Another Tasty Horror Treat From Apple

Matthew Rhys stars as Mayor Tom Loftis in Apple's Widow's Bay

Widow’s Bay is a quaint island town 40 miles off the coast of New England. But something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community. There’s no Wi-Fi, spotty cellular reception and he must contend with superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed.

He wants these people to respect him. They don’t. They think he is soft and cowardly. And he is. But Loftis is determined to build a better future for his teenage son and turn the island into a tourist destination.

Miraculously, he succeeds: tourists are finally coming. Unfortunately, the locals were right. After decades of calm, the old stories that seemed too ludicrous to be true, start happening again. Widow’s Bay blends genuine horror with character-driven comedy.

From these teases, it would appear that Widow's Bay is a delicious blend of dark humour, Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, and Twin Peaks. Possibly. Or it could be something completely different... but I look forward to finding out.

Hailing from Apple Studios, Widow’s Bay is created, showrun, executive produced and written by Katie Dippold.

Director Hiro Murai executive produces alongside Carver Karaszewski, Claudia Shin and Rhys. Murai directs five episodes this season, in addition to directors Ti West, Sam Donovan and Andrew DeYoung.

Apparently the story of Widow's Bay began as a spec script Dippold wrote for - of all things - that greatest of sitcoms Parks and Recreation. Which makes me want to watch this even more!!!

The first two episodes of the show drop in three weeks, on April 29, then the remaining eight episodes of the series will appear on subsequent Wednesdays through to June 17 (with a second double-dip on May 27).

The Uncensored Cursed Earth & The Day The Law Died

Hi. This vid product examines two very early, transformative stories in the Judge Dredd canon. It’s time to travel to the future setting of Mega-City One and have some fun poking tyranny in its stupid eye.

From Hulk To Hermit

In his first creature role since CBS’s The Incredible Hulk, global icon Lou Ferrigno returns to the screen, and steps into the horror genre for the first time, in the cannibal horror/thriller The Hermit.

Uncork’d Entertainment will release the film on Digital and On Demand platforms March 3.

In this dark horror tale with a quirky edge, Ferrigno plays a cannibalistic pig farmer who makes and sells jerky made from human flesh.

The film is also led by Malina Weissman (Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) and Anthony Turpel (Hulu’s Love, Victor), two familiar faces for younger genre fans.

This is destined to become a cult classic - either for the right reasons or the wrong ones.

I'm loving the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Halloween vibe of the set-up, but the trailer doesn't wholly convince me that they stick the landing.

But it's Lou Ferrigno...

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Antrum - The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018)

As I've said many times I have a particular weakness for stories about cursed media, such as Cigarette Burns, Archive 81, Deadwax, The Hills Run Red, etc but the conceit of these movies tends to be that we, at most, see and hear only glimpses of the cursed object while our protagonists track it down and, invariably, suffer the fate of all those who have pursued it in the past.

The unique gimmick of 2018's Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made is that we, the audience, are seeing the entire movie for ourselves, bookended by a pair of mockumentary segments, establishing the terrifying backstory and provenance of this "unique" print of a legendary 1970s Bulgarian (?) movie called Antrum that has left a trail of death in its wake.

In a sense, we are now the protagonists in the story of this artefact, "daring" to watch it despite its existential reputation.

The central movie-within-the-movie, while occasionally horrific and tense (because we keep expecting something to happen due to the manufactured reputation attached to what we are now watching), is essentially a grim, but possibly grittily mundane, nightmarish tale about a couple of children, Oralee (Nicole Tompkins) and Nathan (Rowan Smyth), on a camping trip.

The film opens with their beloved family dog, Maxine, being put down by a vet.

Nathan is traumatised by this, especially when his mother (Kristel Elling) suggests that Maxine has gone to Hell (for reasons we discover later in the film).

So Oralee hits upon the idea of taking her younger brother out into some spooky woods (clearly inspired by Japan's infamous Aokigahara forest) to dig a tunnel down to Hell to rescue the soul of Maxine.

Oralee has it all planned out as a therapeutic exercise, but her scheme goes awry as strange things start to happen and they stumble across a farm belonging to a pair of degenerate, white trash individuals (Dan Istrate and Circus-Szalewski) who like to capture people and cook them inside a giant brass effigy of Baphomet.

