Stream It Or Skip It: ‘All Of Us Are Dead’ on Netflix, Where Zombies Overrun A Korean High School

In All Of Us Are Dead (Netflix), it’s fight or flight for a group of students when their high school becomes ground zero for a zombie outbreak. The series is adapted from Now At Our School, a Korean online digital comic that ran from 2009-11, and it features at least one cast member from Netflix’s runaway hit Squid Game in Lee Yoo-mi (Player #240), who is one of the set-upon students here. 

ALL OF US ARE DEAD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a swirling long take, we see two male students taunting and bullying a third boy as two more students look on. Pushes become shoves and kicks to the chest, and the violence escalates until the victim is thrown from the roof on which all of this is occurring. He crashes to the alley three stories below.

The Gist: Right before he flew off that roof, bullied student Jin-su seemed to fight back against his tormentors with a mixture of rabid determination and bone-snapping urgency, and when we meet him again in the emergency room, it’s clear that bullies and bruises are the least of this kid’s problems. He’s got zombie fever, and his father Lee Byung-chan (Kim Byung-chul) knows it. Lee attempts to beat his son to death with a Bible, and soon returns to Hyosan High School, where he’s the science teacher. For the moment, all is calm at Hyosan, where students Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young), On-jo (Park Ji-hoo), and Su-Hyeok (Park Solomon) are attempting to navigate a love triangle: Cheon-san pines for On-jo, but he’s stuck in the friend zone, while On-jo is crushing on Su-Hyeok, who seems to have eyes for someone else. Class bully Yoon Gwi-nam (Yoo In-soo), meanwhile, pesters the shy and the weak.

Mr. Lee is hiding more than his outcast, zombie-sick son. A hamster in his lab is infected, too, and bites a mean girl named Hyeon-ju. Lee restrains her in his office and injects her with benzodiazepine. “It’s slowing down the infection,” he tells a video log, “but only by a few hours at most.” Whatever the motives of Hyosan’s most deranged science teacher, his attempts to study the zombie virus quickly spin wildly out of control, and it’s bedlam as the bitten transform into bloodthirsty undead freaks.

Who will survive the onslaught? In the first episode of All Of Us Are Dead, none of the students we’ve met are immediately among the bitten. But the zombies on this show move fast, have strength, and have already been shown to be pretty resilient. (Remember the kid who survived being thrown from a roof?) Cheong-san and On-jo better stick together, watch their backs, and maybe make a beeline for the high school archery range.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Obviously, zombies are everywhere, with the unkillable The Walking Dead having spawned a host of spinoffs. But Netflix also features the Korean period zombie drama Kingdom, plus five seasons of Z-Nation, its own spin-off Black Summer, and the Brazilian zombie series Reality Z.

Our Take: In Korean pop culture, zombies have legs. From the 2016 hit Train to Busan (a film so popular, it’s directly referenced by the characters in AOUAD) to 2020’s #Alive, “K-Zombie” movies and dramas are all the rage in the country, where they often serve as a critique on issues of class, consumption, and competition in contemporary society. In All Of Us Are Dead, Hyosan High School is already serving as a microcosm of the country at large, with its class structures and hierarchies well in place. Rich kids like Lee Yoo-mi’s Na-yeon look down on their classmates, the class bullies pick on the weaker kids relentlessly, and gossip runs rampant in the halls. As those same places become full of zombies running amok, it will be interesting to see how the hierarchical structures mutate. As Mr. Lee says during a science lesson, “an organism doesn’t depend on its metabolism, but its will to survive.” The zombie virus he helped unleash will definitely get to the bottom of whether that’s true, and who it’s true for.

As for gore and zombifying special effects, All Of Us Are Dead in the early going features the typical gouts of blood and torn flesh and a few tremendous and startling moments of undead bodies flinging themselves forcefully into walls, off roofs, or crashing through schoolroom windows in slow-motion. As the school grounds become a warzone, there’s bound to be more opportunities for the death blows and kill shots that are standard issue for zombie content. But given the entrenched tribalism of the students, it’ll also be satisfying to see who among the living is targeted. There’s no question that the school bullies who manage to avoid being bitten will need to be taken down a peg by their fellow surviving classmates. Even as the zombies swarm, All Of Us Are Dead is sure to have its Battle Royale or Lord of the Flies moments.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As the recently turned chase a throng of screaming students into the dining hall, Cheong-san and On-jo get their first terrifying glimpse of this horrible new reality. Suddenly, a zombie scrambles over the trampled bodies to confront On-jo head on, blood dripping from its shredded face.

Sleeper Star: Park Solomon is terrific as the handsome, self-assured Su-Hyeok, who’s put his past as a bully behind him in favor of trying to be a better person and classmate.

Most Pilot-y Line: It’s all Cheong-san can do to not admit his lifelong crush on On-jo. “If the world comes to an end,” he tells Su-Hyeok, “and only On-jo, me, and a zombie are left, I’d go out with the zombie.” Little does he know how soon his statement will be tested.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Beyond the visceral thrill of watching zombies chow down on their unfortunate victims, All Of Us Are Dead puts social hierarchies and human beings’ mechanisms for survival under a microscope.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges