Reviews
[Review] Netflix’s “Sweet Home” Replaces Zombies with Monsters in Repetitive Apocalypse Tale
Apocalyptic fiction shares commonalities, themes, and familiar story beats no matter the world-ending cause. In genre film, zombies tend to be the most common root cause of civilization’s collapse, rendered even more conventional thanks to George A. Romero’s popular Living Dead franchise. Whether it’s extreme climate shifts or infectious undead, apocalyptic tales tend to turn a sharp eye inward and ruminate on humankind’s ability, or lack thereof, to cope amidst catastrophic devastation. Despite trailers suggesting a more adrenaline-pumping action-horror invasion, Netflix’s Sweet Home instead falls into the same patterns of traditional apocalypse tales that give precedence to human drama.
Based on a webtoon of the same name, Sweet Home follows the ensemble group of characters residing at the Green House apartment complex. At the forefront is Cha Hyun-soo (Song Kang), a depressed young man still reeling from losing his entire family. Shortly after moving in, he and other neighbors notice a few neighbors exhibiting extreme aggressive behavior that leads to self-harm in some cases and bloodlust in others. Worse, they’re turning into monsters. This anomaly isn’t exclusive to the building; the entire world plummets into a bizarre infection that transforms humans into grotesque monsters. Leaving the uninfected with nowhere to go, they band together inside the building to fend off monsters and survive.
At first, thanks to an action-heavy first few episodes and uniquely designed creatures, this series sets up a video game-style horror story full of monster mayhem. It soon settles into the traditional pattern of zombie apocalypse stories, though, particularly Dawn of the Dead. First, it establishes some of the warning symptoms of a budding monster transformation, intercut with the disparate group of characters that will eventually turn to infighting as supplies dwindle. Some are heroic at the outset, like firefighter Seo Yi-kyeong (Lee Si-young), and some are morally dubious, like presumed gangster Pyeon Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook). There are supporting characters that don’t offer much beyond fodder and others that pop up to serve the narrative when needed. Sweet Home tries to give all of them equal attention in an increasingly convoluted fashion, complete with random flashbacks inserted at the clumsiest of moments.
The more the 10-episode season progresses, the more it loses interest in the monsters altogether. They still appear and present foils for whoever crosses paths with them, but the rules behind them constantly shift for convenience. Monsters can’t be killed, except when they can- the how and why shifts at whim. They’re a constant threat, except when they need to go away to give the drama room to breathe. When the final few episodes should be gearing up toward something action-heavy and grand, it introduces more evil humans to showcase this show’s real villain- humanity. The viewer will have to fill in many of the narrative blanks themselves, thanks to incredibly clunky scenes and choppy editing.
That there’s no real sense of world-building or geography makes it that much harder to follow along. In a later episode, characters escape through a monster-filled garage, and the scene ends with a crash. In the very next scene, those same characters inexplicably show up in the lobby to save another from near death. You just have to assume they clearly completed their mission and imagine how they evaded the hordes of unstoppable beasts. Sure, this setup requires suspension of disbelief, but Sweet Home often stretches it beyond plausibility straight into confusion.
The monsters do look cool in design, but those designs are marred by unflattering VFX. The series also front-loads the best designs for the first half of the season while relegating the more generic creatures to the sparsely loaded second half. The series gets repetitive when inserting monster encounters, too. When Imagine Dragon’s “Warriors” kicks in, expect everything to slow down to highlight the monster madness and the character’s heroics stepping up to face it. Rinse and repeat. The favored and on-the-nose song recurs many times over the season to amplify the poignancy of the monster encounters, but with diminishing returns.
There are so many unanswered questions left by the season’s end, along with a hook that sets up a potential follow-up, but it’s hard to care. The convoluted narrative structure changes what little rules it establishes for contrived storytelling’s sake. The cheap VFX can be off-putting, but the series does go heavy on the bloodshed. Sweet Home makes some of its deaths hurt, but not enough to fully invest in a series that loses steam the further it progresses. What sprints out of the gate and sets up an exciting creature-filled horror series quickly comes to a slow crawl zombie apocalypse that we’ve seen many times before. It just swaps out the zombies for monsters.
Sweet Home is available to stream on Netflix now.
Reviews
‘Cape Fear’ Redefines A Cutthroat Classic & Turns The American Dream Into A Psychological Nightmare [Review]
Hollywood has been stuck in a trend where a recognizable property — any recognizable property — holds more value than an original idea. This has led to a trend where a slew of acclaimed films have transitioned over to television and become limited series, because why not?
Which has led to a very mixed bag of results that’s usually viewed as a hollow exercise in IP renewal that’s become a growing cliche that’s something to mock. Dead Ringers, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and even The Birds are just some of the most recent titles in the movie-to-limited series pipeline. Admittedly, this formula can still work. It just needs to actually have not only a point of view, but a point, otherwise it’s destined to disappear into the vast streaming abyss.
