All of Us Are Dead (2022)

All of Us Are Glad That It's Over

I felt pretty strongly that I wouldn't enjoy "All of us are dead" from the trailer, but I decided to stomach it after really enjoying Park Solomon's acting with Kim Hyang-gi in "Sweet Revenge". I found his character and acting in "All of us are dead", as Lee Su-hyeok, refreshing, and probably most enjoyed the 'bromance' he had with Yoon Chan-young's character (Lee Cheong-san). Though I have to admit it wasn't a standout "WOW" performance, his character was probably the only reason i watched to the end and his acting was consistent.

As for the drama overall, my major criticisms are these:
-The writing was unfortunately really flat. There wasn't much of a plot to begin with. The only parts i found really enjoyable was the characters drop kicking zombies, and the minor internal distresses the group had.
-There were too many female damsels in distress who were intentionally written to be dumb, the main FL being a prime example.
-There's nothing to really focus on or hope for with this drama. Even one of the main conflicts with Gwi nam doesnt actually make much sense.
-The acting messed me up, more on that below.

THE ACTING:
-The acting of the main female lead, Park Ji-hu (On-jo), was completely unbearable. Everything about her acting was completely flat: her voice sounded the same whether she was happy, distressed, scared, "brave", supportive etc. Her facial expressions were worse-- in her sad scenes I could only tell she was sad by the single tear drop strategically placed on her cheek. Otherwise she almost always appeared as though she was either bored or irritated. To give the actress a tiny break, the character of On-jo herself really sucked. She was supposed to be resourceful, being a firefighter's daughter but instead she was completely useless and only saved by plot armor whenever she actually came in contact with zombies. I skipped a bunch of this character's "most impactful scenes" because the acting annoyed me so much. Literally skipped her reaction to her father's death, Cheong-san's death and parting with Nam Ra because i felt her acting literally made the scene worse. I don't know what went wrong and i dont know if i disliked the character of On-jo or the actress's portrayal of her but the outcome is the same-- i would have totally excluded this character if i could, and if she wasn't present i might actually rate this drama's acting much higher at maybe 7/10 or 6.5/10 rather than 3/10.
-What was worse for me was that the side characters did too much of a better job than this main FL, which in my opinion should never be the case. Even the actress for the archer girl Ha-Ri and actress for Mi-jin did a better job and we didn't see much of them at all.
-As a second female lead Cho Yi-hyun as Nam-Ra also did a better job as well.
-The cast's relationship with each other was really fun. If i could separate scores for acting and cast i'd give cast a 6/10 and acting a 3/10.
-I actually enjoyed Im Jae-hyuk's (Dae-su) character and felt he made some otherwise dull scenes slightly more enjoyable.
-I also felt Yoon Chan-young's (Lee Cheong-san) acting and character were decent as well but I might be biased because he was a primary zombie drop-kicker so I don't know that i cared that much about the emotional weight of his character. I still felt his portrayal of the emotional range of his character was decent.



The Good:
-The best part of this drama for me was drop-kicking zombies
-The connection of the cast with each other
-The bromance of the two male leads
-The suspense of them getting out of some situations earlier on in the series
-Letting one person in their inner group become a halfie zombie was interesting as a concept but not executed in the best way
-The camera work was largely pretty good at capturing the action in ways that feel you're right there with the characters

The Bad (just about everything else):
-The acting of the main FL was really stiff for me (i just cant get over this)
-The writing seemed to only care about tying all 1000 extra characters in with the main group of students. It wasn't tight writing.
-Why do they have 1000 extra characters? They should have focused on the main side characters.
-They really didn't need to insert romance into resting moments of the characters, it felt forced
-They wrote the female lead to not use her brain and be useless while pretending she's brave. She was a decent emotional support nearing the end but that wasn't enough to redeem this character for me.
-Killing off characters is only impactful when you know they had to die and their deaths were meaningful. Most of the character deaths were completely uncalled for (ex On-Ju's father, the archer dude, Cheong-san's mother ,the female teacher Na-yeon and many more)
-Childish sense of morality "you did bad--now you die" was repeated literally for every character-- even ones not turned into zombies, like that Chief of Defense who (SPOILER) bombed the city then took his own life. Why did they do that to his character?
-The whole Gwi nam hunting for Cheong-san thing actually made no sense, yet it was supposed to be a central part of the plot and climax, why?
-The music was trash. I literally muted some moments to escape the soundtrack at times.


Summary:
"All of Us Are Dead" was for the most part good for mindless entertainment--you could be a zombie watching it and still get the jist of it. It doesn't strive to be smart (and it isn't), it doesn't strive to be philosophical or deep (and it isn't). It's just a slightly better than mediocre bit of fun and though it wasn't high quality at all, I still moderately enjoyed it for the reason i watched it--mindless fun. Despite my moderate enjoyment I don't actually recommend it. There aren't enough redeeming points to give it above a 2 for me; still if i ever feel like I particularly don't want to use my brain while watching something I might give this a partial rewatch.

total critical rating: 2/10
mindless entertainment rating: 6/10

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