Reviews
[TIFF Review] Netflix’s Korean Drama Series ‘Hellbound’ Has a Great Premise, But Struggles With Its Execution
As far as TV properties go, Hellbound has a pretty awesome hook. The gist of the six-episode live-action Netflix series is as follows: What would happen if angels began appearing, informing individuals that they would die for their sins in a few days, and when the time arrived, those people were beaten to death by hulking, smoking beasts?
That’s the actual scenario that opens the series. As people drink in a coffee shop on a random November day, a man stares anxiously at his phone. When the clock strikes the designated time, he panics, but when nothing happens, he begins to relax. Then, accompanied by a thunderous sound, three giant creatures burst through the wall, pursue the man down a busy street and beat him to death in front of hundreds of onlookers. The whole thing is, naturally, captured on video, uploaded to social media and becomes a viral sensation.
As inciting incidents go, this opening sequence is great: it’s exciting, bewildering and surprisingly bloody. The memory of the opener persists long after the series settles into a more traditional crime drama for the rest of the first episode. Even as police begin to investigate the strange event, discovering ties to an insidious religious group called New Truth and a second victim is warned of impending doom, the spectre of that initial attack looms large.
The Korean drama was developed by writer/director Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, Peninsula) and illustrator Choi Kyu-seok, who adapt from their own webtoon, The Hell. The measured pacing of the early part of Train to Busan is on display here, as Sang-ho privileges the introduction of his main characters and delving into their backstories rather than hit audiences with a series of bombastic otherworldly action sequences.
Fans of police procedurals will feel very comfortable with Hellbound, whose lead is a brow-beaten detective, Jin Kyeong-hoon (Yang Ik-june). Jin is still recovering from the brutal murder of his wife and has a rocky relationship with his teenage daughter, Hee-jeong (Lee Re) who has been secretly volunteering at New Truth. As Detective Jin begins to dig into the case, he crosses paths with Yoo Ah-in‘s Chairman Jeong Jin-soo (Burning, #Alive), the leader of the cult, which is dedicated to spreading the gospel of the angels and encouraging citizens to repent for their sins.
Chairman Jung is a perplexing character. Not only is he very young, but he’s also hardly the nefarious villain that we’re accustomed to seeing in this role. He lives a frugal life, he’s relatively calm and quiet, but he has a powerful intensity and is unafraid of using his deep pockets to achieve what he wants. His motivations become more clear in episodes two and three as he engages first Hee-jeong, and then Detective Jin, in unsavory activities, but he’s still a bit of a mystery through the three episodes made available for review.
The final key member of the series is Min Hye-jin (Kim Hyun-joo), an attorney who is hired to represent the so-called sinners who are targeted by the avenging angels. This is the dominant storyline in episode two when the next victim is publicly named online and Ms. Jungja Park, a single mother of two, is offered a $3 million yen pay-out by the New Truth to broadcast her “demonstration” (ie: death) live to the masses.
While episode two features the least amount of action, it introduces a number of complex, murky moral quandaries. Ms. Park’s “sin” (as revealed by Chairman Jung) is that she had two children with two different men, a fact that is presented as a symptom of moral decay by an online shock jock host. This character is basically a riff on the hysterical, ill-informed media personality who wields huge power with zero responsibility or journalistic integrity. This man even encourages his viewers to doxx Ms. Park and prevent Min Hye-jin from sending the two children out of the country, which she attempts to do when it becomes clear that moral and religious hysteria is brewing. Despite the inspired costuming choice of putting this shock jock in neon attire under black lights, the character is grating, in part because he does little more than scream and rant, but also because this hyperbolic, unhinged character feels a little too real for the current political moment.
As Hellbound progresses, it’s clear Sang-ho and Kyu-seok are more interested in interrogating the underlining issues that would arise from the situation rather than simply depict people being brutally murdered by monsters. There’s no shortage of political hot button topics being explored, including for-profit religion, the public appetite for violence and the rise of hysterical puritanism. Alas not only is this a lot to cover, by filtering these issues through the lens of the detective and the attorney, the message becomes muddled. This is most evident in the third episode when Detective Jin and Min Hye-jin are personally targeted by the Arrowhead, a splinter cell of New Truth-ers who use violence to achieve their goals.
All in all, Hellbound is an intriguing, albeit unfocused series with a solid hook. While audiences looking for a long-form religious horror show may be underwhelmed, fans of supernatural-infused police procedurals will find plenty to appreciate.
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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