all of us are dead movie review essay

ALL OF US ARE DEAD: An Emotional Zombie Invasion

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There is nothing more foreboding than a title of a series foreshadowing the downfall of society. From the very beginning, it establishes the feeling of there being no chance of survival for the characters we are about to meet, laying the groundwork of despair. Yet, as is human nature to strive for survival, so too is our ability to retain hope – even in the darkest hour.

Netflix’s All of Us Are Dead is the latest zombie series to not only take on the classic monsters of horror, but also tackle the unrelentingly battle of hope and despair in the face of uncertainty and death. While at times unsure of whether it is a horror or a young adult induction, All of Us Are Dead delivers a modernized version of the horror within a zombie invasion, in the youth that contains all our hope for the future.

The Walking Dead Return

All of Us Are Dead is a series that knows its genre. Its awareness of horror films and TV series is clearly apparent in the character and design, Train to Busan , World War Z and The Walking Dead , among others, easily coming to mind. Though it is not content on regurgitating what has come before, using past classics as a launching pad to honor and both modernize. All of Us Are Dead is committed to creating not only the perfect creature, but an eerie sense of unrelenting violence and defeat, a feeling, while familiar, heightening each aspect and interaction as the series continues on.

ALL OF US ARE DEAD: An Emotional Zombie Invasion

While delivering on the unrelenting gore and violence one would expect from a horror series involving zombies, what was unexpected was the depth of emotional catharsis that derives from each connection, both new and old, between the characters. All of Us Are Dead leans into emotional interactions, allowing room for its characters to experience the situation they find themselves, as well as allow the audience time to experience it with them.

This emotional craftsmanship speaks to the film’s cleverly plotted narrative structure and editing, but also to the incredible performances consistently delivered episode by episode by its cast. And while success is in the collaboration of its ensemble, there are standouts that will resonate at the film concludes. Victoria Grace shines as On-jo, her emotional journey forever twisting as the series continues. Grace gives her the depth required to garner not only audience investment but to bring a solid core to the group, one the rest of the cast can work with and against.

Ya-Hyundai Cho ’s Nam-Ra, Harrison Xu ’s Chung-san and Darren Keilan ’s Lee Su-Hyeok each bring their own emotional layering to the series as well, delivering an understanding not only on the culture and the horror, but on the turmoils of adolescence in the face of expectation and uncertainty. A solid core to the series, they stand out but never outshine their costars, allowing connection and investment to not only its supporting cast, but into the series as a whole.

All of Us Are Dead does face its own struggles, battling momentary fatigue in its use of its characters, leaning at times into tired horror and zombie cliches and tropes. And at times, its parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic leave a weary viewer feeling a need for reprieve and distance. It is in these moments, viewers will find their minds wandering, their connection with the series momentarily disrupted.

Not Everything Survives the Creative Process

Where the series truly battles is in its identification. Is it a horror? Or does it want to be another young adult series? While it could successfully have harnessed an immersion of both genres, it fights against itself, the two idea constantly resistant to marry with one another. While the first half of the series hides this struggle easily through its contrasting scores to action, as well as brilliantly choreographed fight sequences, the second half of the series struggles to make it less obvious.

This is not to say that the series does not find its successes in each of these genres. It does find the struggle of adolescence, and even social class, and encapsulates both in the horror and as a parallel to it, but it struggles to truly unite them in a cohesive and unified front.

Despite its struggles to merge all its directions, All of Us Are Dead is an emotional ride with the power to reimagine the zombie genre as we know it. Coupled with strong performances and talent behind the camera, All of Us Are Dead is a binge-worthy venture sure to entertain horror and zombie enthusiasts alike – and even leave you wanting more.

Have you seen All of Us Are Dead ? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!

All of Us Are Dead will be released on Netflix on January 28, 2022!

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Netflix’s All of Us Are Dead takes zombie shows to new places

Undead horror mixed with high school drama

By Sara Merican

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Early on in All of Us Are Dead, student Lee Cheong-san exclaims to his peers as they fend off a wave of zombies swarming their suburban Hyosan High School, “It’s Train to Busan !” Another replies, “Why are they at school? They should be in movies.” With this tongue-in-cheek meta-reference to its notable film predecessor, it is a sign that the Korean zombie subgenre has well and truly sunk its grisly teeth into the popular cultural imagination.

First rising to global acclaim with the commercial and critical hit Train to Busan in 2016, the Korean zombie lineage also includes Netflix’s groundbreaking historical series Kingdom (2019), as well as films like Peninsula ( Train to Busan sequel) and #Alive (2020). Through the grotesque figure of the zombie and its transitions between the human and the monstrous, these Korean shows have launched a terrifying critique of society in all of its moral wastes and systemic ills.

The high school setting in All of Us Are Dead marks a unique departure from previous locations used in Korean zombie shows. In the midst of the dread and destruction, the youthful setting opens up opportunities for adolescent banter and burgeoning love. We meet the loyal Lee Cheong-san, along with the buoyant Nam On-jo, who puts her survival knowledge learned from her firefighter father to good use. Class president and top student Choi Nam-ra is initially aloof and distant, though we later learn she is just fighting her own demons, like so many other students. Lee Su-hyeok and Yang Dae-su also make up the main group of students meandering through science labs, broadcasting rooms, music studios, the cafeteria, and teachers’ offices in their bid to survive and find a safe haven. What then is so wrong with the world here?

The immense pressure of the Korean high school setting — one which ends with the dreaded be-all-end-all university entrance exams, also known as Suneung — breaks and bends each student into despair differently. Some, like Choi Nam-ra, withdraw into isolation, earphones plugged in and eyes glued to her notes. Others, like Park Mi-jin and captain of the school archery team Jang Ha-ri, are overwhelmed by a defeated hopelessness about their future. A few more take out their anger on others and become school bullies — like the notorious Yoon Gwi-nam, who does not think twice about inflicting harm on others. The dehumanizing effects of fear become magnified by adolescent insecurities, reducing each young, vibrant soul into quivering shells of their former selves. In other words, the high school becomes a perfect setting for the mass production of a zombie population.

In the origin story of the zombie infection, a male student is frequently and violently bullied. His father, Mr. Lee, holds a PhD in cell biology and works as a science teacher in the same high school that his son is studying in. At wits’ end, he researches and creates the “Jonas Virus,” which preys on fear in humans and turns it into rage in a bid to make his son stronger and cope with the bullying. However, as these things usually go, the experiment turns out all wrong, and an infected hamster in Mr. Lee’s school science lab ends up biting a student, which unleashes the zombie virus upon the school and city.

The premise of the Jonas Virus — leeching onto human fear and transforming it into zombie rage — is a fascinating one but disappointingly underdeveloped in the series. One can imagine the various creative paths and adventures this premise could have taken the show, like using the absence of fear in certain characters to explain their resistance towards the virus or exploring possible “cures” to combat the Jonas Virus. Yet, All of Us Are Dead ultimately resorts to a constant stream of narration through grainy videos taken by Mr. Lee in his science lab and barely lit home. In these videos, we listen to him wax lyrical about the ideals of humanity, the monstrosity of evil that the Jonas Virus represents and the inescapable “system of violence” he was not able to save his son from. This turns All of Us Are Dead into a desperate survival show, and somewhere toward the second half of its breathless chase around the school, the 12-episode series begins to lose some of its pace.

All of Us Are Dead possesses the appeal of high school dramas like Riverdale and Euphoria . It captures in great detail the grotesque violence of high school social dynamics: the relentless gossiping and backstabbing, the unkind politicking and posturing of powerful in-groups and “cool kids,’’ and the festering churn of misery, which falls most heavily on the outcasts. While a few adults do their best to rein in the violence and protect their innocence, the students are largely left to fend for themselves.

