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5 Reasons You Should Watch “All of Us Are Dead” on Netflix

And a few minor gripes

By Yana AleksPublished 2 years ago 12 min read
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Image: Netflix

Let’s be fair - Korean television has had a pretty decent audience in the West for a long time. But now Korean shows have started kicking ass and taking names! After the global success of “Squid Game”, the competition has real reason to start quaking in its boots. And it seems that “Squid Game” wasn’t a fluke - if “All of Us Are Dead” is any indication, hit Korean series might become the norm.

“All of Us are Dead” is an ensemble-cast coming-of-age zombie series based on a digital comic published for the first time in 2009, in which a high school in the Korean city of Hyosan becomes ground zero for a fast-spreading zombie virus. The central story is about a group of students who, suddenly cut off from the rest of the world and abandoned by the authorities, must work together to survive.

I thoroughly enjoyed this new offering from Netflix and, no, that’s not just because I’m a sucker for survival horror. It’s true that I’m fond of zombies and I think the zombie apocalypse makes for a damn good setting, so I tried to watch a whole bunch of zombie series over the past few years. But all of them eventually ended up boring me, depressing me or annoying me. In any case, none of them made me binge a whole season in one day - that is, until “All of Us Are Dead” showed up.

Granted, the show has its faults. There are a few plotlines that don’t seem to go very far, a few dramatic sacrifices which don’t seem to really make sense, and perhaps a few too many characters. But no show is perfect. This one kept me engaged and entertained throughout. So here are my 5 reasons why you should watch “All of Us are Dead” - mostly spoiler-free.

Image: Netflix

1. It’s better than Squid Game.

Yes, I said it - fight me!

Look, “Squid Game” was fine. Some things about it were great, some were a bit meh. I liked it well enough, but it was riddled with logic fails and head-scratching plot decisions. Plus, it was trying too hard to be deep. Surprisingly, “All of Us Are Dead”’s story about kids running away from zombies while trying to sort out their high-school drama felt a whole lot more rooted in reality. The premise somehow convinces you of its credibility, despite being completely fantastical. In addition, “Squid Game” attempts to bombard you with messages and commentary. “All of Us Are Dead”’s commentary is not exactly subtle either, but it does not seem to be the sole reason for telling the story. Its writing is, in my opinion, also superior. The characters have deeper and more meaningful relationships with each other and they are just better characters in general, but more on that further down.

Of course, if either zombies or highschoolers are a turn-off for you, none of these things will matter. But, as someone who would, in principle, equally happily watch dystopian murder games and the undead munching on the population, my verdict is that, on this occasion, the undead win.

Image: Netflix

2. Respecting the characters

Few things annoy me as much as characters serving as nothing more than plot devices. “All of Us Are Dead” avoids this particular pitfall. The show’s creators seem to see the people they are writing about as - well, people - and they treat them with a surprising amount of respect. Time is devoted to secondary characters whose arcs the main cast does not even get to witness. Traumatic events carry the appropriate amount of weight for each person and we are allowed to experience their emotions with them. We are encouraged to understand the bad guys, or at least contemplate their motivations. There is no big, bad, faceless faction or organisation which is solely responsible for the big, bad thing happening - everyone is just human. True, some of the villains can seem a little cartoonishly evil on occasion but not to the point where it takes me out of the story, and there is a clear attempt to give the majority of the antagonists some depth.

Image: Netflix

Most important of all - the relationships are handled well. There is a very large variety of interpersonal connections - from family to friends to frenemies to romance to outright enemies. They are all explored and given enough attention. The romances, while unsurprisingly present (you can hardly avoid them in a young adult story), mercifully take a back seat to the many friendships. This really is a story about children being friends with each other and learning to understand and trust each other. And that will never not be a compelling story. There are also a great number of good role models among the characters, and that’s pretty refreshing, considering how YA works can often star self-obsessed assholes.

Image: Netflix

3. Cast and acting

I thought the cast was excellent. This is even more impressive when you factor in how incredibly large it is. (There are probably upwards of twenty important characters!) At no point did I feel like an actor was dragging a scene down. Everyone I am supposed to like is very likeable, everyone I am supposed to truly hate makes me want to punch them, and for the most part, everyone who is supposed to be shades of grey comes across as exactly that. The touching scenes were genuine and heartfelt, the tears seemed sincere and the chemistry between all of the leads was very believable.

Another testament to the cast’s skill is that I could actually recognise a good number of them when they were on screen. As a westerner who only watches Asian live-action media occasionally and isn’t good at remembering faces in general, even caucasion ones, I have to reluctantly admit that I often find it difficult to distinguish between some characters with Asian features. That is exacerbated when there are so many of them. But the actors did a good enough job portraying distinct personalities that I didn’t often wonder which one was which.

4. Pacing

Unlike some other zombie flicks (such as “#Alive” another Korean zombie story, in which the apocalypse goes from zero to one hundred before we hit the 4-minute mark), “All of Us are Dead” allows the plot to develop and escalate at a realistic pace. This gives us more time to get to know the characters before all hell truly breaks loose, ensuring that we actually care by the time horrible things start happening to them. It also means that we have time to hope that things will get better and feel the emotional impact when they become more and more dire instead. We are only slowly led to understand how truly desperate the situation is and how irreversible some of the damage is. As I mentioned earlier, things feel like they have weight. The characters are given time and space to react to what’s happening and what they are feeling. Deaths and emotional traumas are not simply waved off, tears and breakdowns feel natural and earned. Relationships also progress and develop over time. We get some quiet moments which are not technically plot-related - they are only important to the characters themselves and some don’t influence events in any way - but they provide a valuable change of pace in between action scenes.

