All of Us Are Dead (2022)

All of Us Are Glad That It's Over

I felt pretty strongly that I wouldn't enjoy "All of us are dead" from the trailer, but I decided to stomach it after really enjoying Park Solomon's acting with Kim Hyang-gi in "Sweet Revenge". I found his character and acting in "All of us are dead", as Lee Su-hyeok, refreshing, and probably most enjoyed the 'bromance' he had with Yoon Chan-young's character (Lee Cheong-san). Though I have to admit it wasn't a standout "WOW" performance, his character was probably the only reason i watched to the end and his acting was consistent.

As for the drama overall, my major criticisms are these:
-The writing was unfortunately really flat. There wasn't much of a plot to begin with. The only parts i found really enjoyable was the characters drop kicking zombies, and the minor internal distresses the group had.
-There were too many female damsels in distress who were intentionally written to be dumb, the main FL being a prime example.
-There's nothing to really focus on or hope for with this drama. Even one of the main conflicts with Gwi nam doesnt actually make much sense.
-The acting messed me up, more on that below.

THE ACTING:
-The acting of the main female lead, Park Ji-hu (On-jo), was completely unbearable. Everything about her acting was completely flat: her voice sounded the same whether she was happy, distressed, scared, "brave", supportive etc. Her facial expressions were worse-- in her sad scenes I could only tell she was sad by the single tear drop strategically placed on her cheek. Otherwise she almost always appeared as though she was either bored or irritated. To give the actress a tiny break, the character of On-jo herself really sucked. She was supposed to be resourceful, being a firefighter's daughter but instead she was completely useless and only saved by plot armor whenever she actually came in contact with zombies. I skipped a bunch of this character's "most impactful scenes" because the acting annoyed me so much. Literally skipped her reaction to her father's death, Cheong-san's death and parting with Nam Ra because i felt her acting literally made the scene worse. I don't know what went wrong and i dont know if i disliked the character of On-jo or the actress's portrayal of her but the outcome is the same-- i would have totally excluded this character if i could, and if she wasn't present i might actually rate this drama's acting much higher at maybe 7/10 or 6.5/10 rather than 3/10.
-What was worse for me was that the side characters did too much of a better job than this main FL, which in my opinion should never be the case. Even the actress for the archer girl Ha-Ri and actress for Mi-jin did a better job and we didn't see much of them at all.
-As a second female lead Cho Yi-hyun as Nam-Ra also did a better job as well.
-The cast's relationship with each other was really fun. If i could separate scores for acting and cast i'd give cast a 6/10 and acting a 3/10.
-I actually enjoyed Im Jae-hyuk's (Dae-su) character and felt he made some otherwise dull scenes slightly more enjoyable.
-I also felt Yoon Chan-young's (Lee Cheong-san) acting and character were decent as well but I might be biased because he was a primary zombie drop-kicker so I don't know that i cared that much about the emotional weight of his character. I still felt his portrayal of the emotional range of his character was decent.



The Good:
-The best part of this drama for me was drop-kicking zombies
-The connection of the cast with each other
-The bromance of the two male leads
-The suspense of them getting out of some situations earlier on in the series
-Letting one person in their inner group become a halfie zombie was interesting as a concept but not executed in the best way
-The camera work was largely pretty good at capturing the action in ways that feel you're right there with the characters

The Bad (just about everything else):
-The acting of the main FL was really stiff for me (i just cant get over this)
-The writing seemed to only care about tying all 1000 extra characters in with the main group of students. It wasn't tight writing.
-Why do they have 1000 extra characters? They should have focused on the main side characters.
-They really didn't need to insert romance into resting moments of the characters, it felt forced
-They wrote the female lead to not use her brain and be useless while pretending she's brave. She was a decent emotional support nearing the end but that wasn't enough to redeem this character for me.
-Killing off characters is only impactful when you know they had to die and their deaths were meaningful. Most of the character deaths were completely uncalled for (ex On-Ju's father, the archer dude, Cheong-san's mother ,the female teacher Na-yeon and many more)
-Childish sense of morality "you did bad--now you die" was repeated literally for every character-- even ones not turned into zombies, like that Chief of Defense who (SPOILER) bombed the city then took his own life. Why did they do that to his character?
-The whole Gwi nam hunting for Cheong-san thing actually made no sense, yet it was supposed to be a central part of the plot and climax, why?
-The music was trash. I literally muted some moments to escape the soundtrack at times.