Although the role of the cannibals isn't particularly protracted, I still felt this was the weakest element of the film, a peculiar random encounter with shades of Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets the grisly realism of Man Bites Dog, jumbled in with the demonic terrors (imagined or otherwise) that the siblings were also contending with.

While this story on its own is a powerful thriller, with strong horror elements, the overriding unease of the film comes from what has supposedly been done to the print of Antrum that we are watching.

The documentary portions of the larger film acknowledge that there are subliminal images and symbols cut into the movie print, but there are plenty of other details (from Midsommar-style "faces" in the background of scenes to words scratched onto the negative) left for us to discover on our own, along with occasional odd jump cuts and auditory strangeness that really gets under your skin if you let it.

A puzzle box of a picture, where you find yourself searching for clues to the bigger picture while still being invested in the story of the two siblings in the woods, Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made has definite shades of The Blair Witch Project and a soupçon of additional David Lynch weirdness about it.

Actually a Canadian horror film written and directed by David Amito and Michael Laicini, Antrum deserves praise for its hardcore attempt to establish a verisimilitude around the supernatural print of this supposedly cursed movie.

If you allow yourself to buy into this, even if just for the 95 minute running time of the movie, this has the potential to stay with you for the longest time... and don't be surprised if find yourself tempted to watch it again to see if you missed anything.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Amazonia - The Catherine Miles Story (1985)

Let's get one thing cleared up straight away, Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story (aka White Slave aka Schiave bianche - Violenza in Amazzonia aka Cannibal Holocaust II) is not a well-made or well-acted film.

As an homage to the work of his fellow Italian filmmakers Rugero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi - genre movie makers of the '70s and '80s - Mario Gariazzo (as Roy Garrett) concocted the faux "true story" of an 18-year-old Westerner taken prisoner by an an indigenous tribe of headhunters when her parents are butchered on a family boat trip in the Amazon.

Delivered through the framing device of Catherine's trial for murder - once she's back in 'civilization' - the story is narrated by the titular Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray) in flashback.

In a classic example of Stockholm Syndrome, during her lengthy imprisonment in the jungle, Catherine finds herself falling for the headhunter, Umukai (Will Gonzales), that she blames for her parents' death, but then uses that to ultimately exact revenge on those responsible.

Although 'inspired' by cannibal exploitation movies, there's a disappointing lack of actual cinematic cannibalism in Amazonia; the only mention of it comes from a brief interaction with a neighbouring tribe that we are told practices the eating of human flesh.

Instead, while playing up the 'romance' angle (dig the funky music), the film tries hard to be almost educational, with Catherine often 'educating' the court proceedings with National Geographic-style nuggets of information about the lifestyle of the indigenous population.

There are a handful of moments of cheesy violence, splattered with unconvincing bright red blood and cheap practical effects, and while thankfully devoid of the grim real life slaughter of animals by humans (as happened in the original sickening Cannibal Holocaust) there are a couple of gratuitously random 'nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw' shots of a leopard attacking its prey.

There are also a couple of uncomfortable scenes of threatened sexual violence.

Make no mistake, this is grindhouse sleaze (although largely tame compared to cinema's modern excesses) of the lowest kind, peppering a forgettable script with fake blood and plenty of real nudity, selling itself as a 'cannibal horror film' yet devoid of cannibalism.

However, what almost redeems Amazonia is the plot twist that comes in about two-thirds of the way through the 90-minute movie and answers a major question observant audience members should have been asking.

In a better film, that could have done this revelation justice, the final act of Catherine's narrative would have had more impact.

It's almost as if there actually was a good idea in there, but it got buried under the limitations of 1980's Italian low-budget filmmaking and  Gariazzo's desire to make an exploitation flick in the style of his idols.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Pleasant Dreams!

Back in 2015, Rodney Ascher, director of the controversial documentary Room 237 about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, released his documentary, The Nightmare, about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis.

Now this is something I have experience of.

Despite my love of all things horror-orientated (monsters, cannibals, ghosts etc), when it comes to real life I'm not so brave, so as we are fast approaching Halloween I thought it would be time to share my own 'horror movie' experience:

Way back in 2002 I went to visit Paul when he was working for an English-language newspaper in Beijing, China.

He was staying in a big, one-bedroom flat in a tall tower block, so I was sleeping on a makeshift (but comfortable) bed in his lounge.

