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The popular new zombie Korean drama All Of Us Are Dead has helped South Korea set yet another new record on Netflix in the US.
Based on the webtoon Now At Our School by Joo Dong-geun, the series follows a group of high school students who find themselves trapped on campus in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
After topping the charts on Netflix in over 25 countries by January 31, All Of Us Are Dead reached the peak of the streaming platform’s daily Top 10 list in the States on February 4. This is a huge milestone for South Korean entertainment as the show is only the second non-English-language series to ever reach that position.
Due to the success of Squid Game and All Of Us Are Dead, Korea is now the first country to place multiple foreign-language series at the top of the streaming service’s charts, according to Deadline. The zombie series was released on January 28 and took the top spot after 7 days, just a few days more than the four days it took Squid Game to accomplish this feat.
K-dramas have become extremely popular in the US, with viewership rising by over 200% between 2019 and 2021. While no other Korean series has topped the Netflix US chart, titles such as Hellbound and My Name have made it into the Top 10.
Park Solomon, who plays Lee Soo-hyuk in the series, recently spoke about the process behind the actors’ performances on the show. “We tried really hard to act like modern Korean high school students,” he said, pointing out how long ago the source material was released. “Compared to 13 years ago when the webtoon was made, the culture of high school students is different now.”
One Of Netflix’s Best Horror Shows
Blink and you might have missed Feria: The Darkest Light, a show that briefly landed on Netflix’s top 10 list, but never made it anywhere near #1. Now, it’s slipped away and you may only come across it randomly as you scroll.
If you’re into horror, I wouldn’t skip over it.
Feria is a Spanish horror series. Spanish language, but also literally from Spain, where a small town is plagued with the infestation of a cult that’s been there for decades, but has most recently resulted in a mass suicide where dozens of naked bodies turn up outside a nearby mine.
The story follows two sisters whose parents are caught on video seemingly leading the cult members to their deaths, but now they’ve disappeared, and no one knows what happened to them.
If you’ve just watched Netflix’s more high profile horror series, Archive 81, you will probably find many similarities here, given that the two are about ancient cults and reality-spanning god-demon-etc creatures trying to find their way into our world. All very Lovecraftian.
I would argue that Feria is better than Archive 81, both in terms of its performances (from both sisters especially) but also for its manifestation of horror as it goes some truly bizarre and dark places. The “evil entities” in this are also like nothing I’ve really ever seen in this genre before, and will stick with you long after you watch it.
If I have one complaint about Feria it’s that I don’t think it really sticks the landing. It seems to reach an inevitable point and then goes for something that’s a too-traditional horror trope. I can’t tell if that’s done purposefully to set up season 2, or if they truly just didn’t know how to end it in a coherent way, but I didn’t love the finale as a result.
Still, I fundamentally believe it’s worth watching, and I would certainly watch a second season if it did come around. Given the show’s performance, I’m not sure that’s a sure thing, and this may be all we get. There are quite a few obscure but good foreign language Netflix horror shows out there, and this may just be another one thrown on the pile, waiting to be discovered on some bored weekend of scrolling.
I think the gold standard for a series like this would be Netflix’s Dark, which is perhaps more sci-fi than horror, but still deals with similar concepts. It also happens to be the best time travel series ever made (no exaggeration). Feria doesn’t quite reach those heights, but in terms of creating an atmosphere of dread and a creepy cult and malevolent evil force, it manages to do that better than most competition. I’d absolutely tell any horror fan to give it a shot.
