All of Us Are Dead ends on a note of mystery. Not the cliffhanger sort, the “gee I wonder what happens next” sort, but the “I actually have no idea where it would go after this” sort, the “I’m not really even sure how I’m supposed to feel about this” sort. And I’m glad for it.

I reviewed the finale of All of Us Are Dead for Decider. Speaking as someone who’d soured on zombie media, this show took me by surprise.

It’s getting bleaker. That’s the unmistakable trajectory All of Us Are Dead is taking in its final episodes, at least from where I’m sitting. There’s every possibility, of course, that the finale will take things in a more optimistic direction—but the casualties that began piling up in the previous episode have only mounted, and the city that surrounds them has been destroyed. It’s hard not to think that the show may well live up to its ominous title.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

So that’s where things stand after this grim episode: more kids dead, zombies on the move, and an entire city on the chopping block. Only two episodes remain; the question is now, to use the tagline for the horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, who will survive—and what will be left of them?

I reviewed the tenth episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

The most impressive thing about All of Us Are Dead is how it can continue to mine pathos out of a premise — “zombies overrun society and a small band of survivors in a unique location struggle to stay alive” — that you could easily have dismissed as totally exhausted by now. (Hell, I dismissed it!) In this particular episode, that pathos stems from the fear, and the fact, of abandonment. It stands to reason: In a world overrun by the living dead, being left for dead by the living is perhaps the worst thing anyone can endure.

I reviewed the ninth episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

Honestly, other than the impressively unpleasant violence, the lasting image of the episode is of the kids gathered around the fire, talking honestly amongst themselves. They’ve spent so much of their lives worried about their grades, their teachers, the opinions of their classmates, their future prospects—and now that their future may have been taken away, they’re able to be honest with each other about all this, for the first time in most of their lives.

In essence, the zombie outbreak functions like an encounter group, forcing them to shake free of their social constraints and relate to one another for real. I don’t know if that’s social commentary or just a convenient storytelling device, but it’s the kind of character work the show requires to stay ahead of the zombie-show pack. In a genre that, for the past twenty years or so, has largely focused on the need to survive above all else, it’s refreshing to see a zombie outbreak that brings out people’s most vulnerable sides, instead of turning them all into unrepentant hardasses. The hardasses are what got them all into this mess, after all. Now’s the time for something new.

I reviewed episode eight of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

Zombie fans rejoice: The undead are back in a big way thanks to All of Us Are Dead. The Korean-made Netflix original series tells the story of a group of high-school students struggling to survive a zombie outbreak that begins right there in their school. Combining inventive and thrilling action sequences with a cast of relatable, sympathetic characters, it’s injected new life (no pun intended) into the zombie genre.

Adapted by writer Chun Sung-il from the webcomic Now at Our School by Joo Dong-geun, All of Us Are Dead appears to be following in the pop-culture footsteps of Netflix’s other big Korean horror hit, 2021’s Squid Game. But after all of its pulse-pounding zombie action, the finale ends on a decidedly ambiguous note. What does it all mean, and what does it say about the potential for more stories in the All of Us Are Dead universe?

Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of All of Us Are Dead—warning: major spoilers ahead!

I wrote a little explainer about the ending of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

It’s perfectly fine zombie-action filmmaking, adding some new wrinkles to the basic concept and positioning the survivors for one last push for freedom. I miss some of the emotional power of its predecessors, which here is limited to the plight of that poor kid on the roof. But this is all a setup for the next installment, and I understand the need to keep things plot-centric. My hope is that the remaining episodes will reinject (reinfect?) the proceedings with the sense of pain, loss, and against-the-odds optimism that distinguished its predecessors. I think it’s a smart enough show to pull it off.

I reviewed the seventh episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

When modern zombie media invokes the concept of “shades of gray,” it usually means that one of the heroes of the show or movie you’re watching is about to kill someone in cold blood, because it’s kill-or-be-killed time, bro. It’s tantamount to an endorsement of violence against outsiders, a fascist fever dream. Not so with All of Us Are Dead. Though the episode avoids making tidy proclamations about morals and ethics and then forcing all the characters to either abide by or defy them, thus self-categorizing as good or evil, it also genuinely wrestles with the morally ambiguous choices its characters make. It asks What price survival? and provides no easy answers.

I reviewed the sixth episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

“Hope and wisdom. Which do we value more?”

“Even if the entire world has turned into zombies, let’s not despair.”

“We need hope more than logic.”

The trapped kids at the core of All of Us Are Dead’s narrative understand how important it is to believe in a light at the end of the tunnel, to forego despair in favor of a belief that, somehow, things will turn out alright. Unfortunately for them, there’s little evidence to support their hopes at present. And if the episode’s surprise ending is any indication, things may well get worse before they get better, if they ever get better at all.

I reviewed the fifth episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

Jam-packed with action, humor, pathos, pitch-black cynicism, bright-eyed optimism, cutting social commentary, and major character developments across the entire sprawling cast, the fourth episode of All of Us Are Dead seems to be where the series has truly found its stride. If it keeps up this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach, the copious comparisons to Squid Game may well be earned.

I reviewed the fourth episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

One of the unwritten rules that govern many apocalypse stories is the commandment “thou shalt not kill.” I was first exposed to this ethos in Stephen King’s The Stand, in which the character Nadine Cross comes to believe that killing anyone, after so many billions of people have died from a superflu, is the worst sin anyone can commit. She winds up eating those words, but they’ve stuck with me ever since, no matter what kind of apocalypse drama I’m watching. It’s a big part of why the kill-or-be-killed ethos of The Walking Dead has always rubbed me the wrong way—and it’s why I found this episode of All of Us Are Dead to be the most impressive one so far. 

I reviewed the third episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

Now comes the big question: Is All of Us Are Dead good horror filmmaking? I’d say no—but with a big fat caveat, so don’t get mad at me just yet. Frightening the audience is the lifeblood of horror as a genre, and I said in my review of the All Of Us Are Dead Episode 1, there’s nothing here that’s actually scary. Gross and violent? Absolutely. Thrilling and chilling, in a Halloween haunted-house kind of way? Sure. Keep-you-up-at-night, jumping-at-shadows scary? Not from where I’m sitting.

You could maybe make an argument that, insofar as the apocalypse is a frightening concept, all zombie apocalypse films are frightening on a basic what-if level. But when you get to the point where the characters themselves are doing light comedy about how this is just like a zombie movie—Cheong-san compares it to the Korean zombie blockbuster Train to Busan—that end-times fear is pretty much evaporated.

Ah, but is All of Us Are Dead good action filmmaking? Here I’d have to say that the answer is yes. I mean, what else can you say about a show that revolves around kill-or-be-killed battles in enclosed spaces like classrooms and hallways, like it’s Oldboy or a Marvel/Netflix show? So what if the protagonists are students rather than vigilantes, and the enemies are ravening zombie hordes rather than armies of goons? The underlying principle is the same.

I reviewed the second episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.

Are there hints that there may be more to the show than meets the standard-zombie-fare eye? I think there are. Certainly, what appears to be the underlying concept—a concerned parent concocted a zombie rage virus in hopes that it would help his outcast son defend himself against bullies—is a powerful one, if you’ve ever been bullied or are the parent of a kid who has. That it appears to have backfired horribly, leading to more and worse violence rather than less—well, there’s your social commentary about the inevitable endgame of redemptive, retributive bloodshed. We’ll see if this underlying theme, coupled with some pretty strong zombie visuals, is enough to keep the show up and running.

I’m covering Netflix’s new Korean zombie series All of Us Are Dead for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.