All of Us Are Dead — Season 1 (2022) 🧟‍♀️

“High school, homework, and the end of the world” 🧟‍♂️📚

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we? 🎥

Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

A science teacher’s desperate anti-bullying experiment backfires, mutating into a rage-based pathogen that detonates through a Korean high school and the city around it. A trapped group of students must improvise their way from classroom to classroom while the outside world—military, politicians, parents—struggles (and often fails) to respond. It’s a teen survival thriller first, social horror second, and a ferocious zombie series all the way through.

Character Rundown

Nam On-jo – Practical, empathetic, quick on first-aid and common sense. The emotional center.

Lee Cheong-san – Stubborn and brave; becomes the group’s blunt instrument when it’s time to run or fight.

Choi Nam-ra – The cool, aloof class president who gets a… complicated fate; her arc is the show’s most haunting.

Lee Su-hyeok – Reformed tough kid; clear head under pressure, quietly heroic.

Yoon Gwi-nam – A school bully who turns into something worse than a zombie; pure predator energy.

On-jo’s dad (Nam So-ju) – A firefighter whose rescue-driven subplot gives the show its most grounded adult heroism.

Upperclass crew – Ha-ri (ace archer) and Mi-jin (chain-smoking senior) add grit and gallows humor as they blaze their own path through Hyosan.


Pacing / Episode Flow

Episodes start tight and intimate (nurse’s office → classroom → hallway), then sprawl into gym, library, rooftop, and city-wide chaos. The show can be long (12 eps, many ~70 min), but set pieces are superbly staged, using school geography like a puzzle you solve while sprinting.

Pros

Relentless, inventive set pieces (the library chase; the gym collapse; the music room).

A real point of view: bullying, bystander apathy, class politics, and state triage are baked into the horror.

A terrifying “third state” twist (not just human or zombie) that deepens the mythology.

Practical stunts + vicious sound design = gnarly, bone-snapping momentum.

Teen melodrama that—mostly—earns its tears.


Cons

Bloated middle: a few side quests (e.g., certain adult detours, streamer bits) sap urgency.

The “indestructible antagonist” thread (you’ll know when you see it) borders on repetitive.

Some supporting students feel thin next to the core four.


Final Thoughts

Season 1 works because it keeps the camera at student-eye level while the system above them breaks. It’s as much about who we become under pressure as it is about outrunning the next wave. When it clicks, it’s the best extended zombie survival run on TV since Train to Busan—just meaner, messier, and more personal.

Rating

9/10

Spoiler Warning ⚠️

Full spoilers for Season 1 below.

Spoilers

The inciting horror isn’t “a lab accident.” It’s Mr. Lee’s choice: a father-teacher tries to bio-engineer courage into his bullied son, and instead creates a pathogen that weaponizes fear and rage. That sin—the adult world trying to “fix” kids without fixing the system—echoes through every death.

The nurse’s office bite is the fuse, and from there the show becomes a geography game: barricade classrooms, shimmy across windows, lure hordes with sound, and weaponize whatever’s at hand (broom handles, camera tripods, archery gear). The standout antagonistic force is Gwi-nam, who becomes a “hambie” (half-zombie, half-human) after a near-fatal chomp. He heals, he stalks, he learns—an apex bully made super-predator. His vendetta with Cheong-san (stairwell fights, the cafeteria gauntlet, and the construction-site showdown) gives the series its rawest action—and culminates in Cheong-san’s last stand as the military prepares to firebomb Hyosan. Cheong-san lures Gwi-nam into the blast zone. The show never cheapens it with a coda; it lets the sacrifice ache.

Parallel threads broaden the moral frame: On-jo’s father cutting through hell to reach the kids, then dying because heroism has a cost; Assemblywoman Park navigating triage and optics; a detective hauling a baby through the city because survival sometimes just means carrying someone smaller. The airstrike isn’t a twist; it’s the grim math of quarantine.

The mythology kicker is Nam-ra. Bitten, she doesn’t turn fully. She hears and smells like a zombie, heals like one, and wants like one—but keeps her mind, her memories, her friends. That “hambie” category reframes everything: the pathogen can create predators or people trying not to be. After the time-jump, the survivors (On-jo, Su-hyeok, et al.) meet Nam-ra on the rooftop. She’s chosen self-exile to protect them and hints there are others like her. It’s tender and devastating: the friend group is alive, but not intact. The ember of a campfire on school ruins is the show in a single image—warmth in wreckage.