The drama also sketches a wider portrait of society, depicting the chaos of government quarantine facilities and valiant attempts by authorities to cobble together an infection control plan. The implementation of martial law and life-and-death leadership decisions recall South Korea’s fight for democracy in the 1980s. All of Us Are Dead also captures the complex, moral struggle on the streets, where survival demands selfishness, even when the little bit of humanity in everyone implores them to limit harm. The series seems to make a damning pronunciation: enabled by adults, society’s systems of violence have seeped into schools and poisoned what should have been a bastion for moral goodness and innocence.

The power of zombies in fiction resides in their ability to compel our gaze inwards. In All of Us Are Dead , the zombies are teachers, classmates, archery teammates, and even best friends. Yet, in presenting these cruel circumstances, director Lee Jae-kyu’s take on the Korean zombie subgenre has chosen a most hopeful expression. While his predecessors have largely treated the transformation from human to zombie as a quick, crude one to register horror and revulsion, All of Us Are Dead lingers and dawdles on each transition, even for its minor characters. In director Lee’s world, there is something holy and sacred in this intervening space, in between the human and the monstrous, between sentience and savagery, between friend and fiend.

Many characters, after realizing they have been bitten and are about to turn into a zombie, offer acts of immense self-sacrifice in those precious few seconds before the last of their humanity blinks out into the barbaric darkness. One student throws himself at an onrushing group of zombies to protect his friends. An infected mother desperately ties herself to a door so that she will not cause harm to her baby after she turns. Another offers himself as a distraction to the zombie horde to buy survivors time to run away. Others wave tearful goodbyes as they distance themselves from their peers.

By repeatedly and earnestly holding space for both major and minor characters to demonstrate their humanity, All of Us Are Dead distinguishes its focus. This, combined with the drama-filled high school setting, helps the show carve out its own space in the crowded zombie pantheon. At the same time, it recalls the hallowed battle song that all great tales and stories possess: that we all inhabit both light and dark, good and bad, and that even in the direst of circumstances, we have the ability — and responsibility — to act in the interests of others.

All of Us Are Dead starts streaming on Netflix on January 28th.

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All Of Us Are Dead Season 1 Review & Summary: A Survival Drama with Heart of a Human and Hunger of a Zombie

All Of Us Are Dead is a Korean Zombie Apocalypse Show, currently streaming on Netflix. It is based on the Naver webtoon, Now at Our School, by Joo Dong-geun, which was published between 2009 and 2011.

All Of Us Are Dead Season 1 Plot

Set in the South Korean city of Hyosan, things go berserk one day when a girl in the Hyosan High School is bitten by a rat infected by a deadly virus that turns happy humans into devastatingly ugly and ever-hungry human eating machines (zombies basically).

All Of Us Are Dead Season 1 Cast

Park Ji-hu as Nam On-jo
Yoon Chan-young as Lee Cheong-san
Cho Yi-hyun as Choi Nam-ra
Lomon as Lee Su-hyeok
Yoo In-soo as Yoon Gwi-nam

All Of Us Are Dead Season 1 Review

Zombies are the first love of filmmakers exploring the apocalypse horror genre and there’s little that can go wrong with a zombie movie. Some brain-eating hungry zombies, some scared guys running for their life, and a lot of biting and maiming makes up the perfect formula for a visually scaring and puke-inducing zombie thriller. With great fun, the zombie genre has also brought some largely mediocre stuff lately. One reason for the mediocrity is the lack of innovation in the genre due to it being done to dust by Hollywood.

Nevertheless, Netflix’s latest offering from South Korea is packaged with a little more than just the usual neck-biting and blood-gushing zombie violence. The South Korean zombie apocalypse horror streaming television series All of Us Are Dead is making some buzz for all the right reasons. With the raw violence and action, the Korean movies and series are known for, All of Us Are Dead is a beautiful and tough-to-witness exploration of the vulgarity hidden in the human character when the eventuality is a choice to be made between life and death (much like Squid Games ).

After the girl gets bitten, she is then kept in captivity in the school science lab by the science teacher who’s the mastermind behind the creation of this new zombie virus. On being discovered by the people at the school, the girl, almost on the verge of getting herself zombie-certified, decides to bite one of the people helping her while being taken to the hospital. And the cycle of biting goes on like that for some time until enough people are there to form a zombie self-help group. You get the idea. As the entire school and the whole city starts turning into a zombie-land, we are left with a bunch of school kids who must now survive this zombie outbreak. With the school as the main centre of attention, the focus shifts between multiple locations and characters across the city as they must now run ahead of some gut-hungry zombies to save their lives. (If you feel the description is too graphic, wait till you watch the series.)

The setting of the school as the main playground for all the zombie-driven high adrenaline action to take place with some fun, characteristically unique, and a highly endearing bunch of school kids driving the course of action, provides for a colourful canvas to create an emotional and heart-breaking apocalypse horror drama. The school kids with their ingenuity and genuinely delightful innocence at moments add multiple colours to the otherwise red landscape of a gory and violent zombie drama.

In All of Us Are Dead, the school kids make up the perfect match for a truly vulnerable protagonist at the centre of a massacre. The talented and young cast brings greater conviction to the struggle that ensues. Each character is different and provides greater depth to the story. The conflict that emerges out of a group, consisting of young kids who may not agree with each other on everything, adds to the other conflicts that arise in a zombie outbreak.

The Multitude of Conflicts in All Of Us Are Dead

Talking of conflicts, there are many through the course of this 12-episode long drama. The obvious one is the conflict between the humans and the undead. But what elevates the series in its stature in the zombie hall of fame is the multitude of conflicts it presents. Another is between the instinct to survive at all costs and the instinct to kill. The real cost of survival is written in red letters multiple times. The instinct to survive takes over often violently and often at the expense of another’s life. What follows is a total subjugation of human empathy. Throughout the tense drama which envelops the story, more binaries are presented.

When faced with a decision whether to go out to find a friend who’s possibly dead or stay inside and protect their own lives, the kids face a conflict between hope and logic. The hope of the friend being alive against the logic of protecting oneself fore mostly. Another important conflict is between the choices one is presented with when witnessing a loved one’s transformation into an unknown and deadly creature. To let go or to hold on is a choice the characters are forced to make more than once. The drama and the trauma connected with it are endless, but so is the crisis at hand. All of Us Are Dead in its most honest and heartfelt moments places the human character at the centre of dire situations where the innate humaneness of the characters is put to the test. A test, which at its best, raises vital questions about human helplessness.

The Gore doesn’t Come Without Emotional Stakes

The series is not a mind-numbing trip through gory, bloody, and wildly graphic scenes of flesh-ripping action all the time. Yes, it has the fine elements of a great zombie horror but not at the expense of providing a devastating story of personal loss and death. Throughout its nearly hour-long episodes, the story raises above the basic premise of a zombie outbreak and indulges in the pursuit of various goals. The primary one is the constant social commentary it presents. Along with divulging the flaws of the human characters, All of Us Are Dead quite courageously showcases the inherent systemic flaws- social as well as political.

In the face of crisis, the system falls as quickly on its knees as the humans who built the system do. The choice of life and death is often left to a system built on rules and procedures. In a very cyclic manner, a virus, that takes birth to tackle a systemic problem like bullying, travels a full circle when all it leads to is the total exposure of the hollow pillars on which the system stands upon, in the promise of protecting those who are the most vulnerable. On the outset, in the garb of a violent zombie adventure, this South Korean series turns the eye of inquiry inwards.

The little distraction in the otherwise engaging storyline appears when too much time and effort is invested in building arcs for characters who do not leave a significant impact on the storyline apart from serving an obvious purpose the characters were written for. The series does not suffer from a dearth of motivated characters. With the main bunch of school kids at the epicentre of the outbreak, the story travels a much larger distance across the city with many making their mark. The characters are interesting and remain somewhat important when they are on the screen, making it just more noticeable when they are easily removed from the scheme of things without a proper farewell by virtue of convenient writing.

The Movie Culture Synopsis

The series in its most brilliant moments presents some talented actors portraying some genuine and devastated characters in the middle of an inhuman crisis. Combined with the graphic monstrosity of the zombie genre, this latest drama achieves more than what most zombie movies and television series do .