Alcohol usually played a large part in making sure I had a good night's sleep... but one night I awoke with an "invisible person" sitting on my chest; pinning me down. I couldn't move!

I have no recollection of what happened later but talking to Paul the next day I discovered I wasn't the first person this had happened to. There was the usual urban myth circulating about someone jumping to their death from one of the flats... but no-one could ever say which one.

Later I read about 'sleep paralysis', which (basically) means your mind has woken up but your body is still asleep, so you can see and think - but not move; but at the time I was as convinced as I've ever been that I had come face-to-invisible-face with a ghost!!!

From Wikipedia:

In Chinese folk culture, sleep paralysis is referred as "gui yà chúang" (鬼压床), literally: "Ghost press bed": 鬼: ghost, 压: press, 床: bed. The belief is that a spirit or ghost is sitting or lying on top of the individual while they were sleeping, causing the sleep paralysis. This is thought to be a minor body possession by the forces from the dead, and usually doesn't cause any harm to the victim.

Psycho Goreman (2020)

 A nameless, near-omnipotent force of evil is finally overthrown by the "forces of light" (aka The Planetary Alliance) and imprisoned on an out of the way world... which just happens to be Earth.

Playing in their suburban garden one night, two young siblings - borderline sociopath Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and her put-upon brother Luke (Owen Myre) - unearth a glowing gemstone.

The next day they discover 'something' has dug its way out of their garden, and they track the creature to a nearby abandoned factory, where it's hiding out.

The creature (played by Matthew Ninaber, with Stevn Vlahos providing the voice) is the "nameless evil", but the kids soon realise that it must obey Mimi's every command, because she holds the gem.

It reveals that its enemies refer to it as the Arch-Duke of Nightmares, but the kids decide to call it Psycho Goreman ('PG' for short) instead.

While the youngsters are having fun with their new 'toy' (for instance, one of their friends gets turned into a brain creature and a cop into a soulless, half-melted zombie... you know, crazy kid stuff), the forces that imprisoned PG on Earth become aware of his escape from captivity.

The Planetary Alliance sends Pandora The Templar (Kristen MacCulloch) to recapture the monster while he is still in a weakened state.

As this is all unfolding Psycho Goreman lives up to his nickname and enters Luke's dreamscape, trying to convince him to steal the gem from Mimi, but Luke sticks by his sister.

Until, she playfully orders PG to kill him one day!

You see, Mimi has become a living example of the old adage about "power corrupting", and while she started off with a mean streak, having PG at her beck and call has just made her worse.

Will the arrival of Pandora on Earth resolve the situation?

Written and directed by Steven Kostanski (who also made the brilliantly Lovecraftian horror The Void and the forthcoming Deathstalker reboot), PG: Psycho Goreman is truly bonkers, a gonzo, blood-spattered spin on the look of Power Rangers, interwoven with Japanese body horror, retro special effects, layered world-building, and a wicked sense of humour.

Even under Mimi's control, the invulnerable and superstrong Psycho Goreman has access to a broad arsenal of "dark magics" (such as transformation magic, telekinesis, paralysis etc) that ultimately means he is able to dole out whatever punishment he feels a target deserves.

Of course, if you fight honourably, you may well merit a "warrior's death"... which involves PG cannibalising your corpse in a most shocking manner.

With its tongue buried firmly in its cheek, PG: Psycho Goreman is most definitely not a film to be taken seriously, instead it feels as though Kostanki has thrown everything he loved from his childhood into a blender and splurged the results out onto the page.

Very much a comic book supervillain, there are shades of Thanos (and Darkseid) in Goreman's backstory, which makes his dominance by a young girl all the more humorous and rewarding.

He even has his own Paladins of Obsidian, a collective of unique villainous creatures, that he believes will come and save him.

The power dynamics of the PG universe are highly reminiscent of that employed by Michael Moorcock, with Psycho Goreman as the ultimate representation of chaos and Pandora as the definitive bastion of law.

Although the terms "good" and "evil" are bandied about, as is said at one point, the central battle is truly "evil versus an even worse evil".

Another geeky reference I grokked was the name of PG's homeworld, Gigax. Surely (even with the variant spelling) this is a reference to Gary?

And the anarchic and incomprehensible homemade game of 'Crazy Ball' that Mimi and Luke play all the time - and was always going to be a key element in the narrative - strongly reminded me of 'Calvinball'  from Calvin and Hobbes.