Cape Fear definitely has a point of view and is well aware that it’s the fourth proper adaptation of this story — fifth if The Simpsons’ masterful “Cape Feare” parody is included. It’s an adaptation that’s not only aware of its past’s baggage, but intentionally embraces it and uses it to its advantage. Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear is so exciting because it functions as a remix of every version of this story — the ’60s film, Martin Scorsese’s ’90s remake, and John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners — to create this glorious amalgamation of the narrative. It’s not unlike what was done with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series and how it remixed the breadth of Thomas Harris’ works and their cinematic adaptations.
This approach is most effective when certain iconic scenes from the ’90s film are recontextualized and given to different characters in order to make grander thematic statements. It’s a really striking approach that reflects the generational ripples and overlap between these adaptations, yet it’s never distracting or ostentatious to anyone who is experiencing this story for the first time. It helps this series feel different from the deluge of forgettable adaptations that are flooding the market.
On paper, Antosca is the perfect showrunner to tell this story. He has an impressive body of work to pull from that includes horror series like Channel Zero, Hannibal, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, but also lots of true-crime titles like The Act, A Friend of the Family, and Candy. This series falls squarely within these two extremes as it blurs the lines between these genres and styles of horror storytelling. It’s Big Little Lies on bath salts. Cape Fear perhaps doesn’t need to exist, but it’s still a hell of a terrifying experience that has something timely to say.
Horror is full of stories in which one bad day is all it takes to break someone and turn them into a completely different person. Cape Fear isn’t doing exactly this. It’s more of a psychological waterboarding until the target’s sense of self is eroded to rubble. However, it takes the kernel of this idea and expands it onto the pristine ideal of the picturesque American family. It plays with the self-aware realization that the stories we tell are not necessarily what we think they are.
It’s a story about forgiveness, salvation, and revenge that blows up the Bowden family when a violent offender, Max Cady (Javier Bardem), is released from prison and systematically sets his sights on the people he holds accountable. Anna and Tom Bowden (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson), the married couple who represented his case in court, receive a rude awakening when Cady’s psychological torture tour begins. Cape Fear, as a property, is most famously known for being the ultimate cat-and-mouse psychological thriller. This rendition culminates in such an explosive climax that’s right out of a slasher film.
Antosca was involved with an unproduced Friday the 13th reboot draft back in 2015, and there are certainly moments in which Max Cady moves with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees. So much of what makes all this work rests on Bardem’s complex performance. He’s very careful not to just copy Robert Mitchum or Robert De Niro’s versions of Cady, while he also taps into a terrifying intensity that feels completely different from what he brought forward with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.
Apple TV’s new series also introduces a mental injury to Cady that adds psychological fractures that pull him between different versions of events as he struggles to grasp the truth. It’s an element that’s not exactly necessary and often feels like a convenient obstacle that can be activated whenever necessary. However, it allows for some creative visual flourishes and more opportunities for Bardem to get lost in Cady’s complexities.
Opposite Bardem’s Cady, Adams and Wilson do some of their best work as Anna and Tom. Anna is much more front and center than Tom, and Cape Fear is really Adams and Bardem’s time to shine. Wilson still does amazing, understated work, especially whenever the rug gets pulled out from under him regarding someone in his family. The visceral, brutal violence that Cady introduces to the Bowden family hits hard and highlights the anger and intensity that’s fundamental to this story.
What Cape Fear does best is its enlightening deconstruction of the ideal American family, how much work it takes to preserve such a pure thing, and the lengths that people go when they feel like the sanctity of this union is under fire. All it takes is for one of these foundational pillars to weaken before the whole unit becomes compromised. It moves the damage and pressure from one family member to the next as everyone struggles, and it’s unclear what will be left of this family when all is said and done.
This dynamic makes Cape Fear’s story so much more layered and interesting than if the series were just focused on Cady, Anna, and Tom, rather than making their children as much of a priority. Each member of the Bowden family experiences their own obstacles and arcs, although Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack’s (Joe Anders) storylines are often the most grating. It all boils down to forgiveness, identity, and wanting to be perceived as the person we think we are, versus how we’re viewed by the public, and the dangerous dissonance that can exist between these separate selves.
These ideas are at their most potent when Cape Fear taps into the growing paranoia that bubbles up to the surface and becomes unbearable, so that even the littlest action is triggering. These moments are usually captured through a more erratic filming style that ramps up the tension for both the characters and the audience, unsure of what will strike and when.
Cape Fear never struggles to create uncomfortable setpieces where the anxiety just crescendos and hangs over the scene. On this note, the series’ musical score really captures the perfect aesthetic. It immediately evokes the suspenseful power of the previous Cape Fear films whenever Bernard Herrmann’s virtuosic original theme kicks in. It’s magic every single time.
Antosca delivers an exhilarating update to a classic thriller that pushes its source material to exciting, new places that justify its existence. It’s an exciting story that’s full of terrifying performances and cataclysmic consequences. Admittedly, Cape Fear could have been shortened to eight episodes rather than ten. There are a few plot threads that feel unnecessary and artificially expanded upon, but every episode is still an adrenaline-pumping experience.
If nothing else, it reminds audiences why Cape Fear is such an evergreen story that’s lasted the test of time and will continue to unnerve and get under the skin of whole new generations.
The 10-episode series will make its global debut on June 5 with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31, 2026.
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