All of Us Are Dead smartly employs the setting of a zombie apocalypse to create a moving human tale of loss and grief layered with jealousy, romance, suffering, hostility, and waves of drama engineered around quick bursts of comic relief.

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All of Us Are Dead

Story: At Hyosan High School, a student is bitten by a lab mouse and gets sick within minutes. The mouse was an experiment by a teacher who used to be a brilliant scientist. He was looking for a way to make his son stronger and more aggressive because he is bullied by his classmates. The virus actually manages to activate animal instincts, but also simultaneously kills the host: a zombie virus has been created. The first infected student bites another person at school and is then taken to the hospital, where she also infects other people. A zombie pandemic breaks out in the city, but the students don't know about that yet, because they are busy surviving the outbreak at their own school. In the middle of this zombie apocalypse there are the students Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young) and On-jo (Park Ji-hu), who have been friends since their childhood. While Cheong-san actually has romantic feelings for On-jo, she is only interested in So-hyeok (Park Solomon). Soo-hyeok, on the other hand, tries to get closer to the rather quiet class president Nam-ra (Cho Yi-hyun). So, things might seem like a regular day in a teenager's life if it weren't for the zombies lurking on the school corridors trying to eat the few survivors who are left. Some students barricade themselves and want to wait for a rescue team, but at some point, it becomes clear that help will probably not arrive before it is too late. Whether they want to or not, the students will have to fight their way out of the school all by themselves...

Review: It's pretty bold to put a series like this on screen in 2022, rehashing this horror subgenre after there have already been numerous zombie flicks and series of that kind. The majority of the viewers just have to feel surfeited by now, but then again you should not forget that the younger generation - surprisingly "All of Us Are Dead" has an age rating of 16 - may not have had so much contact with the genre yet, and as the zombies' playground is a school, this aspect of everyday life can certainly also forge a bridge to a teenage audience, especially since various love interests are woven into the story too. To everyone's surprise, the new hit series on Netflix will also be able to convince old-timers of the genre, as there is no denying that the theme gets a breath of fresh air. This is also due to the fact that the well-known story is combined with some social criticism which is interspersed throughout the series, for example bullying in class, but also current Covid-19 measures.

So the horror factor works and the special effects are also impressive, especially some explosions towards the end. In addition, we also get some bonus treats. For example, the virus itself is quite unpredictable because it is mutating. That's why we get a zombie villain who is somehow still alive and keeps his personality. This leaves room for a nice revenge story or a special form of bullying, which once again forges a bridge to the beginning of the series, where the story's main focus already was bullying at school. As is fitting for a series like this, there are also some violent scenes. Although the scenes are generally not too gruesome, there are still a few moments every now and then which make you wonder why the series was approved for an audience aged 16 (at least here in Germany). It should also not come as a surprise that you have to be careful who you emotionally invest in, because apart from the usual suspects who you know will kick it right from the beginning, a few people also bite the dust, who you probably would not have expected to die.

There is also some political and social criticism in the series. First, people in charge want to handle the outbreak at school internally but are unable to deal with it, experts on the subject uselessly stand around, although they would know what to do, facts are manipulated to make sure you are still in the right, the media give out false information and exaggerate things just for good headlines, and even though the government does not want to control the media, they still censor it, crimes against humanity are committed, so that a person even has to ask how much cruelty is okay just because you can justify it with saving the majority, rules are laid down and get changed pointlessly until nobody understands anymore why you should adhere to them, the pandemic is exploited politically, martial law is declared and even politicians put the thin line between that and dictatorship into question, etc. The parallels are obvious, and the series actually treats Covid like a pandemic of the past. Another socially critical level is added by the fact that the students exclude every potentially infected person from the group for the time being, and with that they simply continue the bullying from their everyday school life, even though this behavior was responsible for the creation of the virus in the first place. However, all these problems are only dealt with as much as possible, and the general focus still remains on the zombie story. Despite its impressive number of twelve episodes, "All of Us Are Dead" never gets boring, even if the pace briefly slows down in the middle and the last episode feels more like an epilogue - of course, featuring an option for a sequel. There is no doubt that this series only had the chance to become so popular with the audience thanks to "Squid Game" , but putting all the hype aside, this zombie show is actually the better series of the two. Which is all the more astonishing because you wouldn't have expected that much from a zombie series.

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REVIEW: ‘All Of Us Are Dead’ Is The Jolt of Life for Zombies

All Of Us Are Dead is a Korean-language Netflix Original Series written by Chun Sung-il and directed by Lee Jae-kyoo & Kim Nam-Soo . It’s based on the webtoon Now at Our School by Joo Dong-geun. Lee Cheong-san ( Yoo Chan-young ) and his fellow high school students have their lives upturned when a student presumed to be missing starts acting like a feral animal, contorting herself in unnatural positions and attempting to bite people who come near her. This leads to a zombie outbreak, and as the undead swarm the school, Cheong-san and other students — including his best friend Nam On-jo ( Park ji-hoo ) and stoic class president Choi Nam-ra ( Yi Hyun-Cho ) — struggle to survive, as terror and paranoia rise and the outside world falls prey to the undead.

The zombie genre has had its ups and downs over the years. Recently it’s started to make a comeback with films like Blood Quantum and the resurgence of the Resident Evil franchise; mainly because creators have remembered that the genre is used to dig into some dark truths about society. All Of Us Are Dead doesn’t shy away from this, as the students battle their own prejudices and beliefs about each other. A key example comes early in the first three episodes, when popular student Na-yeon ( Lee You-mi ) shoves and insults another student for being a “welfy”-in other words, he’s on welfare. Another source of tension comes between delinquent Mi-jin (Lee Eun-saem) and archery champ Ha-ri (Ha Seung-ri) over their station in life; Mi-jin thinks her future lies in acing her senior exams and that Ha-ri has it easy because of her athletic skills, but as time goes on Mi-jin learns that isn’t exactly the case.

The high school setting also provides a great place for a horror story. All Of Us Are Dead isn’t the first horror series to explore the concept of “high school literally being hell”- fellow Korean horror series Hellbound beat it to the punch. But it does prove that a high school wouldn’t be the ideal place to hide in a zombie outbreak. The zombies spread with frightening speed, overwhelming rooms and confining characters to various rooms; one scene in a library becomes a harrowing race against time as Cheong-san jumps from bookshelf to bookshelf to escape the zombie horde. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, school bully Gwi-nam ( Yoo In-soo ) shows he’ll go to unspeakable lengths to survive, including ruthlessly sacrificing others to the zombies.

Speaking of the zombies, they’re the most terrifying I’ve seen in a long time. Instead of the usual rotting, shambling corpses, these zombies possess bloodshot eyes and are able to contort themselves into impossible positions. They also run at frightening scenes; viewers will lose track of every time the students have to jump and duck and dodge hordes of the undead. It also keeps the horror elements intact; my heart kept leaping in my chest when a student was grabbed by a zombie or a zombie popped snarling into the screen. Both Jae-keoo and Nam-Soo have clearly studied the various entires in the zombie genre and pay homage to them; Train To Busan even gets a shoutout both at the beginning of the story and in a scene where the students rush the zombies using doors as makeshift riot shields.

The story grows to encompass the outbreak taking place in other locations, including a government building and even a YouTube sensation who foolishly tries to rack up views by going into the thick of the invasion. While there are some interesting twists — the origin of the zombies lies in a scientist who wanted to stop his son from being bullied, which brings to mind the old adage about how the road to hell is paved with good intentions — none of these storylines grab me as much as the scenes taking place in the high school.

All Of Us Are Dead is the best zombie story I’ve seen in years; it has a cast of compelling characters, a truly frightening set of zombies, and a setting that presents challenge after challenge for its protagonists. Between this and Army of the Dead , Netflix is breathing new life into the zombie genre—if you’ll pardon the pun.

All Of Us Are Dead is currently streaming on Netflix.