Coming in at just over an hour-and-half, PG: Psycho Goreman is like a well-made Troma Entertainment movie, a Full Moon Features film with a decent budget, or an unfettered student flick with a top-notch script.

Not so much subverting expectations as leaning into them, PG: Psycho Goreman is simultaneously reminiscent of so much trash cinema we've grown up loving, and yet wonderfully unique in its commitment to a solid story in a well-defined sci-fi universe.

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

I won't bore you rambling on about my long-term affinity for this messy franchise - since writing my university dissertation (in part) on the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre - but when a spiffy new Blu-Ray edition of Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III was announced I was 98 percent sure I hadn't actually seen this particular entry.

Trouble is there seem to be so many sequels and reboots it's difficult to remember which are connected to which, and which of those I've actually watched.

For instance, the most recent offering was 2022's Texas Chainsaw Massacre from Netflix which was a direct sequel to the original and brought back a key "victim" from that movie.

However, 1990's Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (not to be confused with 2017's Leatherface) immediately declares itself a continuation of the original story (conveniently sidestepping and forgetting the deranged slapstickery of Texas Chainsaw Massacre II) with its opening text that declares the character who appears in the Netflix sequel to actually have died in 1977!

TCM III isn't just a sequel, it's really a retelling of the original story, just in a more condensed form.

Bickering student couple Ryan (William Butler) and Michelle (Kate Hodge) are on a roadtrip from California to Florida when they pull into a Last Chance Gas Station, in the middle of nowhere, Texas, and encounter its sleazy owner, Alfredo (Tom Everett).

While filling up the car and using the facilities, the couple also meet a hitchhiker called Tex (The Lord of The Rings' Aragorn himself Viggo Mortensen in an early appearance).

Although Ryan won't give him a lift, he does listen to Tex's talk of a shortcut down a road that isn't on their map.

A fight erupts at the gas station between Alfredo and Tex and, as the young couple flee, they believe they see Tex getting blasted with a shotgun.

To escape the clutches of the perverted gas station attendant they take Tex's shortcut, but end up lost and in the dark... and being chased by a mysterious, giant four-wheel drive truck that forces them off the road.

In the ensuing chaos, they have their first encounter with Leatherface (R.A. Mihailoff), and end up running into 'weekend warrior' Benny (Dawn of The Dead's iconic Ken Foree), who was heading into the mountains for a "survivalist camp".

Leatherface captures Ryan, while Michelle discovers a large house that she hopes will offer her sanctuary and/or a way to contact the authorities.

Of course, she's clearly never seen a horror movie... because this is the home of Leatherface's creepy, cannibalistic family!

Honestly, there isn't really much to Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. It's only 85-minutes long and retreads a lot of familiar ground, but it's also a helluva lot of gonzo fun.

Directed by Jeff Burr and written by David J Schow, there's a surprising attention to detail that I really appreciated - such as Leatherface wearing a leg brace (after he injured himself swinging his chainsaw at the end of the original movie) and the little girl (Jennifer Banko) naming her dolly Sally (after the Final Girl in the original movie, Sally Hardesty).

The legend Kane Hodder (best known for his turns as Jason Voorhees in the Friday The 13th franchise) was stunt co-ordinator on TCMIII and, apparently, even doubled for R.A. Mihailoff as Leatherface.

The film tries to emulate the suggested violence of the original by having the most brutal moments occur off camera, but TCM III comes up short on atmosphere because the grit and grim of Tobe Hooper's classic are replaced here by an air of cheapness.

Yet while Leatherface himself seems a bit bargain-basement, there's no escaping the fact that this is a small-scale rollickin' adventure that thematically, with its frequent reliance on a nearby swamp, foreshadows Adam Green's Hatchet series of slasher movies.

The addition of Ken Foree's Benny adds an interesting dynamic, as he's able to bring some genuine firepower to a chainsaw fight, even if the film's heavy-handed plotting does feel obliged to stick to the obligatory Final Girl trope.

And, no, it turns out I definitely hadn't seen Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III before. But I'm glad I have now.

Django & Django (2021)

Django & Django is an 80-minute documentary looking at the history of Italian/Spaghetti Westerns and their influence on Quentin Tarantino's 2012 Django Unchained (available in the UK on Sky Documentaries as well as being a bonus feature on the recent blu-ray release of Django).

