All of us are dead: A K-drama review

All of us are dead is a zombie thriller that aired on January 28th, 2022. It stars quite a big cast. Park Ji-hu plays Nam On-jo, Yoon Chan-young who plays Lee Cheong-san, Choi Yi-Hyun plays Choi Nam-ra, and Park Solomon plays Lee Su-hyeok. There is a lot more to go through, but I think maybe these were the four main characters. It follows a group of high school students whose school becomes ground zero for a zombie outbreak and we follow their plight to escape. Surprisingly, I had never seen the main characters in anything else, actually, most of the cast were unfamiliar. I think it’s great to see new faces in k-dramas.

We start off the show with a boy being bullied very severely. And the bullies don’t know this, but he’s a zombie, and eventually, he gets thrown off the roof. I’m pretty sure he eventually dies, but we didn’t really get to see it. I don’t know if I was overanalyzing but there was some symbolism of the camera showing a neon cross while the boy was bullied, and then his father trying to beat him to death with a bible. But this was not explored further.

With every zombie movie/show, something has to set them apart, and I do think this show had some discerning features.

First, the way this outbreak started. It’s interesting to see that such a deadly and aggressive thing was created by one man who wanted to help his son stand up to his bullies. The concept of using the mouse who keeps on getting defeated and then using those rare times that they fight back to extract the testosterone is quite interesting. I liked that we were able to see the science teacher’s logs throughout the series. I thought it would lead to some big reveal of how to cure the virus, but it was just more despair.

This isn’t really a discerning feature but the concept of humans being scarier than zombies is one that can sometimes be scarier than the actual undead people. There was Na-Yeon, who due to pure jealousy and hatefulness decided to turn one of her classmates, Gyeong-su, into a zombie, essentially killing him. It was really sad to see the lengths one can go through for self-gratification in the face of an apocalypse. We had Gwi-Nam, (he refused to die!) who was essentially the true villain of the show. A vicious bully and an even more evil zombie who had the ability to keep his human form too. There’s always a question about how people react under pressure, and Gwi-Nam acted in the cruelest ways. Then we had the dude on the roof who refused to open the door for the other students. I admit that it wasn’t the most irrational choice, but it almost sealed the fates of those students.

I loved this show. It kept me intrigued each episode and it had good pacing thanks to the twelve episodes. The cinematography was also creative, and the zombies looked like what you would think zombies should look like. There are a few things I did not love.

There were some impossible things that happened during this show. The first two episodes weren’t so great, but I think after episode three it really started to pick up. All those climbing scenes in the first few episodes were so painfully fake. And apart from the zombies, the CGI overall wasn’t very convincing. I’m conflicted about the students calling the zombies ‘zombies’, it felt a little on the head. It makes sense that they would because it is set in recent times. They obviously would have watched zombie movies like ‘Train to Busan’ but it would’ve been nice watching them come up with other names. I also felt like some people’s deaths were not needed. On-jo’s dad came all that way just to die in a situation that really wasn’t so dire. Cheong-san too, I really thought that after everything, he deserved to get to the end, it wasn’t so unexpected because he was always the one running into the fire, but it would’ve been nice if he didn’t die with Gwi-nam. I think that after everything Gwi-nam did, his death wasn’t as impactful. It would’ve been more gratifying if he died by the hand of the girl he bullied. The writers set up such a good storyline with Na-Yeon being in the room that had food, just for her to die without coming in contact with the group.

Why did nobody ask about Jimin? It felt like her death was very understated. Yes, she did a horrible thing leading up to it, but they set up such a good story with her wanting to get revenge for her parents that it was sad to see her end so suddenly.

These are very small faults to me, and overall, they did not impact my thoughts on the show. I still think it’s worth the watch. Very captivating, great storyline, it also had both romance and comedy, a big cast gives more people to root for. It would be interesting to see what the show would explore if a second season was released.

I couldn’t cover everything in this post because just too many things happened. But if you’re wondering if it’s worth the watch. Yes, it most definitely is.

Rating:8.5/10

If you like: All of us are Dead

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