-CONTAINS SPOILERS-
What is it about?
The premise is basically baseline zombie genre: chaos erupts and the end of the world looms because people turn into zombies. Zombies eat human flesh, they chase remaining uninfected people, et cetera, and you know the drill. The unique point about this show is the focus of the story on a group of high school students. It beautifully infused a social commentary about bullying, teen pregnancy, Machiavellian politics, etc. And since this pretty much is a teen flick, you get love triangles, hot and school-popular characters, nerds, annoying bullies and other stereotypical personas. The stereotypes were compensated by a well-written script though.
General Thoughts
Make-up and gore effects were amazingly executed and the zombies looked impeccably scary and convincing. The zombie movements were nuanced. The zombie-ness of the zombies on this show would probably be at par, if not better than similar popular Korean zombie flicks and shows, like Train to Busan and Kingdom. The wounds and lacerations and blood were aptly vibrantly red as the story happened right at the beginning of the spread of the virus, unlike, for example, The Walking Dead, where the zombies we first see were already several days, or weeks even, after the start of the zombie outbreak – which TWD creators also thoughtfully visualized as blackish-red splashes of blood, and malnourished-looking zombies.
Girls and gays would probably be having crushes on the dreamy looks of Lee Su-hyeok(played by Solomon Park) and boys would most like notice the pretty face of Choi Nam-ra(played by Cho Yi-hyun). Their love triangles(yes, plural) with Nam On-jo(Park Ji-hoo) and Lee Cheong-san(Chan-Young Yoon), along with each character arc, were skillfully written.
What I noticed was that I was annoyed by how slow those students were reacting to the zombies. Maybe because of their initial shock, but even so, I felt like there was a certain point where they already saw how the zombies would literally bite people’s faces off, and at that point, they should already be jumping and running away if someone was possibly being ‘zombified’ right in front of them, but they just stood there. There were also several scenes where they were just watching and standing in place while zombies were already nearby. I wanted to be them and RUN for them – that was my feeling while watching those scenes.
The finale episode was intriguing enough to make audiences look forward to the next season. For me, the major questions after watching this first season are: Why some people did not turn to half-bies(half human, half-zombies) after being bitten by half-bies, and why others did. What was the criteria? How were they different? Is Cheong-san still alive? Are there more half-bies out there, living in the restricted zones like Nam-ra? Will the zombie infection spread again?
I had a lot of fun watching this TV show. The story pacing was fast. Supporting characters were memorable, and their roles fitted nicely into the overall plot. The visual effects were also clean and masterful, especially the school bombing and explosion scenes.
Rating
5 out of 5 stars
Photo courtesy: teenvogue.com
