By Anika Singh ’24
Staff Writer
Graphic by Jieru Ye '23
Netflix’s horror series “All Of Us Are Dead” is a thrilling, adrenaline-fueled saga of zombie chaos. Based on Joo Dong-Geun’s 2009 Korean webtoon, “Now at Our School,” “All of Us Are Dead” follows the outbreak of a zombie virus at a high school in Hyosan, South Korea. “All Of Us Are Dead” is an action-packed thriller that successfully strikes a balance between gore and the exploration of deeper themes of love, friendship and loss.
The show ties together four separate storylines. The first two focus on the students stuck at Hyosan High School, introducing On-jo (Park Ji-hu) and Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young), childhood best friends who are part of a small group of students attempting to escape several zombie attacks. In true high school fashion, this group also includes On-jo’s crush, Su-hyeok (Park Solomon), and Su-hyeok’s crush, Nam-ra (Cho Yi-hyun). This configuration makes for awkward tension between the characters and emphasizes that, even in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, their day-to-day teenage problems won’t just disappear.
On the other end of the school’s campus, two high school seniors, archer Ha-ri (Ha Seung-ri) and delinquent Mi-jin (Lee Eun-saem), shoot arrows through the zombies, all the while worrying about getting into college amid these strange circumstances. The show manages to seamlessly intersect these two storylines despite their differing locations within the school. For these characters, the common denominator is survival.
The third storyline follows police detective Jae-ik (Lee Kyu-hyung), who questions the science teacher who invented the virus about the increasing threat of deadly monsters. When the science teacher discloses that there might be a possible cure for the virus, Jae-ik returns to the high school to retrieve the supposed cure and stop the spread. As he attempts to find the cure, the fourth storyline begins, mainly focusing on the military’s response to the zombie crisis.
“All Of Us Are Dead” won’t disappoint fans of gore. As the episodes progress, and the city is overrun by the undead creatures, the zombies get scarier and scarier. In its first episode, the show provides ample action and gore as the very first cases of the virus arrive at the high school. The zombies show no mercy, biting off limbs, stomachs and intestines. By the end of the first episode, “All Of Us Are Dead” manages to introduce the main characters and tease at the coming plot, all the while providing a promising thrill of action.
Episode to episode, the series is fairly successful at building tension through consistent elevation of stakes. One of the most hair-raising scenes occurs at the end of the first episode, as the virus spreads throughout the city. As students and teachers try to escape from the undead, whose numbers seem to be increasing every second, pandemonium ensues. Throughout the show, the survivors aim to observe the zombies’ behavior and find their weaknesses in an effort to escape and make it out alive, but the zombies seem to catch on to the group’s plan. As the group loses its members to the zombie herd, a bone-chilling transformation scene occurs, complete with eyes reddening and bones ricketing. To add to the students’ problems, the virus finds new ways to mutate, creating an entire breed of human-appearing zombies who are bloodthirsty and brutally strong. As the stakes of the outbreak constantly compound, the show invites the viewer to feel the tension build alongside these characters.
Alongside its thrills, “All Of Us Are Dead” develops compelling relationships as the apocalypse worsens. With the apocalypse upon them, Cheong-San and On-jo seem to be stuck in an undefined relationship filled with denial and yearning. The show also explores the love between Su-hyeok and Nam-ra as they confess their feelings for one another. The introduction of these dynamics makes it easier to root for the characters as it provides light-hearted and positive themes during a dark, depressing time.
“All of Us are Dead” does not necessarily focus on themes of love and friendship, but instead treats them as a byproduct of deadly experiences. The students, now depending on each other for survival, must reckon with the emotional reality of losing their families and friends. While the show has a light-hearted side to it, the deaths of the students’ families and the realization that they might be the only ones alive creates a tinge of sadness.
Overall, the show highlights the incompetence of powerful institutions, such as the government and the military, during times of crisis. The fictional government within the story struggles to have a uniform response to the disaster, while the military desperately takes extreme actions — such as mass violence — to contain it. Each student echoes the sentiment that the adults have failed them, as they are certain that there is no help on the way. In one scene, the group of survivors finds a tape recorder and records themselves in case they don’t make it out alive. Their dire states as they suffer the consequences of poor disaster management is heartbreaking to witness. “All Of Us Are Dead” does a stellar job portraying the destruction of innocence as the surviving students realize that there is no one to help them in their time of need. Such themes make the show even more heartbreaking.