For so many people, there’s a distinct type of terror that’s held in the back of our minds. A fear that the safe and welcoming society we’ve tried so hard to create can come crumbling down in a matter of seconds, that the years and years of progress built up can be rendered meaningless in the face of a single event. Hellbound understands this fear, and its horrifically plausible possibility.

Whilst I adore all of the posters for this show, the one which strikes me the most vividly is this one, because of its noticeable lack of monsters. In that way, it reflects the show itself far more than the rest. Sure, the visceral gore and unsettling implications of these…

K-GUST: The Drama Has Just Begun

The only person I was rooting for to be brutally murdered by those shadow golems was that Twitch guy. Dude was soooooo fecken annoying!

Interesting show with some very familiar themes done in a somewhat original way that unfortunately gets to a point where it falls victim to its own ambition and becomes stale. My biggest problem would be that I wish it had gone deeper but instead the dialogue and everything start to feel repetitive. Maybe it becomes more obvious when you binge on the whole thing in a day.

That being said, this was quite entertaining, with a twisty cliffhanger that had me gasping. I was going to complain that the film…

ffffffffffffffffffffffffu- okay so I've talked about how I don't take tv shows too seriously cuz otherwise I'm gonna end up giving a bunch of them 1 star and I wanna keep enjoying my k-dramas/Korean shows. Hellbound is yet another example of anti-communist/anti-north Korean agitprop entertainment but not many folks are really talking about this for wtv reason 🙄 ofc you can always summarize the major theme of the story as "religious zealotry bad" tho it doesn't take long to realize that anti-communist rhetoric relies on painting the mere subscribing of revolutionary theory as an act of fanaticism or extremism and, therefore, must be evil. If you're not fully convinced yet, then consider examining these images. Much of Yoo Ah-in's characterization…

“Upholding righteousness and justice in fear of damnation. Is that truly righteous and just?” asked Detective Kyunghun.

The first three episodes were what I would consider flawless. There was not a moment wasted, as there are only six episodes in the series. There doesn’t seem to be plenty of time for character growth, but the pace was great. Given the extreme tension and the impeding doom that certain characters would inevitably experience, I was hooked to the screen.

The issue with the series occurred in the last three episodes. Because of the pacing’s significant slowdown from episode three to four, transitioning from one to the other did not seem natural. After some accumulation, the last episode was fantastic and enjoyable,…

Hellbound had a brilliant premise, but the execution was not so much better. At first I started it with eagerness about the idea and to get to understand why it's happening, but at the end there's still something missing. There are many logical loopholes and I don't get how the world works. The show gets higher stakes and doesn't solve anything, but arises more questions than it answers. It would have been better had the director handled character development better. Then again any character development entails reducing the pace of the narrative. There are virtually no characters you can root for, while the story provides no space for its actors to shine.

Dividing the season into two stories, I think…

Underwhelming stuff. Directed by Train to Busan‘s director and starring Yoo Ah In from Burning, it’s hyped as a chaser for Squid Game but never up to the same heights. The problems are just too many;
- We don’t have any characters to root for - the protagonists are too weak in term of characterisation and unlikeable, then the antagonist as the focus of the story is playing pretentious card.
- Forced, artificial stake in the story and the story itself didn’t set any interesting rules - because at some point God will just choose randomly which people that are hell bound. Episode 4 is a showstopper and made me facepalmed.
- Funny looking bodybuilder hell creatures in CGI, killing…

Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) inszeniert mit Hellbound eine Netflix-Serie rund um religiösen Fanatismus, Sektenkult und die immer mehr verrohende Gesellschaft durch Social Media und falsche Propheten. Garniert wird das Ganze mit Schattenwesen aus der Unterwelt, Todesboten und verbrannten Leibern. Der Spagat zwischen bildlichem Horror und Gesellschaftsdrama funktioniert dabei erstaunlich gut. Charaktere und Story besitzen mehr Tiefgang als man nach der ersten Folge glaubt und die Konsequenzen werden immer weitreichender. An die doch sehr künstlichen CG-Effekte muss man sich allerdings gewöhnen und trotz gerade mal sechs Episoden gibt es ein paar Durchhänger. Den Spannungsbogen holt es dann am Ende aber nochmal hoch und präsentiert auch einen WTF-Cliffhanger.

Alles in allem eine spannende Serie, mit interessantem Konzept, aktuellen Themen und einigen…