The title kind of says it all but I have some good, and some mostly bad things to say about this series. I tend to enjoy Korean series a lot more than USA ones but this one actually seems like it was taking notes from USA series and employed all of them into the production of All of us are Dead and then actually even stepped up the BS a notch.
Look, it's not a bad show. I wasn't feeling well yesterday and I ended up watching 9 hours of it in a row. So yeah, it is captivating to a degree and has a really well-done production value to it. There are very few situations where the CGI looks fake - although it does look very fake at times - but for the most part I was really impressed with all of the cinematography and felt as though they used the extras in the scenes very wisely instead of simply trying to computerize a zombie mob that just ends up looking stupid.
I've been an extra in many movies. I can't even imagine how horrible it must have been for all of these background actors to be decked out in all the fake blood and sometimes even crawling on the ground. All of these scenes normally end up being filmed dozens of times and it can take all day. For the most part extras or background workers aren't even compensated very well so kudos to all of these people in the background. They are the real stars of the show here.
The show does have an unusual and I would say, more interesting take as far as the origin of the zombie virus is concerned. They do this very well and quickly in the first episode and this is how the show was able to suck me in to continue watching it. The first episode moves at a rapid pace that gives you a false impression about how the pacing for the rest of the 11 episodes are going to work unfortunately.
As the show goes on, the story starts to become less and less about the actual outbreak and more and more about the various romantic high-school relationships that are occurring inside the group of the main characters. This is fine, but sometimes it goes on for more than half of an episode. This combined with a couple of comedic relief sections that really don't serve much purpose as far as the overall story is concerned seemed a lot like filler to me.
It seriously annoys me when it appears as though series are intentionally trying to drag a story out for as long as possible and I can only presume that this happens when producers are telling writers that the story has to be 12, 1-hour long episodes. Honestly, that is entirely too much material especially when you consider the fact that most of the story takes place inside of a single 4-story high-school building.
Again, I'm not saying that the story or series is bad, I'm just saying that it is much much much longer than it needed to be and a lot longer than I would say the average person is going to find interesting. It was about the 5th time that the students had established a barricade in yet another classroom that I just started to fast forward through it all. I mean, you KNOW they are going to succeed if everyone is in the same classroom, so it really removes all intrigue and thereby, any reason for watching all of it.
By episode 4 I was fast-forwarding through quite a lot of the individual episodes.
I can't fault any of the actors or actresses, even though I don't believe I actually got a good translation on this one, which is pretty common with Netflix and their subtitles for almost all Korean series. I can only see "people clamoring" in the subtitles or someone being called a "punk" so many times in a row until I start to feel as though they are just being very basic and lazy with the translation.
I don't know what the motivation is for producers or studios to make series so much longer than they actually need to be but in the case of this one, they took a maximum of 4 hours of material (probably less than that) and stretched it out to a maddening 12 hours.
Yet again, I'm not saying that this show is bad because it isn't. As zombie outbreak shows are concerned this one at least doesn't have continuity issues nor do they break the rules that are established about the zombies at all - which is something I found exceptionally annoying about Black Summer and other zombie series like it.
Should I watch it?
I would say that if you really like zombie stuff or if you are looking for a "tween" adaptation of such a thing with lots of gore and violence then maybe you should do so. I didn't mind the romance aspect of it but I did mind that it took up so much of each episode's time and clearly was filler so that they could make each episode a full hour long.
If you are like me and have little patience for unnecessary aspects getting thrown into the plot than you should probably watch this with remote in hand. I finished the entire 1st series and understand that a 2nd is in the works as well. I can't say that I am very excited about season 2 but it kind of depends on what else exists at the time of its release. If season 2 was available right now I wouldn't bother with it as it is clear by what happens at the end of season 1 that they intend to drag this out for as long as they possibly can.
My prediction is that the popularity will wane dramatically in season 2 and it will end up being the last one.
Hopefully it has fewer episodes.
