Watched all 12 episodes of Korea's 2022 All of Us Are Dead. Based on the 2009 - 2011 Naver webtoon Now at Our School by Joo Dong-geun, it is about how South Korean Hyosan High School, and eventually its surrounding districts, is infested by a zombie virus. 

This is possibly the goriest zombie movie I have ever seen. It is an exciting screening because of the multiple situations presented. There are many, unexpected surprises, violent and otherwise. It is different because it shows not only strangers but relatives and friends turning into zombies, and the viewer is shown the stark before-and-after. At its very core, it is a high school deconstruction of Golding's Lord of the Flies. On the macroscopic level, this is a war movie possibly as epic as Tolstoy's War and Peace. It is about loss and dashed expectations, exceedingly timely because everyone lost someone or something during the three-year pandemic and, in the Philippines, due to Typhoon Odette. 

The cast is huge, certainly bigger than that of the 2016 Train to Busan, where only a few relationships are in focus, and the minimalist 2020 Alive, which is as slow and as quiet as Mel Ferrer's Wait Until Dark.  The plot development and action are swift, and each episode is comprised of several cliff-hangers. The only snag for me was the series of Blair Witch Project monologues in Episode 6, which verged on the mawkish. And, again, like Spain's Money Heist, the whole series is just too long and discourages thoughts of watching everything all over again.

In a previous review I mentioned that zombie movies are a natural product of pent-up anger and boredom in First World countries, as the Theater of the Absurd was a natural product of industrialization in Europe. Why is it, though, that bullying is the main source of tension and conflict in every high school movie?

It is quite impressive that an entire, four-story school building facade was built inside a sound set to make all of those exterior shots possible. As in Money Heist, other, detailed sets were constructed as well. That probably spells the difference between such productions and our country's own. As the late Mario O'Hara proudly declared, location hunting in the Philippines mostly consists of finding a single house where one can shoot the entire movie. In his own words, "Ang study room, puwede mong gawing opisina. Magtirik ka ng tatlong krus sa bakuran, sementeryo na iyon. Maglagay ka ng bangko sa garden, parke na iyon." And, recently, while working with Laurice Guillen on a screenplay I asked her how long it would take to shoot the entire movie. She said, "Fourteen days. Ten days out-of-town, four days sa Manila. Ganyan na ngayon." I found it sad that directors stick to the objective of helping their producers save money. Aren't producers supposed to spend money rather than save it? It seems that saving money affects an entire production--all the way from the writer's creativity to the director's exploitation of imagery to the cinematographer's set-ups for shots to the performers' not giving their best because they have to be rushed through scenes.        

In All of Us Are Dead the opening shot of each scene has something to do with the ending shot of the previous scene. Even the extras must have gone through extensive sessions of Eric Morris's Willy-Dilly exercises. I should mention that Episode 9 was most original and interesting. 

Finally, young people like this movie because it asks the the hypothetical question "What do we do if our parents ceased to exist?" All of us are dead because all of us have hidden agenda, most of them death-dealing rather than life-giving. All of us are dead because we are not spared from the machinations of government leaders and politicians.

What a poignant yet ominous ending--it was the best possible ending a writer could think of.