Recap "All of Us Are Dead" Episode 7

Feb 8, 2022

I know what you’re thinking: Have they ever stopped their onslaught? The answer, of course, is no; even the most emotionally driven episodes of the show have been stuffed with zombie action. But for this episode anyway, the emotional stuff has been scaled back significantly. The minor storylines get a lot less screentime this ep, too. Our focus is now squarely on the core group of surviving kids, and their last-ditch effort to escape the school and find safety.

Recap

It fits with the show’s overall theme, though, that the biggest obstacles to their escape in the end aren’t zombies, but other students. (“We have met the enemy and he is us,” as Walt Kelly once put it.) The kids have a big plan to get out of the music room in which they’ve been trapped and make it to the rooftop to seek help, and miraculously, it pretty much works as expected. After first building a barricade to cut the room in two, they begin making a ton of noise, luring the zombies into the room but stranding them at the barricade. Once all the zombies leave the hallway and cram into the music room, the kids simply slip out the back door and make a break for the stairway to the roof above.

But there are two problems they didn’t see coming. First, there’s the bullying victim who’s still up there on the roof with his SOS sign. Even as a rescue copter approaches (thanks to the assemblywoman pulling strings back in the quarantine camp on behalf of So-ju, who’s trying to make his way there himself), the poor kid hears our heroes trying to get through the locked door. But he remembers how his fellow victim Eun-ji said they’re still outcasts even amid an apocalyptic zombie outbreak, and he doesn’t unlock the door for them. (At least not this episode—cliffhanger!)

Recap

The other problem is Gwi-nam, the bully who’s been killing his way through students and faculty alike since the start of the outbreak. After dispatching with the one-time leader of his clique, he overhears the racket in the music room and comes looking for the kids, specifically Cheong-san, whom he hates for poking out his eye. It’s he who faces Cheong-san and Su-hyeok down at the end of the episode, and since he’s immune to zombie attacks, he could well unleash the whole horde on them. (Another cliffhanger!)

Elsewhere, the army begins moving into the city, discovering that bullets kill zombies just as easily as humans. (It seems like metal weapons—arrows, knives, bullets—are the zombies’ kryptonite, which should make the outbreak easier to contain than your average has-to-be-a-headshot variety.) So-ju makes the same discovery when he raids a police station’s weapons locker. Detective Song gets ditched by his erstwhile partner Ho-cheol after stopping to rescue that idiot vlogger from a few episodes ago, and given that they’re shepherding a baby and a small child, I have to say the younger cop is probably in the right on this one. The archery/bathroom kids try to escape the archery training room, but the stretcher they built for their wounded member falls apart, forcing them back inside.

In terms of the show’s zombie mythos, the most important development other than the effectiveness of the bullets is the discovery that “half-zombies” like Gwi-nam, Eun-ji, and Nam-ra have, well, superpowers, namely enhanced hearing and strength. There’s Mr. Lee’s “new breed of human” for you. It should also be noted that Eun-ji tries to eat a teacher who ignored her pleas for help from bullying over the years, but she winds up vomiting a ton of blood back up afterwards. Unfazed, she puts on a little makeup and strides right out of the school, her destination and fate unknown.

Recap

And oh yeah, Su-hyeok confesses his feelings for Nam-ra, which she reciprocates. On-jo even gives them her blessing, in a sense, by insisting on undoing the rope that bound them together. “Hatred is contagious,” she says, “but so is trust.” So that’s nice, provided Nam-ra doesn’t zombie out at any point.

There’s really not much else to say about the episode, I don’t think. It’s perfectly fine zombie-action filmmaking, adding some new wrinkles to the basic concept and positioning the survivors for one last push for freedom. I miss some of the emotional power of its predecessors, which here is limited to the plight of that poor kid on the roof. But this is all a setup for the next installment, and I understand the need to keep things plot-centric. My hope is that the remaining episodes will reinject (reinfect?) the proceedings with the sense of pain, loss, and against-the-odds optimism that distinguished its predecessors. I think it’s a smart enough show to pull it off.

Tags: #All of Us Are Dead;