends
Yoo In-soo as Yoon Gwi-Nam, one of the school’s bullies, quickly becomes the nemesis of Cheongsan and the gang
Lee Yoo Mi as Lee Na-yeon, a wealthy but arrogant and selfish student
Photo: Netflix
SPOILERS AHEAD!
This series opens up with teenagers gathering on a church rooftop to beat the life out of an unknown victim, presumably a kid that is also around their age. The fight gets so violent to the point one bully overdoes it and accidentally throws the poor kid off the roof and into a dark alleyway. Thankfully, the kid doesn’t die as we see in the next scene that he’ll be getting emergency surgery soon. However, amidst the fight, the kid’s aura had suddenly changed: his eyes were bloodshot and his movements hostile and aggressive.
In this opening scene, there is some interesting religious imagery being shown; an inverted neon red cross reflected in a puddle, which represents the Cross of Saint Peter, which can be seen as a satanic symbol. Later, when the victim’s father, Lee Byeong Chan comes to visit his son in the hospital, he detects from his son’s bloodshot eyes and erratic movements that something is wrong. He proceeds to beat his son into obedience with a bible, and he folds him up into a suitcase and tries to leave the hospital, without suspicion of kidnapping his own son. The use of a bible to hit his son is interesting since the seemingly pure and important piece of religious text being used as an assault weapon can be used to describe the father’s genuine good intentions but how he has also made a very fatal and horrible mistake; creating the zombie virus.
As the series continues, we learn that unfortunately, no one was willing to stand up to the bullies which led to the father of the victim taking matters into his own hands, creating a serum that turned fear into rage. But it all went horribly wrong as the serum instead created monstrous zombies that would stop at nothing to taste the flesh of humans. The father had also previously tested this serum on a rat, which he kept in the storage room of the high school science lab. A wandering student by the name of Kim Hyeon Ju discovered the rat and was bitten by it, which led to the raging outbreak of the Hyosan Zombie Apocalypse.
In all honesty, I never really got the hype with this drama. It seemed just like a normal, high school thriller that got everyone at the edge of their seats, but it also didn’t really bring anything new to the table. Though to be fair, I’ve never really been a fan of coming-of-age stories either, so this may just be an issue of personal preference. The story also gets progressively more and more illogical, especially with the whole zombie-human hybrid arc they used with Nam-ra and Gwi-Nam. I get that the director wanted to add a “special” factor or aspect into the story to differentiate it with the famed Korean movie Train to Busan, but it just didn’t really work; not for me at least.
Nevertheless, if you are into Korean dramas that touch on social topics such as school violence, bullying, cyberbullying, and moral justifications, and don’t really care for minor plot holes, then I highly recommend this drama.