Macabre…ish Horror Review: Happiness

 

 

First, we got Sadness and now we have Happiness, but instead of a feature set in Taiwan where those infected with a virus. The victims of the infected were often killed with rape and horrific violence. Some of the infected confess that being infected feels wonderful and killing was enjoyable. One of the leads, Jim explains that he can think of no better way to share this experience with Kat than by mutilating and killing her. The virus was highly contagious, with the ability to spread by simply spitting in someone’s face. And the transmission speed was anywhere from seconds to minutes.

 

It’s all action, bodies, blood and gore.

 

 

 

Whereas, Happiness is a limited series set in Korea and the world wide outbreak of ‘Mad Human Disease’ was actually caused by a failed drug called Next, meant to treat a different virus. Next plus the virus is triggered when the afflicted starts to suffer from an unquenchable thirst. It is like a zombie outbreak but the people aren’t dead, they’re ill. And the ‘zombie like state’ is not permanent, many of the afflicted snap out of it after they’ve attacked someone. For a while…

 

But stimuli, like temperature can impact the change. Colder temperature keeps it under control. Their eyes return to normal from being milky white and what memories they have are like a bad dream. They also heal very quickly and their heart rate goes down when they are attacking someone.

 

The virus can be passed with a scratch and if that scratch doesn’t heal, that’s bad news. If the victim has been fully mauled, that person is dead, they will not become undead. The infected aren’t really zombies. They are more zombie-adjacent, if anything it’s akin to rabies.

 

And one of the people who was scratched but not infected is a star member of SOU (Special Operations Unit), Yoon-Sae bom (Han Hyo-joo). She was attacked while breaking up a junior colleague who was gnawing his way through another colleague’s neck. Another colleague, Lee-Seung young (Lee Kyuhyung) who also helped break it up and was also scratched, wasn’t as lucky. And instead of surrendering to the medical unit where he’s almost certain he will die.

 

He opts to fake another injury to get inside and then sneaks away to get video of what’s happening and selling it to a journalist. The plan was to get a big payday and get out of dodge. It doesn’t quite work out that way when sneaks into a freezer trucker where infected are being stored, presumably under anesthesia. There are rows of shelves of humans. And Lee Seung accidentally wakes one up. And unfortunately, he’s been locked inside.

 

Yoon Sae-bom arrives to rescue him but then the soldiers try to close them both inside. But detective and Sae-bom’s new fiance and detective, Jung Yi Hyun (Park Hyung-sik)  turns up just in time to rescue them both, he tosses a grenade inside just before the soldiers close the door again. Han Tae-sook is there and admits to trying to keep this virus under wraps but Yoon Sae-bom gives him an ultimatum, you make the announcement or I will. 

Later, Han Tae-sook is busy covering his tracks and recovering Next pills and killing off random infected. Unfortunately for him, the cell phone video has already made it to the press.  And an outbreak is happening in the building that Yoon Sae-bom and Jung Yi Hyun just moved into. 

There is no vaccine, no cure and you can’t just kill off a bunch of sick people, all there is, is quarantine. Han Tae-sook informs Sae-bom the moment construction of the quarantine barriers arrive. And he gives her minutes to decide if she’s staying or going. But Sae-bom is not a runner, she decides to stay before she knew Yi Hyun was still in the building. They’ll fight together.

 
Oh and where did the outbreak originate? Sae-bom and Yi Hyun’s upstairs neighbors. The wife, Park Min-ji, got her hands on some Next pills from the building’s gym full time Senior Trainer/ part time plug, Heon, who said they help with concentration and weightloss. And she isn’t the only customer in the building. Min-ji’s infection was dormant, until her husband, Dr. Oh Joo Hyung (Hyeon-jin Baek), tried to kill her, the fast healing abilities of the virus kicked in and when she awoke, her head was still caved in but the infection was no longer dormant.

 

Dr. Oh’s been trying to hide her and the infection for days with the help of his assistant and witness, Woo Sang-hee (Ye-Won Mun). But not only did it not keep the infection from spreading, his weird behavior caught the attention of Bae-som and Yi Hyun. 

 

The day Yi Hyun was confronting the husband with his evidence of his crime, now upgraded to murder, and arresting him, was the day the quarantine barriers went up, an it’s not just their building but the entire complex.

But Han Tae-sook is not giving up, he still wants to know where this all started. So he locates the man who bit his pregnant wife. Mr. Choi, a very wealthy and influential man. He told someone where the Next stock was warehoused, so that it would be disbursed into the community, so that the virus would get out and a cure could be found faster, to save himself.

 

Because as of right now, he has sequestered himself in a freezing could bunker with everything he’d need in a hospital. Protocol is people still need to stay out of arms reach, even though he is chained down by the waist. He fights to keep the thirst under control.

 

And back at the quarantined complex, the residents start to separate into factions, in an attempt to keep the virus from spreading to other buildings.

  

Happiness is more story and build up to the big disaster. There’s some violence and blood but not much until later. It feels like a prequel and by episode 10, it feels like it could be the prequel to #alive.