So All Of Us Are Dead is a new school zombie show that’s in a class of its own. The series is packed with amazing character development, tense action scenes and a different take on the zombie genre that breathes new life into something that’s been done to death.
Heavily inspired by films like Train to Busan and Kingdom, we watch as a zombie plague makes its way through a major city in Korea and through the season we follow several of the survivors as they try and make their way to a quarantine camp.
Coming in at over 12 hours long it feels like its own gruelling journey to get through that could’ve been avoided if people just learned to stay away from the hellis hamster. However, the series is definitely worth watching and if you’ve finished it then this video is for you.
Throughout it we’re gonna be breaking down the ending and also discussing what we think could be happening in Season 2.
There will be heavy spoilers from this point out so if you haven’t had a chance to watch it then going past this point would be a grave mistake.
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With that out the way, thanks for clicking this, now let’s get into All Of Us Are Dead.
Zombie Outbreak
Ok so All Of Us Are Dead primarily focuses on a group of students that band together at their school in order to survive a zombie outbreak.
Throughout the series we learn that this was caused by the school’s science teacher who’s son was bullied so badly that he attempted to give him a way in which to fight back. The pair were both failed by the school system that looked the other way whilst bullies were allowed to destroy someone’s life and thus the teacher tried to give his son something that would end his torment.
However, this backfired and instead, it created a legion of the undead whilst the virus itself mutated into two different types.
Firstly there was the more ravenous type in which people completely lost all control and they turned into flesh-eating monsters intent on ripping you apart. As the military and government learn more about the virus we discover that it actually completely kills the carrier and just stimulates their bodies, basically making their corpses move
The variant to this is 98% similar but the host retains their consciousness and thus we get a human-zombie hybrid that appears fine from the outset but they do hunger for human flesh from time to time.
The idea of a virus is laced throughout the show and even in the title sequence, we see several of the undead laid out in a way that’s similar to how the disease is shown in episode 9.
Like most Korean shows, there’s a lot of social commentaries and throughout the season we see vast blankets of the public believing that the outbreak is fake news, watch quarantine zones set up and also even get bullying metaphors laced throughout.
The latter of these comes in the form of Gwi-Nam, a guy who should’ve been killed for the mullet alone. In the series, he ends up becoming infected with the mutated version of the virus and he attempts to track down his bitter school rival Cheong-san and the other students that he’s with. Amongst these are Su-Hyuk, the leader that everyone wishes they were in school, Nam-Ra the class President that should be president of the world, on-jo who’s dad is a firefighter desperately looking for her and several others, most of which get picked off one by one.
Gwi-Nam is basically like the Nemesis from Resident Evil and he stalks the corridors looking for the group, desperate for revenge. No matter how many times they defeat him, he always comes back and during the series, Nam-Ra gets infected with the same mutation that he has.
This grants her increased strength and power but like the rest of the undead, she too starts to yearn for human flesh.
In the subplot, the military realise that the undead can be herded by using the frequency of 24 khz and thus they put together a plan to usher all the zombies into specific areas with drones so that they can bomb the living…sorry dying hell out of them. This is inspired by the final video left by the science teacher in which he almost set fire to his wife and son after realising that that was the only way to really deal with the disease.
Obviously, there wouldn’t be much tension if the school wasn’t one of these locations and thus there becomes somewhat of a race to get out of dodge before school’s…out…forever.
Towards the group race to a construction site near the school and it’s at this point that they’re attacked by Gwi-Nam, Cheong-san gets bit and thus he remains behind to buy the others time in order to escape. The battle is as bloody as you’d expect and it really sums up the phrase; an eye for an eye. As they battle the missiles start to bombard the area and Cheong-san ends up taking Gwi-Nam down a half-built elevator shaft where the two both perish.
Now I have seen people online going back and forth over whether Cheong-san is actually dead and I’m actually unsure whether he’s fully dead or not due to the evidence that we get. The first of which comes when the pair both go down the elevator shaft and we only really see Gwi-Nam’s body being obliterated in the fire. I’ve slowed down the footage so you can see this happening but Cheong-san does get engulfed by it too.
However, he doesn’t really get the orangey burning that Gwi-Nam does and his head also can still be seen.
Cut to the end of the episode when we close in on On-jo’s name badge and you can also see a set of fingers, possibly belonging to the character.
However, in episode 12 we do see what looks like his body along with several others.
Personally, I think that the character is likely dead but there are several times throughout the season where they imply that he’s finished and in the next episode we learn that isn’t the case. When looking for him Nam-Ra also says that she can’t smell any of the dead which is a line that has stuck in my head long after finishing the season.
I think this could have been done on purpose to give the audience the idea that he might have actually survived the encounter. It’s pretty crazy if he did but at the end of the season, we do get lip service paid towards other characters being out there. Now, this isn’t me confirming whether he’s alive or not and in all honesty I’m not that sure myself.
I think it does leave an opening for the creative team to potentially bring him back but the bombing itself was pretty extreme so if he doesn’t return then we at least have him going out with a bang…pun intended.
