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"All of Us Are Dead: Season 1" - STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

In a crowded media landscape, is Netflix's "All of Us Are Dead" worth your time?

By Littlewit PhilipsPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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There's so much content out there these days that it can be hard to find anything worth watching. I know that sounds backwards, but there are simply so many options that the true gems are hidden among the ranks of the mediocre, or even the outright bad. Besides, modern shows are designed with carefully planted cliffhangers so that once you get started, it's hard to walk away. Then you look up, and six hours have passed, and you realise that you didn't really enjoy any of it. It was distracting, and it got its hooks in you, but you kinda wish that you had those six hours back.

This isn't a full review. Think of it as early impressions. I am scouting ahead and reporting back to you, but I'm not that far ahead. If the show is promising, I might circle back and give it a full review later. Or I might just cross one title off of that never-ending list of content.

All of Us Are Dead: Season 1

The ensemble cast from Netflix's All of Us Are Dead

I am entirely confident that the creative directors at Netflix are desperately searching for their next Squid Game. Despite being made for a relatively modest budget (21 million dollars for the 9 hour series), Squid Game brought in record-breaking numbers of viewers. It's not hard to see why! Lee Jung-jae's performance as Seong Gi-hun was charismatic and compelling, and the series unfolded in lots of interesting ways. The brutal violence mixed with the unsettling imagery created something of an instant meme. The show's aesthetic was replicated everywhere, which only made more publicity for the show.

Squid Game also demonstrated a new trend in the entertainment economy. In 2019, the South Korean film Parasite became the first non-English film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Squid Game became the first Korean drama to break into Netflix's Top 10 on its global charts.

Which brings us to All of Us Are Dead, a Korean zombie show. Netflix has to be hoping that they've got another Squid Game on their hands, right?

All of Us Are Dead opens with violence. A group of students bully another student, eventually throwing him from a building. Somehow, the student survives, but when his father visits him in the hospital, his father attempts to beat him to death with a Bible. At least, he appears to beat his son to death, but when he's moving the corpse, the corpse starts to move again.

Uh-oh.

The next hour introduces us to various students who all attend school at what will become ground-zero for the zombie uprising. We have our yearning lovers, our bullied students, the rich kid who possibly has a heart of gold, and so on. Some students are being sexually harassed while others are eating chicken. It feels very much at home as a high school drama, except the story keeps cutting away to the zombie plot-line, and we know that this will all come to a boil eventually.

This creates an uneasy tension in the story. We know that we're supposed to care about the drama. It's supposed to humanise these characters who are going to be in peril. However, we also know that ultimately much of that won't be as important as what is currently the side-plot. When are the zombies coming? What impact will this have on the zombies?

Ultimately, nothing about this premise won me over. The year is 2022. The Walking Dead has aired for 11 seasons, and Fear the Walking Dead has run for 7 seasons. This is a post-Train to Busan world. Not only have we seen Train to Busan, we've also seen its sequel (Peninsula) and the American studios have threatened to remake it as Train to New York. Zombies have been slow, and zombies have been fast. Zombies have been serious, and zombies have been satirical. With the first episode of All of Us Are Dead, I was watching to see what this show can add to this already crowded genre.

And after spending over an hour with this show, I'm just not hooked. The action is well-shot, and the zombie motions are unsettling, and it doesn't feel bad necessarily, but it also didn't feel arresting. I can't help but shake the feeling that we've been here before too many times. This show feels like it's too late to the zombie game.

Considering that it is based on a decade-old webtoon, there's a reason why All of Us Are Dead feels dated.

The Verdict:

Skip it.

If you're a huge fan of the zombie genre, maybe this show will provide enough for you to sink your teeth into. However, if you're zombie-apathetic (or burned out on the genre), the first episode doesn't promise to shake up the genre in a meaningful way.

"All of Us Are Dead" is available via Netflix. Depending on your region, "Train to Busan" may be as well.

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About the Creator

Littlewit Philips

Short stories, movie reviews, and media essays.

Terribly fond of things that go bump in the night.

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