Recap "All of Us Are Dead" Episode 5

Feb 6, 2022

The trapped kids at the core of All of Us Are Dead’s narrative understand how important it is to believe in a light at the end of the tunnel, to forego despair in favor of a belief that, somehow, things will turn out alright. Unfortunately for them, there’s little evidence to support their hopes at present. And if the episode’s surprise ending is any indication, things may well get worse before they get better, if they ever get better at all.

Recap

We’ll start out reviewing this very eventful episode with a look at that core group of kids. Realizing yet again that a day has dawned without any sign of rescue, they devise a plan to use a drone, partially assembled by the science club, to surveil the school building and its surroundings—partially to make sure the missing Cheong-san is still alive somewhere, and partially to deliver a note to any outside survivors or authorities, asking for help.

After a perilous mission to the science supply room—there’s a terrific fakeout involving the infected hamsters that started the whole mess—On-jo and the bespectacled science whiz Joon-yeong retrieve the drone and everything they need to make it operational.

What they discover using it, though, is mainly a horror show. Yes, they are able to locate Cheong-san, who’d spent most of the episode running for his life and stuck in a pipe shaft. (More on this later.) But they just miss spotting the bathroom kids, who’ve been bow-and-arrowing their way through the zombies, perhaps pioneering a way to do away with the undead. (Side note: No one’s tried shooting them yet, not even the cops or the military, at least not that we’ve seen.)

And they find a student who hanged herself from a window rather than succumb to the zombies. They find one member of the group’s parents, zombiefied in a crashed truck. Then the zombies attack the drone, and the note they’d attached asking for help flutters away in the breeze. So much for hope.

Outside the school, things aren’t going much better. Pranksters, protestors, and religious zealots are worsening the crisis. (In one gutting scene, an old man and a little girl get pelted with refuse by protestors trying to keep refugees out.) The government has declared martial law for the first time in 41 years—a very pointed reference given South Korea’s history of authoritarian government. Seemingly acting without civilian-government approval, the military switches off all communications into and out of the city to prevent the spread of potentially destabilizing “fake news,” though of course this also prevents the kids and any other survivors from finding out what’s going on or contacting anyone outside for help. Even On-jo’s firefighter dad and the assemblywoman he escorted to safety are essentially imprisoned in a quarantine center, by military officers who are Just Following Orders. What could go wrong?

Recap

Elsewhere, some of the series’ more disparate plot threads start coming together. Cheong-san is unwittingly saved from a zombie attack by the bathroom kids’ archery contingent, who put an arrow through a ghoul that was about to chow down on Cheong-san through his pipe-duct hiding place. We also discover that the archer Ha-ri’s missing brother is part of the main group of kids. Finally, Detective Song Jae-ik and his book-smart but cowardly cop sidekick stumble across the baby that the pregnant kid delivered before succumbing to the infection.

The episode’s most action-heavy sequences involve Cheong-san and his escape from both the zombies and the psychotic bully Gwi-nam, who’s intent on killing him. There’s a fun and inventively staged battle in the school library that involves the classic cartoon visual of an entire row of bookshelves toppling into each other like dominoes. In the end, Cheong-san puts out Gwi-nam’s eye with a phone; the bully subsequently gets swarmed by zombies, and Cheong-san escapes

Recap

But here’s where things get weird. We’ve already seen that Eun-ji, one of Gwi-nam’s victims, survived getting bitten, and continues to merrily smash cellphones in hopes of preventing the nude footage the bullies took from going live. Now it’s Gwi-nam’s turn to miraculously withstand infection; zombies no longer seek him out, and he’s free to roam the school’s hallways in search of revenge against Cheong-san.

It’s here that footage from Mr. Lee, the originator of the zombie virus—named the Jonas Virus—comes into play. He theorizes that if the virus keeps evolving, it could create a new breed of human—like Eun-ji and Gwi-nam, carrying their grudges beyond life and death. Perhaps the greatest menace to society from the virus has yet to reveal itself. And perhaps All of Us Are Dead has even more hidden cards to play.

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