Now, this causes so much pain that the head of the military actually ends his own life and it definitely feels like in the series there are no real winners. This is reflected in several of the parents that die in order to save their kids.
This is most notably seen in On-jo’s father Nam So-Ju.
Follow the Ribbons
Throughout the series, he makes a daring journey out of the quarantine zone in order to save his daughter. Just as he’s reunited with her, he ends up sacrificing himself in order to save her from being eaten by zombies. It’s a pretty devastating gut punch but he doesn’t die in vain as when the students final escape the school they find ribbons amongst the trees that lead them somewhat to safety.
Eventually, the group make it into Yangdong but they’re not out of the woods yet and we get one final death in Woo-Jin, a kid who saves his badass sister with a bow.
She’s so cool.
Woo-Jin ends up turning but unfortunately, his sister can’t bring herself to kill him and thus Nam-Ra steps in to break his neck. This sets Ha-Ri off and it also causes urges within Nam-ra to feed on her. On-Jo even offers herself up as a meal but Nam-Ra decides to stay in control and thus she makes a choice to remain behind whilst the group go to the quarantine zone.
Eventually, they make it but they’re put in prison and interrogated over what they know of the events.
They’ve been through hell which has really matured them and in the end, they stand up for themselves and refuse to co-operate with them. This was a government that left them behind to die on a rooftop on the off chance that they were infected and thus they stand firm in their stance. Over time as the virus dies down things start to open up once more and we get a time jump of four months in which the group are finally freed.
This is along with several of the other characters that we met throughout the series who somewhat get a happy ending.
As a precaution though, the residents of the area are kept in quarantine whilst Korea and the rest of the world comes to grips with what happened. People have had their homes and lives destroyed over something that could’ve been prevented had more care been given at a human level.
We follow On-Jo as she sneaks out of the compound one night and during this journey, she notices a fire on the school roof. Nam-Ra said that if they ever met again that they should have a campfire and after telling Su-hyuk the rest of the survivors go back into the restricted zone searching for their friend.
Upon huddling together on the roof they come across Nam-Ra and it’s a pretty, pretty heartfelt reunion.
It brings everything together and though the group still refer to her as their pres, they know that they can’t be together. Nam-Ra says that she’s neither human nor a monster and though they want her to stay with them she says that she’s found a new purpose.
The full series is very much a coming of age story in which our characters mature and grow as people. Nam-Ra says it’s sort of like being between a child and adult which is of course reflected in the teenagers themselves. On-Jo at one point even says that she’ll never help adults again and in some ways, the group are something new themselves much like the hybrids. They’ve seen the ugly side of society and though they will live among it, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever truly feel part of it again.
Nam-Ra says that she wants to help others like her that have been forced to live in the restricted zones and she leaps off into the night sky and probably into a second season.
Ey, it’s been trending all weekend.
Return to Normality?
Now going forward I do think that we will probably follow Nam-Ra for the most part as she starts to survey the area. I think that most of the characters will return to somewhat normality after they are freed from quarantine but with the virus still being out there, there is the possibility that it could spread once more.
Like all humans, the new hybrids will have their own desires and aims in life and there may even be some that see the undead as the future. In the likes of Gwi-Nam, we saw that he actually relished living in the hellscape and thus there might be other characters who wish to infect people so that they can rule.
There are definitely a lot of possibilities and who knows, the need to eat may even have proven too much for Nam-Ra. She does look somewhat healed in the final scene and therefore it’s possible that she could have eaten. Beyond this though she might have found a way to consume normal food and be sustaining herself off this.
Nam-Ra in the end very much represents what the teacher wanted his son to be. In many ways, she’s a superhuman that has heightened senses and also incredible strength. She’s very much the end goal of the virus and has likely found a way to heal without having the insatiable hunger that is a downside of being infected.
There are lots of questions that could be answered in a second season but with her and the hybrids still being carriers, I still think it’s through them that the virus will spread once more.
The characters did a good job of keeping it contained in this series but I’d love to see it potentially even start to corrupt others. Hell, it might not even be those that cause the issues and it may be the humans that end up resenting those that live in the restricted zone. The wall very much divides the societies and this may cause a divide in which the regular humans wish to take back the area and thus oust the hybrids.
It’s clear that the students don’t want to work with the uninfected as they’ve seen that when push comes to shove they completely disregard their lives.
Therefore they might even travel to the other side and end up living with Nam-Ra and the others.
There are a lot of things that could happen going forward and as for my thoughts on the series, though I thought it was a little long at points, I did really enjoy it. Rocking in at 12 hours makes it one of the longer shows on Netflix and there are certain elements and scenes that I think could have been cut to make a better-paced show.
Saying all that though, once you’re in this world you don’t really want to leave it and the action, acting and character development are really well done.
You feel for all of these characters and it’s gripping watching the series play out as you start to lose some of your favourites.
Korea continues to knock it out of the park when it comes to shows and there’s a lot going on in this that I’d love to see developed more in a second season.
All of us are dead was great and it gets an…
8.5/10
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