Never Lose Sight of Hope, Even In The Darkest of Times

In the remote South Korea village of Hope Harbor, police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung- min) and officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) are called to find a mysterious creature that has wreaked havoc on the village.

In the nearby forest, a coterie of hunters, including Sung- ki (Zo In-Sung) set out to track the beast and find themselves hunted instead.

But all is not as it seems, and perceptions can be misleading. What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster, escalating through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions.

A New Breed Of Zombies Is Shambling In From Korea

Horror master Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) directs a new Korean zombie thriller starring Gianna Jun and Koo Kyo-hwan.

Professor Se-jeong (Jun) is thrust into a bloody nightmare when a rapidly mutating virus is released during a biotech conference causing authorities to seal the facility. Trapped inside with no escape, Se-jeong along with a small group of survivors must fight to stay alive while the infected undergo horrific transformations.

Colony (aka Gunche) is directed by Yeon Sang-ho, the man who brought us the epic Train to Busan, one of the definitive zombie flicks of the modern age.

This great-looking, two-hour long, new Korean-language zombie flick opens in American cinemas on August 28.

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.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008)

A self-styled "Oriental Western", The Good, The Bad, The Weird has to be required viewing for anyone interested in high adventure pulp action in the "Back Of Beyond".

A Korean movie set in 1930's Manchuria with three larger-than-life characters and one massive MacGuffin - a treasure map - leading to an epic chase across the desert, with some spectacular set-pieces and grand scale shoot-outs.

Lucky thief Tae-goo (Song Kang-ho) stumbles across the map while robbing a train, but psychopathic sadist Chang-yi (Lee Byung-hun), and his posse, is already after the map and ice cool bounty hunter Do-Won (Jung Woo-sung) is after Chang-yi - who he believes is a famous killer known as The Finger Chopper.

The rest of the film is pretty much one long chase, peppered with gunfights, martial arts, vehicle stunts etc

Two set-pieces stand out in particular, the fight around the "ghost market" (a town's black market area, which is patrolled by its own gang of thugs), which marks the half-way point of the film, and then the monumental "everybody chases Tae-goo" sequence which leads into the third act. This latter segment throws in a large detachment of the Japanese army and a gang of marauding bandits - each faction keen to get ahold of the map and find the treasure.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of these set-pieces, unlike many Hollywood blockbusters (e.g. the later Indiana Jones films, the Star Wars Prequels and The Pirates of The Caribbean sequels) is they don't look like video game levels, but genuine, old school, thrilling action with real actors, real props, real horses etc - not CGI!

As you may have guessed from the title, the film lifts a lot of ideas - and visuals - from classic Spaghetti Westerns - with the final three-way confrontation between our protagonists being the most obvious - but serves them up in a distinctly Oriental style.

Two hours is perhaps a bit too long for a movie with such a simple plot, but the constant action and subtle wit of the script make it thoroughly engrossing, so you don't notice the time.

The DVD comes with an alternate (Korean), extended ending which opens the doors to a possible sequel, although I actually found the ending as shown to be just as satisfying.