Macabre…ish Horror Review: All Of Us Are Dead

 

 

 

All Of Us Are Dead, 2022

 

A science experiment goes wrong and out of control when a nosy student, Kim hyeong-ju gets bitten by a lab rat and after she’s caught the science teacher, Lee Byeong-Chu (Kim Byung-chul) gives her shot in hopes of slowing the infection. He then binds her and handcuffs her in his office and she becomes an unwitting and unwilling participant in his experiment.

 

The virus is contained until she changes and breaks free, it quickly spreads among the student population.

The symptoms are bleeding from the eyes, nose and mouth, low body temperature, violent with the overwhelming need to kill or be killed, plus the odor of a corpse. The cells also definitely do regenerate and heals injuries quickly and makes the infected hard to kill. After a bite, it takes only seconds for the virus to take hold and the victim is back up and attacking anyone who’s near. They are fast, aggressively violent, and just as likely to run at a brick wall at a sprint or through window of a multi story building. But they do not stay down or slow down. 

And not everyone who is infected turns into a mindless monster. Some are calculating monsters and some resist those violent impulses but still have all the zombie perks. Such as heightened senses, the ability to re-articulate their broken bodies, they can’t be ‘killed’ and they can still pass on the virus.

 

One of the infected is the son of a teacher, Jin Su, who is suicidal but then he is attacked by the school bullies for naming them in his suicide letter. They have a violent  encounter that ends up with Lee Su-hyeok (Park Solomon) being thrown off of a building and hitting a sign and a fire escape before he hits the ground. But he doesn’t die and he seems mostly fine in the hospital.

 

Jin Su’s dad also smells like a corpse, the talk around school is he hunted down the bullies one by one in retaliation for his son’s suicide.

 

The tipping point comes when the overwhelming majority of the students outside are infected and en masse, go after the uninfected kids inside of the building. Social media is a buzz with zombie outbreak videos all while school officials are desperately trying to keep the situation in house.

 

And the few uninfected students are trying their best to hide inside. Meanwhile, the rat bitten student arrives at the hospital, it’s not long before it is spreading through the hospital and into the street. Mr. Lee is being interviewed by the police about his role in this disaster and questions about what he did to his family.

Meanwhile, the asymptomatic infected who aren’t mindless killing machines are taking sides against each other. Some fight in support of the living and others attack and kill because they want too.

 

This is a very bloody, gory and graphic Korean series with the typical teen bullies, angst and drama up until the outbreak gets serious. This is a fast zombie series but they are not running up the walls and across the ceilings. There is also CG but video game levels of it. The physical effects are good, as is the zombie makeup and acting. This is a world that knows what zombies are, even the Train to Busan is mentioned. It’s slow at first but gets pretty fast after the outbreak.