All of Us Are Dead

9/10 Rating - 9/10

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Born and raised in Texas, Collier “CJ” Jennings was introduced to geekdom at an early age by his father, who showed him Ultraman and Star Trek: The Next Generation. On his thirteenth birthday, he received a copy of Giant Size X-Men #1 and dove head first into the realm of pop culture, never looking back. His hobbies include: writing screenplays and essays, watching movies and television, card games/RPG’s, and cooking. He currently resides in Seattle.

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‘All of Us Are Dead,’ Netflix’s Inventive New Korean Drama, Strands Zombies in High-School Nightmare: TV Review

By Caroline Framke

Caroline Framke

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All of us are Dead Yoon Chan-young as Lee Cheong-san in All of us are Dead Cr. Yang Hae-sung/Netflix © 2021

SPOILER ALERT : This review includes some spoilers for Netflix ’s “ All of Us Are Dead ,” which premiered Friday, January 28.

As the last, desperate teen survivors in “All of Us Are Dead” do their best to stay alive through a zombie apocalypse, hoping beyond hope that adults are coming to rescue them, it takes a full day of horrors to make them realize that they’re on their own. With their high school labeled Ground Zero for the escalating outbreak, the students are left for dead (or, as is the case with zombies, something in between). Their ensuing all-out battle for survival makes up the meat of “All of Us Are Dead,” Netflix’s elaborate new adaptation of the popular webtoon, in ways both banal and epic. With the high school survivors stuck inside their school for most of the season, writer Chun Sun-il and director Lee JQ have to keep finding inventive ways to make each classroom and confrontation a terrible new challenge — and they do. Like “ Squid Game ” before it — the only comparison I’ll be making between this show and Netflix’s recent smash Korean hit, I promise — “All of Us Are Dead,” makes the most out of its nightmarish central location to otherworldly, dizzying effect.

With 12 episodes running at least an hour each, “All of Us Are Dead” splits its time between the nightmare unfolding at the school and the one engulfing the world beyond. At Ground Zero, best friends On-jo (Park Ji-hu) and Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young) make it out of the initial crush of zombie mayhem to a classroom where others like the class president Nam-ra (Cho Yi-Hyun), mean girl Na-yeon (Lee Yoo-mi), and On-jo’s crush Su-hyeok (Lomon) are sheltering. Elsewhere, star archer Ha-ri (Ha Seung-ri) and blunt nicotine addict Mi-jin (Lee Eun-saem) hunker down in a bathroom, while unrepentant bully Gwi-nam (Yoo In-soo) makes sure he’ll end up on top, no matter the cost. To say the least: it’s a sprawling cast, and with the addition of several adult factions outside the campus struggling to keep the outbreak under control, episodes are dense and run longer than necessary. But the school plotlines really work, in large part thanks to continued ingenuity with the props and sets and the charismatic young cast, with Yoon Chan-young and Cho Yi-Hyun as notable standouts.

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The show’s weakness, then, lies beyond the labyrinthine school itself as it tries to view the outbreak from the outside in. Watching yet another military take on zombies, no matter how bone-crunchingly sickening the ones in “All of Us Are Dead” are, just isn’t that interesting after seeing so many other TV shows and movies do the same. If the drama is to continue beyond this season, digging in to the “why” and “how” of this reality having zombies in it is probably advisable. But few scenes involving the adult characters are especially compelling or different from what we’ve seen before in the zombie genre, whether they be a helpless assembly member (Bae Hae-sun), a detective (Lee Kyu-hyung), or even the miserable scientist (Kim Byung-chul) who accidentally started it all.

What this particular zombie series can instead offer unlike any other is that core group of teens running into danger, mourning constant deaths, figuring out how the virus is evolving, and forcing their way to safety through the familiar halls of their school with one ingenious scheme after another. Sequences like Cheong-san and Gwi-nam facing off on top of the library stacks, a tense tip-toeing mission down a hallway, and a mad dash across the auditorium to safety are impressively staged to bring the extraordinary and the ordinary together to thrilling effect. And when the teens do get a moment to breathe in between all the gory panic, the show lets them still be teens. They continue to nurse crushes and grudges, still crave acceptance and intimacy, still find darkness and hope in the least likely places.

Most of them might be dead. But while some of them are alive, it’s undeniably moving to see them embrace the full experience of being human despite everything trying to stop them from doing exactly that.

“All of Us Are Dead” is now available to stream on Netflix.

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Netflix’s “All of Us Are Dead” Review – Zombie Series Bites Off More Than It Can Chew

This “All of Us Are Dead” review is spoiler-free. You’re safe.

The Netflix adaptation of a digital comic on WEBTOON, Now at Our School by Joo Dong-geun, uses a gory if familiar outbreak premise as a vehicle for an ambitious K-drama bearing no shortage of social critiques. “ All of Us Are Dead “ ( trailer here ) does offer a few twists to the zombie setup, but it’s far more interested in doling out emotional punishment upon its sprawling cast. The series ultimately bites off more than it can chew in themes, characters, and ambition.

Created by Lee JQ , Chun Sung-il , and Kim Nam-su , “ All of Us Are Dead “ wastes no time establishing ground zero for a viral outbreak resembling a gnarlier version of 28 Days Later ’s rage virus. A savage opening bullying scene on a rooftop sees a victim left for dead. When the teen’s father comes for him in the hospital, it’s clear both are harboring a grim secret, and dad’s come to hide their tracks. Dad ( Kim Byung-chul ) teaches at his son’s high school, and his attempts to contain a virus that he created instead cause a massive outbreak that quickly overruns the school and beyond. Trapped survivors must fight their way out against extreme odds.

It’s not just the lengthy cast list the show struggles to balance, but the plotting itself. After a breakneck outbreak, the episodes toggle between zippy horror-action sequences and plodding moral or survival dilemmas. An early episode dedicates a surprising amount of time to one group attempting to solve a toilet situation while locked inside a classroom. Meanwhile, a line of dialogue raising issues of dehydration or starvation gets swept aside for the sake of convenience.

Bullying is the thematic throughline, with the core message seemingly that bullies create even bigger monsters. Bullying is essentially the root cause of this nasty, uncontrollable virus, but how the series approaches the topic amidst the outbreak is often messy and perplexing. One victim of physical and sexual harassment gets transformed by it, but the series lets that subplot meander and spiral out in an unsatisfying, unrelated way. Another low-tiered high school henchmen desperately clings to power gained by the endemic, becoming a recurring antagonist with little purpose or depth other than to create more problems for the core four.

“ All of Us Are Dead ” dabbles with poignant topics of classism, social inequality, high school pressures, blackmail, and teen pregnancy, but often with a clumsiness that begs the question, why bother? The latter gets shoehorned in a particularly egregious way that fails to contribute anything beyond shock value and artificial emotional manipulation.

At twelve episodes, with most running over an hour-long, this K-drama tends to make you feel its length. It culls down its sprawling cast with an impressive lack of mercy and does deliver plenty of gripping action-horror scenes. But by the end, it fails to make you care about much of it, and we’re still no closer to knowing who some of the survivors even are through the finale. Nor does it fully explore the one unique facet about this outbreak tale. “ All of Us Are Dead “ plays like its infected, an aimless and unfocused representation of frothing rage that targets anything and everything in its path without structure.

Netflix releases “All of Us Are Dead” on January 28, 2022.

Horror journalist, RT Top Critic, and Critics Choice Association member. Co-Host of the Bloody Disgusting Podcast. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon and SeriesFest.

“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product

‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.

“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”

American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby , no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.

It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur , is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.

This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”

“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female , rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion . It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.

American Horror Story Season 12 Episode 8 Cora In Cloak

“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffe r – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.

To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes . It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.

“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.

Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”

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REVIEW: All of Us Are Dead

TV show reviews
April 4, 2022
10,734 views
By Aaron Jones

Last Updated on April 4, 2022

Korean zombie series All of Us Are Dead is yet another example of brilliant television from South Korea. The 12 episodes follow a group of high school students in Hyosan as they fight to survive in a city overwhelmed by zombies.

