K-dramas have been very popular worldwide in recent years. The success of these shows has prompted the Korean entertainment industry to explore many sub-genres and test out their success among audiences.
After the massive success of Train to Busan in 2016, the zombie sub-genre gained much popularity in Korean television. Many more zombie shows have been released in South Korea recently, such as Kingdom, Alive, Rampant, etc.
The recent Netflix release All of Us Are Dead garnered much attention from audiences worldwide as this show has a unique appeal to other zombie shows - zombie apocalypse in a high school setting.
The show’s plot revolves around Hyosan High School, a typical high school in a small city in South Korea. Everything is usual until a shady-looking life science teacher Lee Byeong-chan’s experiment leads to havoc.
His experiments on a zombie rodent in a science club room bite a student, the plague gradually spreads in high school, then to the whole city of Hyosan eventually.
Although Byeong-chan serves as the all-embracing antagonist of this show, the whole show’s focus isn’t on him.
A group of students who survived the zombie outbreak are the main showrunners, as the show focuses on their survival and outrunning the horrors ongoing inside their school.
Each survivor has a unique personality; some are brave enough to sacrifice their lives for their peers, while some are vindictive enough to leave their peers to die. In this ongoing catastrophe, they face the challenge of upholding their moral values as well as their struggle to survive.
Aside from the survivors, other humans around Hyosan show their sacrifices too. Park Hee-Su, a recurring character in this show, gives birth through an unwanted pregnancy in the wake of the outbreak.
Getting bitten by zombies while running through the streets of Hyosan, she decides to save her baby by tying herself so she can’t bite.
Nam So-ju, the father of one of the main survivor Nam On-jo, responsively accomplishes his first responder job to rescue certain people with many risks while he has the strong urge to save her daughter from the school first.
All of Us Are Dead also shows the spread of false information and its terrible influence on the mass populace.
Orangegibberish, an online streamer, decides to live-stream his viewers the situation in Hyosan to increase his online presence. Although his depiction of the nature and severity of the zombie outbreak was real, his audience laughs it off as being victim to the spread of false information.
Even when the whole country is in chaos due to the plague, some exploit the situation malevolently only for online attention. All these incidents resemble the real-world scenario when some fatal incidents arise.
Director Lee JQ does a great job of assimilating the zombie apocalypse with the Korean high school social dynamic scenario. Also, the attacks of the zombie horde on the survivors were anxiety-inducing and visceral to watch.
Nonetheless, All of Us Are Dead is a breath of fresh air in the zombie sub-genre K-dramas.