The primary focus of the piece, presented largely as a casual conversation with Quentin Tarantino (occasionally intercut with a few other talking heads), is his admiration for the work of the late Sergio Corbucci (aka The Other Sergio or The Second Best Spaghetti Western Director).

Tarantino is seemingly given free rein to enthuse over a genre he clearly loves in his trademark style of blending his encyclopaedic film knowledge with limitless child-like enthusiasm:

"Of all the great Western directors, Corbucci created the most pitiless West that there was. The most pitiless, the most pessimistic, the most surrealistically grotesque, the most violent."

While Tarantino does detail how Corbucci's body of work helped shape Django Unchained, he graciously devotes the main thrust of the presentation to discussing Corbucci's ultra-violent Western oeuvre of the 1960s and early '70s: Django, The Great Silence, The Specialists, Navajo Joe, The Mercenary, Sonny and Jed etc

Although Corbucci only (obviously) appears in archival footage, this Italian production manages to interview the charismatic Franco Nero (who played Django in the original 1966 movie) and, a year before he died, Ruggero Deodato, who was assistant director on Django before helming the infamous Cannibal Holocaust in 1980.

A fascinating watch for fans of the genre, 80-minutes feels too short a time to listen to Tarantino and dissect the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Corbucci... and yet some of the documentary seems a bit self-indulgent.

There's a couple of overly long 'behind-the-scenes' sequences without dialogue and commentary, which are superficially interesting but lack real context and meaning.

However, for me, the worst offence was the documentary's "prologue" (the film is broken up into chapters, naturally), which is a make-believe "deleted scene" from Tarantino's Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood that hijacks and reimagines a real story about a young Burt Reynolds interacting with Corbucci, but attributes it to Tarantino's character, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Maybe it's because I'm no fan of Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood  (for me it's Tarantino's weakest movie, but what do I know?), but this felt like an unnecessary introduction to the subject of the documentary.

Conversely, the film wraps up with a wonderful experiment in the creation of headcanon as Tarantino kicks around an idea for who Django (a Northern soldier in the Civil War) had come South to find, and ultimately seek brutal revenge on behalf of.

As far as I am concerned, Tarantino's headcanon is now my headcanon for Django's backstory.

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Like John Carter before it, The Lone Ranger was another victim of Disney's marketing team not understanding how to promote a classic pulp character to the general public.

The Lone Ranger also suffered from being saddled with its connections to the successful Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise and Disney's obvious desire to kickstart a similar series of movies - with the attendant lucrative merchandising.

The central performance by Johnny Depp as Tonto isn't really that much of leap from Captain Jack Sparrow. It's as if he only has the one arrow in his quiver these days when it comes to blockbuster action flicks. And did I miss the nerdrage at the racebending casting of Depp as the world's most famous fictional Native American?

But before you start thinking I didn't enjoy this film, I have to say there is a lot to enjoy about it and when the William Tell Overture kicks in for the climactic chase sequence you need a heart of stone not to be transported back to a childhood filled with plastic cowboys and Indians, cap guns and Lone Ranger action figures.

The film's grand finale is truly breathtaking - without a doubt the most incredible extended stunt sequence I've ever seen in a Western.

The problem is the film takes so dang long to get there. In total it's almost two and a half hours in duration and that's simply way too long.

Arnie Hammer plays John Reid, a greenhorn lawyer, returning to the West to see his brother, Dan (James Badge Dale), Dan's wife, Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) and their son, Danny (Bryant Prince).

He joins up with Dan - and is deputised as a ranger - to track down dangerous cannibal killer Butch Cavendish (an almost unrecognisable and decidedly evil William Fichtner).

Cavendish's gang ambush the rangers, leaving them for dead, but John is found by Tonto and nursed back to health. He then takes on the guise of the "masked man" to track down Cavendish and his confederates .

This is all well-and-good as a classic origin story, but the waters are further muddied by a very cliché plot involving a nefarious railroad man, Latham Cole (Tom Wilkinson).

Like Pirates Of The Caribbean, the script - by Pirates alumni Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and Justin Haythe - blends the action with humour, but this is a bit hit and miss.

There are also suggestions of a mystical angle to some of the goings-on, but - unlike Pirates - the script seems unwilling to commit to whether this is really happening or is a product of Tonto's deranged imagination.