Summary:
"All of Us Are Dead" was for the most part good for mindless entertainment--you could be a zombie watching it and still get the jist of it. It doesn't strive to be smart (and it isn't), it doesn't strive to be philosophical or deep (and it isn't). It's just a slightly better than mediocre bit of fun and though it wasn't high quality at all, I still moderately enjoyed it for the reason i watched it--mindless fun. Despite my moderate enjoyment I don't actually recommend it. There aren't enough redeeming points to give it above a 2 for me; still if i ever feel like I particularly don't want to use my brain while watching something I might give this a partial rewatch.

total critical rating: 2/10
mindless entertainment rating: 6/10

Read More

Fun ride...

I was initially a skeptic when I saw that this would be a series instead of a movie. Because, how long can you drag a zombie apocalypse??

Was i ever wrong! From the very first episode, I was drawn in to the world of Hyosan high school students. The series had a perfect balance of light and scary moments. Comedic lines were properly timed just when you need a break from the heavy, adrenaline pumping, zombie chases.

But what I really liked about this, was the valid reason why the Professor invented the virus in the first place. The viewers were not left to wonder as to why these zombies came about. Unlike The Walking Dead, wherein no explanation was given as to their presence.

I still have a few episodes left, but I am wishing for another season already....

Read More

Poorly written, filler characters, unnecessary scenes.

Let me start by saying I'm a fan of the genre, and I really like Kingdom.
I was looking forward to this serie, and was very excited when I saw the trailer.

All of Us Are Dead can be quite entertaining if you just care about the gore and the adrenaline of the characters being chased by pretty fast zombies. But it has a major problem: there are too many characters and groups. None of them are interesting or developed enough for you to get attached and care about them, and there is too much stupidity happening even for a teen-centric story. It also lacks actual action in the killing zombies department.

The "hero" is likable enough and active. Some might even find his teenage awkwardness relatable. But I found a lot of his scenes with the second lead, which were meant to be humorous, extremely cringy and ridiculous. Think about this, who the hell would want to talk about "girls/boys" while standing outside of a window on the 3rd floor, with zombies everywhere? Survival instinct and urgency seems to slip their minds a lot actually.

Then is this serie supposed to be a comedy like Zombieland?
That's the thing, I don't think it's meant to be a comedy but it ends up becoming one.

Also, if you're a female viewer expecting to see a strong female heroine, I'm sorry to tell you this is one of those that only show women as dumb, useless and annoying. The one female character that has potential is hardly shown which is very disappointing.

I don't want to drop this serie yet, so I marked it as such. But I have doubts that I will be able to complete it.

Read More

Commendable yet Forgettable

I decided to drop it after three episodes. The zombie genre has been milked a thousand times before, yet this is the first time I saw an addition to the genre that utterly disregards those before it. It was frustrating just for the sake of it, so things would keep on happening. Plot devices are used numerous times in the same episode with the same results. It is not ground breaking. The cast was phenomenal. But with a questionable script, unless you have anything else to do, you might be better off watching something else. May I recommend Season 1 of Kingdom - a top-tier zombie series.

Read More

All of us are Inlove over Park Solomon?

It's actually not that bad. The story was quite amazing, the characters portrays well, and the friendship is perfect


I don't need a season 2 for this drama. It was all so satisfying for me. Perfect in every way.
This is more than just about zombies. This is about social issues, like bullying and prejudices and how social status affects how you are treated by society. It all actually started because of bullying and how it was not given importance by authorities.
In the end, everyone will be equal in a situation like this. Everyone is affected no matter your social status is. Can you save others or just yourself? Will you sacrifice others to live or will you sacrifice yourself for them to live.
Friendship may develop or enemies may be made. The decision depends on you.

Read More

If you liked Train to Busan, You will love this one.

This is a great drama. Don’t listen to people who rated it low. It was clear as glass in the trailer what to expect. I did not give it ten because the romance was really unnecessary. There wasn’t even a need for that. And also they wasted the SML. There wasn’t even a need for his role other than defending his love and kicking zombies. The ML was really good. Both FL and SFL were great too but it would’ve been so much better if they just kept SFL alone because the FL didn’t really have any part to play other than lose her loved ones. The other characters are all likeable too. This is definitely worth a rematch but I hope they will bring back the main lead again because the ending literally hinted it(kinda). So if there will ever be season 2, they can’t really take the story far with SFL alone. This is worth every hype for a zombie show. 12 hours of zombie survival mode???what more do you need!!

P.S. Ep5 is literally best episode in the whole show. 1 hour of intense zombie chasing I’ve ever seen.

Read More

Extreme highs and lows without enough heart.