All of Us Are Dead is refreshing in that it links the effect of the virus to a person’s cruelty and will to survive. Bullies such as Gwi-nam survive death multiple times through their sheer will to be cruel whilst others keep a semblance of their humanity to save those they love. It’s an interesting spin on a genre that we all know so well and adds an extra layer to the series. The series shines a lot on the choices that humans make in times of great distress. There are difficult decisions being made throughout the series and it is tough to separate the show from the recent pandemic. Those in power are given options and know that whichever ones they choose, many people will die. Survivor’s guilt becomes a huge point in the series because of this and it is one that All of Us Are Dead handles better than many shows and it has you feeling sympathy for characters who perhaps made choices that you wouldn’t have agreed with.

All of Us Are Dead is a thrilling zombie series full of brutal and violent scenes involving characters who are all so human. Whilst not hitting the heights of the amazing Squid Game, the series is still an excellent piece of television that fans of the zombie genre will devour like the tastiest of brains. Here’s to hoping that there’s a second season!

Aaron Jones

Aaron S. Jones is the author of Memories of Blood and Shadow, and The Broken Gods trilogy. He is Head of School at a school in Kent, UK and when he is not tearing his hair out at students struggling with their, they're and there, he is tearing his hair out as he dies for the thousandth time on Elden Ring. You can find him on Twitter @HereticASjones where he is most likely procrastinating for hours at a time instead of focusing on his Orc murder mystery.

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All Of Us Are Dead Review: A Moving Zombie Drama High On Heart & Emotions Portraying Way More Than Just Bloody Violence

Watch it if you haven’t already. emotions are at their peak and so are the bloodthirsty zombies, save yourselves.

Cast: Park Ji-hu, Yoon Chan-young, Cho Yi-hyun, Lomon as Lee Su-hyeok, Yoo In-soo as Yoon Gwi-nam and ensemble

Creator: Chun Sung-il

Director: J.Q. Lee and Kim Nam-Soo.

Streaming On: Netflix

Language: Korean (with subtitles).

Runtime: 12 Episodes Around 1 Hour Each

All Of Us Are Dead Review: What’s It About:

In the Korean town of Hyosan, a high-school girl is bitten by a lab rat in the school science lab. Lesser does she know that the rat was injected with a virus. Soon she transforms into an aggressive beast wanting to eat any human that comes in the way (a zombie actually, but there is a more evolved explanation for it). Soon enough she breaks the virus breaks loose and engulfs the entire town leading to a doomsday.

All Of Us Are Dead Review: What Works:

The only zombie drama that ever felt complete in all senses to me was Train To Busan . I might have missed a better one, but I also know this movie will always have a special place in my heart. The Walking Dead that started quite impressively took a rather disappointing turn. All Of Us Are Dead that brings heart to a story that has monsters without it ruling the city, somewhere sits near the former.

Of course, the majority of them are heartless beasts crawling around the town, but at the same time their existence is not a result of some thoughtless experiment performed in a lab by privileged to create weapons for their gains. Rather it is more personal and humane. The show that streams on Netflix is based on Naver webtoon, Now at Our School, by Joo Dong-geun.

While it follows all the traits of the zombie dramas and does complete justice to the genre at the core of it talks about the regressive culture of bullying. The purpose that the creator creates the virus in the first place is to give his son the confidence. Reason, the poor chap is a shy boy who has been brutally bullied in his school. The aim is to give him the rage so he could protect himself.

It is about a father who wants his son to be strong but ends up creating a monster of a situation. And it’s not just him, but several other suffering bullying in the school. Writer Seong-il Cheon who adapts the show for screen, while building the zombie world makes sure the core reason why the virus was created stays with you till the end. For this the makers introduce the idea of mutation and how some with higher immunity will control the virus in their body and become stronger.

With this, they make a bully and some bullied stronger. So while the living are fighting the moving corpses, there is also a war between the victim and the culprit, only the victims are also equally strong this time. Remember when I said the show is humane? This is what I meant. The conflict here isn’t just to entertain your spooky senses, but also to move you emotionally.

The 12 episode show has more to present than just violence, zombies, flesh, and blood. While bullying is the main conflict, the background of the show is richer. There are conflicts that are personal. Be it the choice to go out and find a missing friend or save their own lives. Or be it watching their dear one turn into zombies and also hitting them at one point.

Amid all of this, there is a deep social commentary. Lee Yoo-mi plays a girl who comes from the privileged class, one that lives in a plush society. She believes she deserves the biggest and the first share of everything, because she is upper class. She makes fun, rather insults a boy who belongs to the have nots and is studying on welfare funds. But at the same time she is also a victim of bullying too. But that doesn’t make her any empathetic or less greedy.

There are many layers to All Of Us Are Dead and just calling a zombie drama doesn’t do justice. There is a school trying to keep its image clean, a father trying the save his daughter no matter what, two teens in love and the triangles that are formed. Dig in and explore it.

Set designs, prosthetics and camera work are all top notch and there is not single bad bone in the technical department.

All Of Us Are Dead Review: Star Performance:

The show brings ahead some of the most phenomenal young actors from the Korean scene. The show cannot be created if any actor thinks only about their performances, and you can see the group acting together and supporting each other all the time.

Park Ji-hu and Yoon Chan-young get the maximum screen time. The chemistry they share brings a layer of coming of age to the show. There is love but unsaid and they don’t even realise that. The complexities due to the same increase and creates a love story amid the apocalypse. But it never geos overboard and that is what is good. The two actor are amazing.

Cho Yi-hyun as Nam-ra goes through a complete transformation. She is one of the strong one mentioned above and she has to portray a range of emotions. Not just as human, she also has to fight the half zombie in her and bring those emotions on her face. The actor does an effortless job.

Lomon who plays Lee Su-hyeok being the seriousness to the drama. He is the boy every girl dreams to date in the high school, but that is never something that bothers the guy. Lomon plays this part like he knows Lee. He fights for his friends, saves people and doesn’t let the bad guys have their day. His chemistry with Yoon Chan-young is beautiful and their conflict at one point creates good drama.

All Of Us Are Dead Review: What’s Doesn’t Work:

There is a girl who is expecting and delivers A baby but you never looks in her advance stage. Meanwhile, she quickly turns into a zombie after delivering the baby and not much about her is known. Her sacrifice is huge and highly moving, she stayed with me through out and I expected her story was told to us in a deeper way.

All Of Us Are Dead Review: Last Words:

It is one of its kind apocalypse horror genre show. There is more than what meets the eye and the heart is at the right place. Watch it if you haven’t already. Emotions are at their peak and so are the bloodthirsty zombies, save yourselves!

Fan of thrillers? Read our Only Murders In The Building Review here!

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All of Us Are Dead is the show I wish The Walking Dead was

Just because the zombies are dead doesn’t mean they can’t have feelings

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A girl crouching down while a zombie leans into her face

The last decade has been absolutely incredible for zombie representation. The undead community — largely voiceless thanks to decomposed vocal chords — has been the unrelenting focus of one of the most expansive television franchises in recent memory, The Walking Dead . To date, 274 Walking Dead episodes have aired across the main series and two spin-offs, with new series on the way and plenty of episodes to come. It is an incredible achievement and also a suffocating one: any new zombie-themed show must work hard to step out of The Walking Dead ’s long shadow. Fortunately, All of Us Are Dead , Netflix’s popular K-Drama import about a zombie outbreak in a Korean high school, pulls it off with a simple trick: It’s not so damn mean .

This doesn’t mean All of Us Are Dead is toothless. It’s a violent, brutal story where the classmates of Hyosan High School’s Class 2-5 slowly watch their friends and teachers turn monstrous and do horrible things to one another. Its large cast (which eventually sprawls to include people from all of Hyosan) allows it to focus on what, specifically, is lost in such a disaster, and what is worth preserving. Through character-focused writing and a strong focus on how its cast relates to each other, All of Us Are Dead never loses its focus on people — even after they turn to zombies.

