Brief Story Line
In Hyosan high school, everything started like any other day for junior students like Lee Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young - Mama TV series, Mothers etc), his childhood friend Nam On-jo (Park Ji-hoo - House of Hummingbird etc) and their classmates such as the cool Soo-hyuk (Park Solomon - Sweet Revenge TV series etc), the class president Nam-ra (Joo Yi-hyun - Hospital Playlist TV series etc), the snobby Na-yeon (Lee Yoo-mi - Hostage: Missing Celebrity etc) and the others. Even the bully like Gwi-nam (Yoo In-soo) was still doing his usual bullying to other students including Eun-ji (Oh Hye-soo).
But when one of the students was somehow infected by a virus that turned her into zombie-like monsters, things gotten really out of hand. As these children tried their best to survive the zombie attack, the adults such as On-jo's father Nam So-ju (Jeon Bae-soo - Stranger TV series etc) and Detective Jae-Ik (Lee Kyu-hyung - Doctor John TV series etc) were doing whatever they can to help save the people from the zombie apocalypse.
So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this fantastic zombie series.
End of Brief Story Line
Now that's what I called an entertaining zombie TV series. Since their major hit Train to Busan, the South Koreans have been producing quite a lot of movies and series about zombies, and this happened to be another example of how good they were. This series was trully awesome in providing us the suspense, intensity and drama. Even though the first episode started in a normal pace with the brief introduction of the characters, but once the first person got infected it was suspenseful all the way.
Almost every episode ended with sort of a cliffhanger that really tempt you to continue watching. It took a lot of strong determination for my wife and I to stop at episode 3 as if we followed our instinct, we would probably stayed up till morning to complete the whole 12 episodes. Anyway, we managed to finish this on Saturday night by nearly nonstop watching the remaining, which was quite tiring with so much emotions at play, plus the long duration of each episode (averaging around 1 hour+, except few episodes > 55 minutes).
What we really liked about this series was not only the intensity of how the high school students tried valiantly to survive in their own school, but also the unexpected villain to make the story more suspenseful. In addition, the students were very colorful and most of them represent the typical people in high school like the academically challenged, the jocks, snobbish, bully, outcast, smart and so on which made it more interesting. As the story progressed, we also got to know more on these young teenagers as they faced their day to day challenges that made us even more attached with them, such as the sweet high school romance, the extreme bullying, high parents expectations and other stuff.
Our emotions were really toyed by the series during the zombie chases or the multiple times they were trying to reach certain location and the many emotional moments. There were scenes which were very touching and affected us (especially my wife) a lot. These melodramatic moments were enhanced by the wonderful background music and the effective use of flashback scenes at the perfect time. Oh the special effects were good too, in particular the make up effects and the seemingly realistic transformation to zombie. Another thing that I loved about the series was how they managed to maintain the intensity in every episode, although I personally was not truly satisfied with the finale as to me it lacked the spectacular climax that I hoped for, especially with such built up. My wife also of the same view as she felt it to be too neat and both of us would have loved it even more had it finished off more brightly.
Btw, the series was based on webtoon titled Now at Our School by Joo Dong-geun which was published between 2009-2011. It was directed by Lee Jae-Gyoo (prior works included Damo TV series and Beethoven Virus TV series) and Kim Nam-su with screenplay from Chung Sun-il (writer of The Long Way Home, Your Honor TV series etc). After completing this, I think it has a strong limited series feel, but if this were another hit for Netflix, there is always going to be a possibility for a second season.
Overall this is an awesome zombie apocalypse horror series which was combined perfectly with the coming of age story. The cast were generally wonderful and with such engaging characters whether it's the students or the adults, it made us have strong attachment with them. I could not say one by one in here since there were so many of them, but my favorite character was definitely Cheong-san while my wife's were Soo-hyuk and the detective Jae-ik. All of the cast and crew have done their work admirably to make this series an amazing one. So if you are interested in such series, then you certainly would not want to miss this.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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