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Watch Hellbound — Season 1 with a subscription on Netflix. Summoned by the devilish imagination of writer-director Yeon Sang-ho, Hellbound leverages its terrifying concept to thoughtfully ...
- (33)
- Yoo Ah-In
- Yeon Sang-Ho
- November 19, 2021
Nov 19, 2021 · The wrath of God has been rendered, cinematically speaking, in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes it’s a perfect storm; sometimes it’s Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules striking great vengeance down upon thee with furious anger in “Pulp Fiction.” “Hellbound,” an ambitious new Netflix series from “Train to Busan” director Yeon Sang-ho based on a webtoon (“The Hellbound”), imagines ...
Nov 19, 2021 · A clearly distracted Jin Kyeong-hoon (Yang Ik-june), a police detective whose wife was murdered a few months prior, is late to the briefing about the case. His annoyed chief assigns him and fellow ...
- 2 min
- Damnation awaits us all in Netflix’s bleak but excellent Korean drama Hellbound.
- Netflix Spotlight: November 2021
- What’s your favorite Korean drama of 2021?
- Verdict
By Kayleigh Donaldson
Updated: Nov 29, 2021 10:56 pm
Posted: Nov 24, 2021 8:03 pm
Hellbound is now streaming on Netflix.
What would you do if you knew the exact moment you were destined to die? For a nameless man in the opening scene of Netflix's latest Korean drama, Hellbound, that question is all too real. He sits at a table in a busy cafe, staring at the clock on his phone, sweat dripping from his panicked face. As the clock hits 1:20 p.m., there is silence. A moment of relief flashes on the man's face. And then a rumble rips through the streets, and he meets his preordained fate. A trio of demon-like beasts barge through the city to grab him, beat him senseless, then burn him into a shell of ash and bones. It’s a shocking opening to a series that doesn’t let up the tension for six whole episodes, diving into a world where the threat of damnation turns us all into monsters of a different breed.
Yeon Sang-ho, the director of Train to Busan, adapts his own webtoon for a six-part series that has quickly become a social media talking point. It’s hard not to be immediately intrigued by the premise: people begin receiving prophecies from strange creatures that they will soon be dragged to hell for their sins, causing the world to fall into a state of panic and condemnation. That opening scene is a brutal wake-up call of the utmost seriousness of this conceit. There are no winks, nods, or sly jokes to break the tension, no meme-ready moments for Netflix to post on Twitter. Hellbound is 100% serious about its bleak new world. For Yeon, however, the focus is less on the creatures themselves, as foreboding as they may be, than the all-too-human reactions they elicit.
The first half of the series focuses on a disparate group of people tied together by the chaos of these creatures. Detective Jin Kyeong-hoon (Yang Ik-june) is called upon to investigate the deaths, a task that seems utterly pointless given that human justice seems utterly irrelevant to this case. Min Hye-jin (Kim Hyun-joo) is an attorney hired to represent a terrified woman who is doomed to damnation. And then there is Jeong Jin-soo, a quietly charismatic figure who heads the New Truth Society, a cult that sees the emergence of these creatures as a sign that humanity has strayed from God's path and must change before it's too late. As played by Yoo Ah-in, probably best known to Westerners for his startling performance in Lee Chang-dong's Burning, Jeong is unnervingly normal, bereft of the fire and brimstone preaching one might expect from a cult leader. Handsome, almost cute, and wholly in control of every moment, he makes it seem completely understandable as to why anyone would be taken by his call for a return to Old Testament-style justice. It's in those moments where his calm facade falls and we see the real toxicity of his gospel that we, the audience, feel his wrath.
The wrath of God is one thing, but the judgment of man is revealed to be far more insidious. It seemingly takes no time at all for Seoul society to fall into a trap of hysteria, scorn, and religious propaganda. There's no room for nuance in this new world. You're either a sinner or you're not, and regardless of the seriousness of your supposed crimes, you deserve to suffer. This is most tragically conveyed through the fate of one damned sinner, a terrified single mother named Park Jeong-ja, played by Kim Shin-rok in a heart-wrenching performance that’s a series standout.
Hellbound
Squid Game
Vincenzo
Move to Heaven
Taxi Driver
Other -- let us know in the comments.
Hellbound may be endlessly bleak, but its mercilessly sharp focus on humanity's hypocrisy and evangelical panic reveals a highly gripping drama that holds no punches in exposing our true darkness. This grounded approach to the fantastical offers one of the darkest but most satisfying Netflix series of 2021.
Nov 18, 2021 · 18th November 2021. No other TV show in 2021 has an opening quite as explosive as Netflix’s new South Korean horror series, Hellbound. A jittery man sits in a cafe, looking anxiously at a ...
Nov 23, 2021 · An auspicious premise for a show, to be sure, but “Hellbound” is primarily concerned with what this new horrific fact of life does to the society left in its wake.
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Hellbound (Korean: 지옥) is a South Korean dark fantasy television series directed by Yeon Sang-ho, based on his own webtoon of the same name. An original Netflix release set in the then future year of 2022, supernatural beings suddenly appear out of nowhere to condemn people to Hell .