Focused on the very start of the outbreak, All of Us Are Dead kicks off its zombie apocalypse in a fairly typical fashion. Student Kim Hyeon-ju (Jung Yi-seo) discovers a mouse in the science lab that was experimented on by mysterious and standoffish science teacher Lee Byeong-chan (Kim Byung-chul). When it bites her, the clock starts ticking on the high school around her — and Hyosan as a whole.

Students barricading themselves against zombies with a pile of desks

Much of what follows is rather formulaic, but what zombie story isn’t? Students and teachers are rapidly infected. Some are cowardly and unwilling to help. Students who realize what’s happening (this is — thank God — a show where people know what zombies are, and even name-drop Train to Busan ) begin to suspect their friends who may have been bitten. Emergency personnel succumb to the horde. The plague spreads.

All of Us Are Dead commits to making all these familiar aspects exciting: There’s a physicality to the camerawork and choreography that provides plenty of holy-shit moments, both thanks to fight scenes (the more athletic students of Hyosan High School are very happy to beat the hell out of some zombies) and gory horror, and while it’s wide scope does get a little too wide at times, sprawling outward into Hyosan proper let’s the series loosen up and introduce some variety.

All of this is ancillary, though. What All of Us Are Dead spends most of its time on is relationships. How Na-yeon (Lee Yoo-mi), in the privilege and arrogance that comes from wealth, is more likely to tear others down than help them survive. Or how Su-hyeok (Lomon), a former delinquent without much academic prospects, secretly crushes on Nam-ra (Cho Yi-hyun), the class president.

The series layers in these relationships, flashing back to moments they were bullied, petty cruelties and small kindnesses, acts that reverberate into the present, making this apocalypse a very specific one for these characters.

A group of students in All of Us Are Dead looking shocked

This focus on character gives All of Us Are Dead a different moral texture than shows in The Walking Dead mold. The former illustrates the fundamental human desire to cooperate in times of crisis, and how unkindness and a lack of empathy in everyday life can rot and make that necessary cooperation difficult. The Walking Dead ’s moral universe — with its endless parade of groups that turn to depravity in order to survive, and its constant redrawing of ethical lines — is a fundamentally mean one, where might frequently makes right. It’s a prepper fantasy uninterested in society or culture, and while there have been exceptions (the fifth season of spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead is specifically built around characters trying to help others) the franchise never overcomes the bleakness of its season 1 revelation that the eponymous Walking Dead is everyone. Its zombie plague is in all of us, waiting for death to turn humans into something else.

All of Us Are Dead takes its time revealing the specifics of how its zombie virus works, but it makes its take on the metaphor clear early on: It’s what happens when the will to survive isn’t tempered by humanity, and the natural endpoint of casual cruelty on every level — from school bullies to uncaring bureaucrats in government. It’s a show that argues that we should root for the living, because maybe we’ve forgotten how.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Dead Poets Society — Review Of The Film Dead Poet Society

Dead Poets Society: Film Review and Analysis

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All of Us Are Dead summary and ending explained

All of Us Are Dead is a zombie horror series that revolves around a district in South Korea that is plagued by a deadly virus that turns all the infected into mindless monsters and the high school that serves as ground zero of this pandemic.

Lee Byeong Chan (Byeong-cheol Kim) is a genius scientist and substitute teacher at the Hyosan high school where his son is a victim of constant bullying. When his son tries to commit suicide, he begins to experiment on him to find some way for his son to fight back which leads him to create the Jonas virus.

One day at school, a student gets bitten by a hamster that was part of Byeong Chan’s experiments. He initially restrains her but she escapes and goes back to her class before she’s taken to the infirmary. They contact an ambulance but before she is transported, she happens to bite the school doctor and spreads the virus.

Slowly but surely the students and teachers of the school get infected and begin to go crazy while the patient zero who was taken to the hospital starts to spread the virus in the city at an alarming rate.

A group of students take shelter in the science lab and try to get their heads around what is happening. Byeong Chan has been taken in by the police and is being questioned by detective Song Jae Ik (Kyoo-hyung Lee). Byeong Chan tells him that once the virus begins to spread, there is no hope for anyone.

The children in the science lab decide that they can’t stay there much longer and use a water hose to climb down from the outside. They go two floors down to the broadcasting room where they meet their teacher, Mrs Park (Lee Sang-hee). They have to fight off a zombie that follows them and in the aftermath,

He pleads his innocence but still agrees to isolate himself to prove it. Na-yeon (Lee Yoo-mi) who was the most suspicious of the group is told to apologise but instead, she intentionally infects him wiping an open wound of his with zombie blood. After this interaction, the group lost three members.

Firefighter Nam So-ju (Jeon Bae-soo) is called to rescue an assemblywoman but he’s more focused on rescuing his daughter, Nam On-jo (Park Ji-hoo) from the school. After being convinced to hold off on his decision, he gets the order to wait for the rescue chopper until the next day. They make arrangements to spend the night.

Two of the students, Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young) and Soo-hyuk (Park Solomon) decide to climb down to the teacher’s lounge and get a hold of a phone. They manage to get the phone but Cheong-san is blocked off and has to run the other way. The infected have breached the police compound and Byeong Chan tells the detective that the only possible answer is on his laptop at the school.

He then sacrifices his own life to save the detective. Martial Law has been declared in the area and Jae Ik has to get to the emergency centre and tell them about Byeong Chan and his laptop.

Cheong-san catches Gwi-nam (Yoo In-soo) murdering the principal and then tries to escape from his grasp while also avoiding the zombies. After stabbing Gwi-nam in the eye, Cheong-san watches as he is overwhelmed by the zombies. He manages to get to the music room and barricaded himself there.

The others in the broadcast room find out where Cheong-san is with the help of a drone and then hatch a plan to get up to him with the help of the school speakers. They lure the zombies to one side of the school and rush up the other. Soo-hyuk and Nam-ra (Cho Yi-hyun) are held up by Gwi-nam who bites Nam-ra before being pushed out the window.

The others are worried about Nam-ra but Soo-hyuk insists she won’t turn because Gwi-nam wasn’t acting like a zombie. So-ju breaks out of the quarantine camp so that he can head to his daughter’s school and rescue her.

The students decide to head up to the roof in the hopes of being rescued so they come up with a plan to build a barrier in the middle and lure the zombies in using sound. Once all the zombies are in, they escape out the other side of the room and head up to the roof. They manage to get up there too late as the rescue helicopter that had flown leaves before seeing them.

Jae ik comes across a deserted baby, a scared little girl and a stranded social media influencer on his journey towards the quarantine camp. The commandeer a bus and make their way across the city. They run into Eun-ji (Oh Hye-soo) who is one of the infected students who doesn’t show her symptoms like Gwi-nam and Nam-ra

They encounter a group of soldiers soon after and are immediately taken to the camp. Jae ik tells them about the laptop and the soldiers immediately send a team to the school to retrieve it. Once they secure it, they plan to rescue the students on the roof but when Eun-ji attacks someone at the camp it puts doubt into the soldier’s minds and they are ordered to leave without them.

Later that night a thunderstorm hits, allowing the students to come up with a new plan to escape the school grounds. Using the chaos of the storm, they make their way to the auditorium where they come across another group of survivors but are once again pinned down in a room.

The next morning, they figure out a way to create a barrier around them using the steel trolleys so that they can make it to the back door and escape. They make it to the other end where So-ju happens to show up and get them out of a tricky situation but not without more losses.

The military realises that there is no real cure for this virus and begin to consider more drastic solutions to counter this plague.

So-ju ushers them towards the mountains and sacrifices himself to help them escape. They reach the nearby construction space but are once again pinned down by the zombies. The military decides to gather all the zombies into 4 major zones and bomb those regions. They use drones emitting sound at a certain frequency to attract all of them there.

Gwi-nam does not give up in his chase for Cheong-san to take revenge. He ultimately takes a bit of Cheong-san and is then pushed off the side of the building. Cheong-san sacrifices himself as bait while the others escape out into the forest. The military drops the bombs and sends the army in to clear out the rest.

If you have any more questions regarding the final episode, read on below.

