4 out of 5

Directed by: Yeon Sang-ho

covers season 1

A gripping concept, visualized with a very modern, visceral brutality – arguably more effective in its computer-touched artificiality – but ultimately succumbing to some evasion of its tricky questions, and very mixed messaging.

Expanded from writer Yeon Sang-ho’s webtoon, Hellbound imagines a near future where those that are doomed to Hell are visited by three supernatural, unstoppable creatures, and beaten and then dragged to their fate or melted into ash and bone on the spot. That this seems so outlandish is what makes it gripping: Sang-ho, directing from Choi Gyu-seok’s script, smartly makes this sentencing undeniable: it’s in our opening scene; it’s a big event whenever it happens: these giant, golem-esque swirls of grey mist and vacant eyes just appear out of thin air, charge down their target – knocking anyone and anything out of their way – and deliver a beating and then whichever conclusion, then the creatures themselves blip out or fade away. While I’ve seen the very clearly CGI nature of these beings criticized, the shaky-cam editing style that’s applied during these sequences helps to add an in-the-moment nerviness, not treating the effects like glory shots, and their clear un-real nature is fitting for how bizarre the occurrence is. It’s also part of an underlying concept: interpretation. While the violence of these happenings is undeniable, their interpretation is all down to religious and social politics: days or however long beforehand, the intended target is visited by a messenger (another computer-bundle of swirls, forming a distorted, smoky, floating face), telling them they will die on a certain date and time; that these messengers are considers angels and the victims sinners who must repent… well, that’s the human side of us, applying our logic.

A logic which is encouraged / furthered by the cultish New Truth, led by Jeong Jin-soo (Yoo Ah-in), which starts to gain traction with the public by broadcasting these deaths and explaining them as god’s wrath. The social media hook is underlined by cutaways to Twitch-like streams of New Truth followers, stirring up frenzy amongst one another, and the very reactive nature of such media-fed fandom is represented by “Arrowhead,” a very violent, gang-like group that’s going around and beating the hellbound.

We start with copper Jin Kyeong-hoon (Yang Ik-june) and lawyer Min Hye-jin (Kim Hyun-joo), both skeptical of these occurrences, but more directly questioning of New Truth’s aims, and though they can soon no longer deny the existence of the creatures and the deaths, each’s investigations into the growing cult suggests there’s something off here. What’s Jin-soo’s aim? Where does all of this lead? What should we do with the knowledge of our death – what do these “sinners” own themselves, or us?

The ramifications of this on the public – and how New Truth does end up using their following to boost the power of its leaders – are examined, as well as some of the more philosophical questions posed above, which get even more cutting as we see other examples, and learn more details of, the various hellbound occurrences.

Only: though perhaps due to translation, the show isn’t necessarily great at stating these questions, or exploring them. Neither Jin or Min can quite articulate what their issue is with New Truth, beyond not trusting them, or what they think a “right” response should be. There’s some trumpeting of ‘people should be in charge of their own fates,’ and yes, but such statements are not squared with how we’re shown that… they clearly aren’t. Because much of this is happening at a pretty fast pace, not dealing with these issues can be seen as part of the commentary, how the news cycle and mob mentality take over for real reporting and logic all too quickly, but things move so fast that the show can’t really speak to this idea either. This compounds with a mixed tone that bandies between dark comedy, tragedy, and action, and those can all go together, but here it comes across more as uncertainty, with the comedy covering for some of the missed depth in the script, and the action covering for when Choi Gyu-seok can’t quite stitch scene or concept A to B, and so… let’s get some distraction going in here.

A time jump at the midpoint of the series is another example of this. While its plot revelations indicate the churn of thoughts motivating this show – which is still a brilliant idea, and with some undeniably tense sequences – the jump also abandons some plot threads and skips to others, in a way that, again, could be read into as the sort of uncaring nature of life and death (that these things go on without much say from us), but then some threads are continued forward… This is the mixed messaging to which I referred: the vagueness of what Hellbound wants to accomplish would work fine if that lack of clarity was the point, but it plays around with conspiracy theory and attempts at more pointed commentary in a way that doesn’t strengthen its philosophical musings, and in fact undermines them in its final scenes. And on a more practical level, for as tight as some of the procedural aspects of this show can be, which make for some of its best – stepping through how the law or the police or journalists might deal with such inexplainable, ungraspable events – this is also the kind of show that requires some really dunderheaded decisions from its principles in order to force more drama into the mix.

On the one hand: we have this great, brutal, challenging psychological drama, rife with chilling commentary. On the other hand, we have a Lost-y actioner, that ducks out of some of its compellingly grey morality via distraction.

A second season could either sharpen the less flashy stuff, or go deeper on the conspiracy angle, but even if it remains a mixed bag, this was one of the more compelling and unique series to have popped up on the streamers.