I liked Train to Busan so when they said that a new Korean zombie show was coming out I was really excited. The trailer looked good and I'm for TV series over movies to tell a big story all day any day. I thought it was cool that they had some scientific explanations for the zombie outbreak and not just "it started". It was also cool to have 12 hours to cover surviving a zombie apocalypse rather than 2 in a movie. But the show really fell flat.
For starters, the plot was really ridiculous at times. The virus origin story was just "what"? So the teacher's son was bullied, and instead of protecting him, moving him to another school, finding ways to prove the bullies' guilt, using his status as a teacher to push for punishment, signing him up for self defense classes and basically everything rational... he injects his son with a new virus he just created? I'm impressed he was able to contain his son and wife at home without getting hurt himself btw. Then when the virus broke out his actions were really inconsistent. He was agitated at first when finding out that the student he chained up was released. But then he took centuries to explain everything. Also he sent the cop to his computer to retrieve the solution when it was just "burn them all"? I was really hoping this character would be developed and utilized more, since the scientific side of a zombie virus is pretty interesting and would've separated this series from other zombie shows.
Moving on, the characters that we follow are mostly not very likable. There were some actors that were horendous at acting too. Zombie in your face and these kids just poker face... I get that these kids are just teenagers, but it's a zombie apocalypse, one of the kids actually mentioned Train to Busan in episode 1 or sth, lets get to work with building up defenses, armoring up, finding resources, figuring out what's going on outside... can we save the meaningless squabbles and love triangle drama for later? The kids also act very dumb at times. Can we throw an infected person out of the room before they actually become a zombie and get another person bitten? Yes I can imagine it being tough when it's a friend or family, but sometimes they really go over the top with it and just makes the characters seem stupid and irrational. Neither the protagonists nor the antagonists were particularly well written, and I can't help feeling that the writer had something against women in general. I get that Asia's gender expectations are more traditional, but most of the females just cowered behind while the guys did all the work. Like seriously? You need the guys to tell you to help them push and not just sit behind and watch?
Half way through the series become more about the conscious "half zombies" than the rabid thrashing ones, which is okay, but the subplots were quite underwhelming too. The bully's obsessed with the male lead. The bullied girl decides that the person she wants to avenge the most is... the guy that tried to comfort her at the rooftop? Class president gained these super powers and couldn't die anymore... and she couldn't do anything to help? Like go out, find a safe path, find food & water? It's like having Spiderman with an invisibility buff on your team and he does almost nothing. They spent half an episode on making toilets, a much more mundane matter that nobody asked for.
I wanted to like the series. I really did. I watched it as soon as it came out, but in the end it was kind of underwhelming. It wasn't terrible, it was a thrill to watch people run away from the zombies, but many of the times when they weren't actively fighting or escaping the zombies ended up pretty frustrating.
For starters, the plot was really ridiculous at times. The virus origin story was just "what"? So the teacher's son was bullied, and instead of protecting him, moving him to another school, finding ways to prove the bullies' guilt, using his status as a teacher to push for punishment, signing him up for self defense classes and basically everything rational... he injects his son with a new virus he just created? I'm impressed he was able to contain his son and wife at home without getting hurt himself btw. Then when the virus broke out his actions were really inconsistent. He was agitated at first when finding out that the student he chained up was released. But then he took centuries to explain everything. Also he sent the cop to his computer to retrieve the solution when it was just "burn them all"? I was really hoping this character would be developed and utilized more, since the scientific side of a zombie virus is pretty interesting and would've separated this series from other zombie shows.
Moving on, the characters that we follow are mostly not very likable. There were some actors that were horendous at acting too. Zombie in your face and these kids just poker face... I get that these kids are just teenagers, but it's a zombie apocalypse, one of the kids actually mentioned Train to Busan in episode 1 or sth, lets get to work with building up defenses, armoring up, finding resources, figuring out what's going on outside... can we save the meaningless squabbles and love triangle drama for later? The kids also act very dumb at times. Can we throw an infected person out of the room before they actually become a zombie and get another person bitten? Yes I can imagine it being tough when it's a friend or family, but sometimes they really go over the top with it and just makes the characters seem stupid and irrational. Neither the protagonists nor the antagonists were particularly well written, and I can't help feeling that the writer had something against women in general. I get that Asia's gender expectations are more traditional, but most of the females just cowered behind while the guys did all the work. Like seriously? You need the guys to tell you to help them push and not just sit behind and watch?
Half way through the series become more about the conscious "half zombies" than the rabid thrashing ones, which is okay, but the subplots were quite underwhelming too. The bully's obsessed with the male lead. The bullied girl decides that the person she wants to avenge the most is... the guy that tried to comfort her at the rooftop? Class president gained these super powers and couldn't die anymore... and she couldn't do anything to help? Like go out, find a safe path, find food & water? It's like having Spiderman with an invisibility buff on your team and he does almost nothing. They spent half an episode on making toilets, a much more mundane matter that nobody asked for.
I wanted to like the series. I really did. I watched it as soon as it came out, but in the end it was kind of underwhelming. It wasn't terrible, it was a thrill to watch people run away from the zombies, but many of the times when they weren't actively fighting or escaping the zombies ended up pretty frustrating.