Here is the ending of All of Us Are Dead explained in detail (Episode 12):

It’s quiet in the streets.

The students are still in the forest the next morning with one of them being injured from the fall out of the explosion. They decide to head out towards the mountains but end up going in circles.

While walking around, they notice a yellow marker tied on one of the trees. They begin to follow a trail of them when On-jo catches a glimpse of a flashlight. With her father’s name on it, she realises that he was the one that tied these markers.

They’re led back into the streets of Hyosan rather than the neighbouring city and they encounter empty streets without any signs of life among them. Nam-ra begins to hear some zombies approaching and tells them all to run.

One final stand

The students are fed up of running and decide to stay and fight. They grab whatever they can find to use and weapons and embrace the oncoming swarm.

A battle ensues and the students do a decent job of holding them off with some superhuman help from Nam-ra. They lose yet another member of their group but carry on in hopes of finding a safe haven. Nam-ra begins to feel herself turn and give into the virus so she splits away from the group. On-jo and Soo-hyuk run after her and try to convince her to come with them but she cannot control herself so she refuses. The students finally make it to a checkpost and are rescued and taken into the quarantine camp.

Hope for the future

After spending months in the camp, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of the people of Hyosan being released. On-jo makes regular trips outside to a shrine she made dedicated to the friends she lost.

One day while she is out there, she sees a fire lit on the roof of their school. She tells Soo-hyuk and the plan to go there the next night. Soo-hyuk tells the others and the whole group make the journey out to the remains of their school.

When they reach the roof, they see a small campfire burning bright. On-jo says that it’s probably Nam-ra and that’s when Nam-ra shows up. She tells them that there are other’s like her in the city who need help and that she will always remember the friends she made but she can’t go back with them.

She then jumps off the rooftop after saying goodbye to the others, possibly for one last time. That is where the season ends.

Also Read: In From the Cold summary and ending explained

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All Of Us Are Dead Is Worth Watching (If You Don't Mind Its One Big Problem)

Netflix's "All of Us Are Dead" has done quite well for itself. The South Korean zombie series currently has a very respectable rating from audiences and critics alike on Rotten Tomatoes . But of course, hype doesn't necessarily translate to quality programming, and the above strengths don't always cut it for all viewers. At the r/netflix subreddit, u/Pariyama asked, rather straightforwardly, "Is 'All of Us Are Dead' really good?" Their comment mentioned that they had watched the first episode but hadn't been impressed. "I hoped the show would be more similar to the comic," they wrote, "And my boyfriend already disliked the love triangle and assuming female lead and I can't help but to agree." They then asked if the series gets better or if it's mostly just hype.

If the popularity of "All of Us Are Dead" is indeed simply down to the hype, then it's not difficult to understand why. There's certainly a novelty to setting a zombie story in a high school — though it increasingly branches out into the surrounding city. The specificity of the in-universe rules — that they aren't technically zombies, but rather are infected with a virus that removes people's fears and sends them into a blood-thirsty rage — also makes for a fun watch. And of course, there's plenty of blood and ultraviolence and exciting action. Still, a fun premise doesn't necessarily translate into an airtight series. At least not in everyone's view.

Fans feel the writing isn't up to snuff

There are without a doubt notable differences between the webcomic — originally titled "Now at Our School" — and the TV remake, from some characters' personalities, who infects who, and even some notable differences in how the plague starts to spread. Granted, divergence from the original source doesn't by itself make a film or TV show bad on its own terms. But the dissatisfaction with the love triangle and the protagonists of "All of Us Are Dead" may point to deeper problems with the show's writing, and it's just one of the flaws that have fans scratching their heads .

That seems to be what other criticisms imply, as u/green9206 suggested the show would have been much tighter had it limited itself to fewer episodes. There's a similar sentiment over at r/kdramarecommends , with u/Opulescence 's comment stating that, though they enjoyed the fact that "All of Us Are Dead" was relatively merciless with character deaths, they "Found the show's usage of sudden shifts in tone from scene to scene distracting." Though only one now-deleted user specifically brought up the bad writing, the other qualms mentioned on the thread could plausibly be chalked up to either a shoddy story, lacking character development, or simply bad dialogue.

Then again, others defended "All of Us Are Dead," with some even arguing that the writing could be overlooked thanks to other strengths. Some even seem to think that the show's weaknesses hold a certain kind of charm. "A solid 6/10, some scenes entertain," wrote u/Tough-Train-4825 , "and some scenes are just fun to hate-watch while you boil in frustration."

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All of Us Are Dead... Review

I was in school around the time that zombie media began to blow up. Left 4 Dead was the co-op game to play with friends. The Last of Us was leaving a lasting impact on my classmates, and everyone in school would talk about the most recent episode of The Walking Dead . The multiplayer survival genre was making waves across the internet thanks to the rise of games like DayZ . We all had our plans for what we would do if a zombie apocalypse happened. It’s a medium that hasn’t seen much love recently, so when I came across All Of Us Are Dead… and was offered the chance to relive my teenage dreams of dealing with a zombie apocalypse in school, I was eager to revisit a part of my childhood that I haven’t given much thought to for a long time.

All of Us Are Dead… is a Korean visual novel set within the fictional school of Hyosan High and is most widely known for the Netflix series adaptation released in 2022. In reality, All of Us Are Dead… started as a webtoon in 2009, and the visual novel brought to us by IKINAGAMES offers a faithful retelling of the original story from 15 years ago, complete with various endings and new insights into elements of the story that have been previously untouched in other adaptations.

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Just a guy that loves to write :)

All of Us Are Dead...

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On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor

Over 16 songs (and a second LP), the pop superstar litigates her recent romances. But the themes, and familiar sonic backdrops, generate diminishing returns.

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A black-and-white close-up of a woman with light hair tilting her head and bringing one hand to her face.

By Lindsay Zoladz

If there has been a common thread — an invisible string, if you will — connecting the last few years of Taylor Swift’s output, it has been abundance.

Nearly 20 years into her career, Swift, 34, is more popular and prolific than ever, sating her ravenous fan base and expanding her cultural domination with a near-constant stream of music — five new albums plus four rerecorded ones since 2019 alone. Her last LP, “Midnights” from 2022, rolled out in multiple editions, each with its own extra songs and collectible covers. Her record-breaking Eras Tour is a three-and-a-half-hour marathon featuring 40-plus songs, including the revised 10-minute version of her lost-innocence ballad “All Too Well.” In this imperial era of her long reign, Swift has operated under the guiding principle that more is more.

What Swift reveals on her sprawling and often self-indulgent 11th LP, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is that this stretch of productivity and commercial success was also a tumultuous time for her, emotionally. “I can read your mind: ‘She’s having the time of her life,’” Swift sings on “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” a percolating track that evokes the glitter and adoration of the Eras Tour but admits, “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting ‘more.’” And yet, that’s exactly what she continues to provide, announcing two hours after the release of “Poets” that — surprise! — there was a second “volume” of the album, “The Anthology,” featuring 15 additional, though largely superfluous, tracks.

Gone are the character studies and fictionalized narratives of Swift’s 2020 folk-pop albums “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The feverish “Tortured Poets Department” is a full-throated return to her specialty: autobiographical and sometimes spiteful tales of heartbreak, full of detailed, referential lyrics that her fans will delight in decoding.

Swift doesn’t name names, but she drops plenty of boldfaced clues about exiting a long-term cross-cultural relationship that has grown cold (the wrenching “So Long, London”), briefly taking up with a tattooed bad boy who raises the hackles of the more judgmental people in her life (the wild-eyed “But Daddy I Love Him”) and starting fresh with someone who makes her sing in — ahem — football metaphors (the weightless “The Alchemy”). The subject of the most headline-grabbing track on “The Anthology,” a fellow member of the Tortured Billionaires Club whom Swift reimagines as a high school bully, is right there in the title’s odd capitalization: “thanK you aIMee.”

