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Hellbound Review

Hellbound is a South Korean dark fantasy drama series released on Netflix in 2021. It is a pretty solid show that proved to be somewhat disappointing in its second half.

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“I don’t know why God is doing this“

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Three supernatural monsters appear and drag sinners to hell. The rest of the season consists of people panicking and forming organizations that in various ways try to manipulate others how to feel about this new development. This is a series that is very slightly a fantasy. In fact, those sequences where the monsters take people to hell were the only prominent fantastical sections of the show and I wished to have seen more of those.

Those scenes were a bit too superhero-genre inspired bits and pieces, but still they were memorably dark and gruesome. When it comes to the central premise and idea, I loved it. What is a sin and is it okay that these people met their demise in such a way? Should people signal this as a religious thing or something altogether different?

The exploration of religious piousness was very well explored while the priest character was particularly terrific. In fact, I was so shocked that he died halfway through that unfortunately the rest of the show did not quite recover from his death. His presence was definitely missed afterward as he was memorably eerie and fascinatingly complex.

I did like the main policeman character, but others were unfortunately underdeveloped and much less memorable. Again, the first half was so striking and intriguing that the rest of the series failed to make use of its great premise and killing the main characters halfway through was unexpected and authentic, but it hurt the rest of the season as I was left with nobody to care for.

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Technically speaking, Hellbound is overly dark in cinematography, but memorable in the creatures’ designs and superbly acted across the board. I am a big fan of the director Yeon Sang-ho and his work here is quite strong, but the pacing is all over the place and the structure did not appeal to me. The crime elements were also overwhelming, but the dialogue and the script are certainly quite sophisticated.