Image: Netflix

5. Story and messages

It’s pretty simple: “All of Us Are Dead” is a good story. As I already said, friends trying to survive together will almost never not be a good story. But even beyond that, everything that surrounds the main characters is interesting. The wider context of the events is complex and meaningful and the end leaves certain questions and moral dilemmas without definitive answers, inviting us to draw our own conclusions.

On the other hand, when the show does try to teach us something, it does a pretty good job of it. Together with the obvious anti-bullying message, “All of Us Are Dead” criticises the tendency of some educational institutions to place their reputation above the wellbeing of their students. We see instances of abuse being swept under the rug by the school administration in favour of maintaining an orderly facade. The idea that adults cannot be trusted is examined but it is not presented in black and white. We see clearly that some adults are bad, some are good, and the vast majority are well-intentioned but ultimately fail the children in their care despite wanting to protect them.

Image: Netflix

The stereotype of the high-achieving, academically-inclined Asian child is also challenged. The show presents us with several characters who are average or below-average students and strong emphasis is put on how intelligent and valuable they are, regardless of their grades. The script goes so far as to have a parent tell their child in no uncertain terms that grades don’t matter and simply being alive and healthy is infinitely more important. While the child in question is initially annoyed by their father’s low expectations and lack of belief in their abilities, the very premise of the show proves the father right. In the same vein, the top student in the group does not actually appear to be smarter or more adept than any of the others throughout the course of their ordeal. She is instead presented as very lonely. Her academic pursuits have prevented her from developing meaningful relationships with her peers until now and only once she opens up and is accepted by the group does she begin to feel fulfilled. And it’s not even just academic prowess as the ultimate aspiration that is being judged here but any kind of pressure to be an overachiever. Early in the season we see that a senior student has just failed to place at the archery competition which she hoped would have gotten her a place in college. The show goes out of its way to show that the results of competitions are irrelevant in the real world. In other words, if you can shoot attacking zombies, you are still absolutely awesome, regardless of your college prospects.

Ultimately, “All of Us Are Dead” seems to argue that what makes us happy, valuable and desirable in life is our ability to connect to others.

Another point in favour of the story is that it’s just unpredictable enough. Where I thought it was heading was not at all where it went, and past a certain point, none of the characters felt like they had plot armour. Who died and who survived came as at least a little bit of a surprise and there were enough twists along the way to keep me interested.

Image: Netflix

Bonus: What I would change

Much as I liked the series, that doesn’t mean there was nothing at all that bothered me. Here are a few things:

1. Did we need those deaths?

Obviously, people have to die in a zombie series - that’s kind of the whole point. And most of the deaths in “All of Us Are Dead” are quite well-placed and impactful. But there were a few heroic sacrifices that seemed like they could have been easily avoided so they made me roll my eyes a little bit. I won’t get into spoilers but I would have personally allowed some of the people in question to survive. I don’t think it would have taken away from the seriousness of the story. Or, at the very least, I would have killed them in a way that didn’t cause the viewer to immediately suggest at least three ways they could have made it out of the situation they were in.

2. Did we need that villain?

There is a particular ‘mega-villain’ that I could have honestly done without. I think he was created out of a desire to “up the ante” and make things even more dangerous, but, frankly, I don’t think that was necessary. It’s the darn zombie apocalypse, it’s plenty dangerous! Our characters are surrounded by a townful of undead. They have no real weapons, the have no food and they have no water (...for some bizarre reason? I kept waiting for them to try to get into one of the school’s bathrooms where they could have easily gotten water. It’s not like they don’t devise plans to get into other zombie-infested places…). We really don’t need to also have a superhuman bad guy with an inexplicable obsession with killing one of the main characters. Come to think of that, he’s not even the only one who is weirdly obsessed with harming one of the protagonists for no good reason! Another minor villain does that, too!

3. Did we need abuse victims to all be psychos?

I had a bit of an issue with the portrayal of victims of bullying. None of them were shown as entirely sympathetic. The girl, in particular, was problematic for me. In the show she is so traumatised by what happened to her that she contemplates jumping off the school roof… but she simultaneously acts quite terribly towards someone who is trying to be her friend and help her, and she is extremely vindictive towards everyone and everything. It’s certainly not impossible for someone who is suicidal to feel and act this way - perhaps not even entirely unexpected in the situation - but it is still a potentially dangerous portrayal. Suicidal people people are not often psychos plotting revenge on the entire world for what that one person did. In fact, all three bullying victims are apparently homicidal, two of them before they even come into contact with the virus. We feel sad for them but they are very clearly not protagonists. That particular aspect could have been handled better.

Regardless of any criticism though, “All of Us Are Dead” is a very solid show which has a lot to offer, far beyond blood, gore and cheap trills. Go ahead and watch it!

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About the Creator

Yana Aleks

Fiction writer, reviewer and an incurable chatterbox.

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