At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. The opener, “Fortnight,” a pulsing, synth-frosted duet with Post Malone, is chilly and controlled until lines like “I love you, it’s ruining my life” inspire the song to thaw and glow. Even better is the chatty, radiant title track , on which Swift’s voice glides across smooth keyboard arpeggios, self-deprecatingly comparing herself and her lover to more daring poets before concluding, “This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots.” Many Swift songs get lost in dense thickets of their own vocabulary, but here the goofy particularity of the lyrics — chocolate bars, first-name nods to friends, a reference to the pop songwriter Charlie Puth ?! — is strangely humanizing.

Taylor Swift’s New Album Reviewed

For all its sprawl, though, “The Tortured Poets Department” is a curiously insular album, often cradled in the familiar, amniotic throb of Jack Antonoff’s production. ( Aaron Dessner of the National, who lends a more muted and organic sensibility to Swift’s sound, produced and helped write five tracks on the first album, and the majority of “The Anthology.”) Antonoff and Swift have been working together since he contributed to her blockbuster album “1989” from 2014, and he has become her most consistent collaborator. There is a sonic uniformity to much of “The Tortured Poets Department,” however — gauzy backdrops, gently thumping synths, drum machine rhythms that lock Swift into a clipped, chirping staccato — that suggests their partnership has become too comfortable and risks growing stale.

As the album goes on, Swift’s lyricism starts to feel unrestrained, imprecise and unnecessarily verbose. Breathless lines overflow and lead their melodies down circuitous paths. As they did on “Midnights,” internal rhymes multiply like recitations of dictionary pages: “Camera flashes, welcome bashes, get the matches, toss the ashes off the ledge,” she intones in a bouncy cadence on “Fresh Out the Slammer,” one of several songs that lean too heavily on rote prison metaphors. Narcotic imagery is another inspiration for some of Swift’s most trite and head-scratching writing: “Florida,” apparently, “is one hell of a drug.” If you say so!

That song , though, is one of the album’s best — a thunderous collaboration with the pop sorceress Florence Welch, who blows in like a gust of fresh air and allows Swift to harness a more theatrical and dynamic aesthetic. “Guilty as Sin?,” another lovely entry, is the rare Antonoff production that frames Swift’s voice not in rigid electronics but in a ’90s soft-rock atmosphere. On these tracks in particular, crisp Swiftian images emerge: an imagined lover’s “messy top-lip kiss,” 30-something friends who “all smell like weed or little babies.”

It would not be a Swift album without an overheated and disproportionately scaled revenge song, and there is a doozy here called “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” which bristles with indignation over a grand, booming palette. Given the enormous cultural power that Swift wields, and the fact that she has played dexterously with humor and irony elsewhere in her catalog, it’s surprising she doesn’t deliver this one with a (needed) wink.

Plenty of great artists are driven by feelings of being underestimated, and have had to find new targets for their ire once they become too successful to convincingly claim underdog status. Beyoncé, who has reached a similar moment in her career, has opted to look outward. On her recently released “Cowboy Carter,” she takes aim at the racist traditionalists lingering in the music industry and the idea of genre as a means of confinement or limitation.

Swift’s new project remains fixed on her internal world. The villains of “The Tortured Poets Department” are a few less famous exes and, on the unexpectedly venomous “But Daddy I Love Him,” the “wine moms” and “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best” who cluck their tongues at our narrator’s dating decisions. (Some might speculate that these are actually shots at her own fans.) “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is probably the most satisfyingly vicious breakup song Swift has written since “All Too Well,” but it is predicated on a power imbalance that goes unquestioned. Is a clash between the smallest man and the biggest woman in the world a fair fight?

That’s a knotty question Swift might have been more keen to untangle on “Midnights,” an uneven LP that nonetheless found Swift asking deeper and more challenging questions about gender, power and adult womanhood than she does here. It is to the detriment of “The Tortured Poets Department” that a certain starry-eyed fascination with fairy tales has crept back into Swift’s lyricism. It is almost singularly focused on the salvation of romantic love; I tried to keep a tally of how many songs yearningly reference wedding rings and ran out of fingers. By the end, this perspective makes the album feel a bit hermetic, lacking the depth and taut structure of her best work.

Swift has been promoting this poetry-themed album with hand-typed lyrics, sponsored library installations and even an epilogue written in verse. A palpable love of language and a fascination with the ways words lock together in rhyme certainly courses through Swift’s writing. But poetry is not a marketing strategy or even an aesthetic — it’s a whole way of looking at the world and its language, turning them both upside down in search of new meanings and possibilities. It is also an art form in which, quite often and counter to the governing principle of Swift’s current empire, less is more.

Sylvia Plath once called poetry “a tyrannical discipline,” because the poet must “go so far and so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poets Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.

Taylor Swift “The Tortured Poets Department” (Republic)

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .

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‘Abigail’ Review: Melissa Barrera And Dan Stevens Battle Dracula’s Child In Cheeky Vampire Flick

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Not to be confused with killer doll movies like Annabelle, this young girl is such a seemingly innocent budding ballerina it comes as a shock to see her whole-hog transformation into daddy’s little demon later in the film. Alisha Weir , morphing into the most terrifying child since Linda Blair got an Oscar nomination for doing it in 1973’s The Exorcist, is the title star who becomes the victim of a kidnapping plot by a group of badass, but kinda dumb, criminals enlisted by Lambert ( Giancarlo Esposito , in for a couple of scenes), who has been hired to bring them together by an unseen but fearsome crime boss in order to snatch Abigail and demand a $50 million ransom to be paid by her very wealthy father. The job goes relatively easy as they infiltrate the family mansion and steal her away to a deserted, gothic-like house while awaiting payment for the gig. But as they will soon learn this is no ordinary job. “I am so sorry for what is about to happen to you,” Abigail innocently says at one point to one of her clueless kidnappers.

Watching this unfold I kept thinking of Agatha Christie’s endlessly copied and remade And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians ), and sure enough later in the movie the screenwriters, Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, do indeed reference that inspiration quite literally. Any casual moviegoer knows when you gather a group of strangers in a dilapidated mansion, one by one they are going to be goners. It is just a matter of time — and how. After a lot of bickering between them, plus the discovery that Abigail is no ordinary little ballerina, we start to see some imaginative, bloodcurdling sequences, and the movie earns it stripes in the genre; this is definitely hard-R horror. Of course, with Frank leading the resistance, they turn on each other in a bid to survive as Abigail shows she inherited the family genes and talent for sucking the blood out of their misbegotten plans while at the same time niftily shows off her balletic talents in dispensing with this crowd.

Although I have been getting weary of the same old tropes used in so many horror films of late, the endless parade of sequels doing basically the same thing, Abigail is actually a lot of fun, perhaps part of its inspiration coming for a lesser-known 1936 Universal classic, Dracula’s Daughter, but still a completely different storyline than that one. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (aka Radio Silence), who managed to freshen up the tired Scream franchise over the last two installments and are also responsible for the original Ready Or Not, show a real flair for injecting humor and horror in equal doses into the proceedings and really keep this thing building to the inevitable crescendo required of such a premise. Short of giving this material to a genius like Guillermo del Toro, they do a fine job in bringing it all to life, helped enormously by Brian Tyler’s sensational Grand Guignol-style score.

You can see why Stevens, an otherwise serious actor, might want to take on a gonzo role like Frank as he completely devours it without a worry that too much is, uh, too much. Barrera, who worked with the directors on Scream, shows she also has the chops for this sort of thing. Newton is pure fun, as is Durand who gets some of the best lines. Cloud has the real nutso character but sadly is out of the film much too early, though it’s enough to shows the potential the Euphoria star had for creating some out-there characters. Gone way too soon. The film is dedicated to him.

Producers are William Sherak, James Vanderbilt, Paul Neinstein, Tripp Vinson and Chad Villella (the latter also part of Radio Silence).

Title: Abigail Distributor: Universal Release date: April 19, 2024 Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett Screenwriters: Stephen Shields and Guy Busick Cast: Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Alisha Weir, Giancarlo Esposito, Matthew Goode Rating: R Running time: 1 hr 49 min

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