The story also has a framing device of an elderly Tonto recounting the tale of John Reid to a boy in a 1930s' funfair, which primarily serves to give the scriptwriters licence to play with the idea of Tonto being an unreliable narrator, so they can muck around with the linear nature of the story.

This works, but isn't really necessary.

The Lone Ranger could have done with losing about 30 or 40 minutes from its running time, but ultimately the main stretch isn't arduous - just sometimes feels it's going round in circles - and the magnificent grand finale is worth the wait.

All of Us Are Dead (2022)

From Train to Busan to Kingdom, and now the 12-part Netflix serial All of Us Are Dead, it seems Korea is the place to go for the best live-action zombie offerings.

Spiralling out of a grief-stricken father's attempts to protect his son from school bullies, this current iteration of the zombie apocalypse begins in the science lab of Hyosan High School and then spreads rapidly, exponentially, out into the surrounding city.

Although the series checks in on a variety of characters throughout its story, the main focus is on two groups of students trapped within the corridors and classrooms of the school by the sudden appearance of large numbers of flesh-gnawing zombies.

And these are fast, nearly-indestructible, zombies - seemingly without the standard "one blow to the head" weakness of many similar TV or movie undead.

Writer Seong-il Cheon does an amazing job of drawing out the tension of every scenario, with the students methodically coming up with a variety of schemes almost in real time, and not all of them working.

This can also make it feel quite slow on occasion, especially when you're reading sub-titles, but the investment is worth it because it makes the characters more rounded and believable, their grief more personal, and their victories more meaningful. 

In truth, the slowest episode is the first, as it takes almost 50 minutes to get to the meat of the story, taking its time to set up the main personalities whose fates we will be drawn into through the run of the show.

[Just check out the list of students, staff, and other characters on the show's Wikipedia page to fully appreciate the ensemble nature of All of Us Are Dead].

Once your mind adapts to the Korean social mores (such as bowing, an expected reverence for your elders etc), you can really appreciate the poetry of Seong-il Cheon's dialogue, whether dealing with horror or heartache, survivor guilt, or the harsh reality of the apocalyptic situation et al.

Even beyond the fact that everyone calls zombies 'zombies' - and the kid's are clearly terrified and prone to swearing (as you probably would under these circumstances) - there's an air of Truth and verisimilitude to All of Us Are Dead that is often lacking from Western takes on the genre.

I don't want to knock The Walking Dead, because that long-running show has had its high points and appears to be going out with some of its strongest episodes for many years.

However, there's more conviction and impactful emotion in these 12 episodes of All of Us Are Dead than in all the series of that granddaddy of long-form zombie drama, bar, possibly, the legendary The Grove episode (with the whole "look at the flowers" incident).

While obviously many of these characters in All of Us Are Dead lean towards heroic archetypes for narrative purposes, they are also all flawed to some degree or another, slipping and stumbling when they run, getting distracted by their crushes, bearing grudges etc

The story also does a great job of frequently wrong-footing its audience, where characters you are convinced have a degree of plot protection find themselves on the receiving end of an infectious bite.

Gwi-nam (Yoo In-soo), the relentless
hambie that pursues our heroes

All of Us Are Dead introduces us to the idea of "hambies": a certain, small percentage, of the population who, when bitten, become 'asymptomatic', seemingly immortal, half-zombies, retaining their human intelligence, but suffering from the zombie craving for flesh.

Their lives then become a constant struggle against their cannibalistic nature, and whether they can resist it and remain 'human' or give in and become 'zombie'. 

This is not a series for the faint of heart as, as with all the best zombie shockers, there's a lot of gore, but the most disturbing parts come in the early episodes when we see shocking student-on-student bullying, both physical and psychological.

As horrific as this is, it all plays into the overarching storyline, so can't be construed as gratuitous. 

Not only is the zombie virus clearly a metaphor for the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the effects of such mental diseases as Alzheimer's, while the show itself is simultaneously about the conflict - particularly around trust issues - between teenagers and adults.

Beautifully written, stunning well-acted, All of Us Are Dead is an amazing dusting-off of a genre that occasionally creaks under the weight of its own clichés. 

The show's ending was so artistically perfect that, as much as I am emotionally invested in the fates of these characters, I hope that there's no attempt to continue the story in a second season. 

All of Us Are Dead works magnificently as it is, as a standalone piece of horror fiction.

It definitely requires dedication from its audience, but the rewards are well worth it.