I know nothing about the webtoon, but "All of Us Are Dead" being another Korean Zombie story was enough to pique my interest. The story itself feels pretty standard, with the expected tropes, yet still unique. The zombies are well done and realistically creepy, but something about this series disappoints and it was hard to put a finger on why while watching. Now that I've finished I think I understand what stopped me from loving this drama, the convoluted back story, and too many main characters that I didn't like or care about. It's hard to get invested in a zombie story if you don't care if they get eaten or not. Don't get me wrong, I loved the concept behind how the zombies were created, but that part didn't get enough focus, and I loved the school setting, but too many moments in this show seemed to drag out with too many characters that fell flat or were too stereotypical. The main one being Park Ji Hoo as Nam On Jo. Yes, she was a realistic teen, but her salty attitude throughout was more annoying than empathetic. Seeing zombies chase students gets super repetitive when you don't care enough about the people being chased.

Nam On Jo is just one of the main group of students we follow through this fast escalating zombie crisis. There's Lomon as Soo Hyeok the strong and crushworthy, Jo Yi Hyun as antisocial class President Nam Ra, and Yoon Chan Young as Chung San, my favorite character, the classic sympathetic hero. The rest of the classmates are a mix of bullies, clowns, snobs, BFFs, and assorted personalities you're likely to find in your average basic teen drama, but because things escalate so quickly some characters felt too generic to make me sympathize enough. In the middle of the chaos, we are faced with who likes who and who resents who, cliques, classism, bullying, bonding, selfishness, and insane revenge but because I didn't care enough about most of their relationships or feelings, I was left waiting for the next "event" to happen to them. I will admit that there was always an epic event on the horizon, often a pretty shocking one that kept me wanting to watch the next episode, but the time in between those events got pretty boring. Maybe I was looking for more chemistry between characters, or a stronger origin story since visually the show does an amazing job. Nothing about the acting is bad, it's just not as emotionally exciting as it was visually exciting. The story itself is definitely heavy on emotional "moments" but they left me dry-eyed when they normally wouldn't so I must partially blame the cast. Unforgettable scenes filled with mostly forgettable characters are the result. There is an extremely memorable extreme bully (with a mullet) but the rest of the cast is pretty generic. Lee Yoo Mi as Na Yeon is one of the few characters with a clear story arc, likable or not. Don't even get me started on the baby, or the little girl... too many wasted and unexplored storylines to count.

Would I watch this again, Oddly yes. I think knowing the story and characters better may make earlier scenes better too. It's a shorter series, 12 episodes, which is also a decent binge length. I also probably missed some important key things in some episodes while distracted by the shock of the zombies. This seems like the kind of drama that may make more sense with a second viewing. I would definitely be tempted to skip many scenes, especially the bio teacher's video diaries, but I know there are probably details I missed while bored. I was also satisfied with the ending, although a little disappointed that the zombie mess had no clear resolution and felt rushed to an end.

If you are a zombie fan, then this is worth watching. At least for some good and terrible zombie survival strategies. If you hate gore and violence but love a good drama, you honestly may want to skip this one. This drama is gory and dark and explores survival instincts, trust, loyalty, and is pretty high on lost faith in humanity points, but without a major throughline besides basic survival, the story is the weakest part of this drama. It is suspenseful, but the suspense is based on who will survive and who won't. There's really great 'WTH did I just watch' end of episode suspense to keep viewers hooked, but the zombie lore was pretty messy with plot holes I would have noticed more if I cared more. Some of the social commentary is pretty heavy-handed and doesn't go deep enough to feel relevant, which I think is this drama's overall issue. The Drama "Happiness" did a better job of telling a zombie survival genre and social commentary story without being too preachy... shout out for Bae Hae Sun for having to go through Zombies again! lol! Although this time her character seemed more like a glorified cameo.

Overall, "All of Us are Dead" is another Zombie drama for our times. Since this pandemic has many people questioning how we deal with a sudden crisis, and Zombie movies are a great way to explore Human Nature and Instincts, the timing of this series is perfect. What I didn't expect was a story filled with high adrenaline-inducing zombies to feel so tedious and I certainly didn't expect to have so many 'rooting for the zombies to eat someone' moments. Arguing, running, fighting, arguing, more running, and more fighting... the fight and zombie choreography is pretty epic, but I wish this drama's emotional moments matched the action. I can definitely see this being left somewhat open-ended for the possibility of a season 2, which I would watch, but not with super high expectations. Not quite overrated, but not as good as it could have been. I just know if zombies come I'm avoiding all teens. lol!

Read More

This got 8.5 and Hell bound got 7.4 ratings !!!!!

what the fuck is wrong with drama show viewers a show like this with the most annoying characters and nothing makes sense got
8.5 Ratings while a show Hellbound got 7.4 which had a very good story and great characters the scores should have been flipped. The ending to All Of Us Are Dead didn't make any sense because how was Nam Ra just fine without eating humans and didn't have any hunger AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!! I Just Can't with these ratings all the stupid shows are most rated except a few and all the good shows just do average this pisses me off
and why Didn't Nam On Jo (Main Girl) become zombie she gets bit in the first episode like what ?

Read More