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Cette critique peut contenir des spoilers
Well, well, well…
Make some tea, this will take a while…
!!!ALL the spoilers will be warned beforehand!!!
Hellbound is one of the examples where a story with an interesting concept was "bound", not to hell, but to not develop fully so that it could reach its true potential.
Hellbound is a supernatural horror drama not for the light-hearted. Even though Hellbound is not scary, it contains extreme violence and gore which makes it very dark, raw and twisted.
The story revolves around a mysterious phenomenon where some weird creatures burn humans and bind them to Hell. As fast these monsters burn humans, so slow burn the drama is. For a 6-episode length drama, it’s really slow paced. Personally, I like slow paced dramas when this factor helps in building the universe of the story, the atmosphere, the suspense or the characters’ depth. In Hellbound though, nothing of these happens. That’s why I found the whole set up (especially the first 3 episodes) a little boring and I don’t think that the drama can be binged-watched easily as its slowness makes it a very exhausting experience.
~~~What went wrong~~~
The real problem of the story though, it’s not the pace. I think that the story has 2 main problems
~ The Randomness~
DISCLAIMER: ~Randomness~ does not contain spoilers but it describes very generally how the storyline works.
The one problem is the randomness. Many random people were involved in many random situations that led to a random storyline.
Hellbound feels like watching a “collection of stories” which take place in the same universe. The storyline is showing some of the actions/situations of many different people during the crisis, but never you’ll never get to see in depth the character's way of thinking or get to fully know their personalities. Also, you won’t even get to know the whole story for some of them. As a result, you can’t get attached with any of the characters. There are only some cases where you can feel sorry for some of them and that’s it.
In addition, the relationships between the characters feel kind of superficial to me. The fact that you see many people with not a certain relationship between them, strengthened the randomness factor because basically, the drama was just throwing random characters and their stories to your face. The weird thing is that the drama isn’t that long and it didn’t even have these many characters to feel like it’s overdrawn with them and their stories, but it did.
And here is where the critical question arises: among all these characters, who is the protagonist?
I asked myself many times and to my surprise, I couldn’t come up with an answer. In Hellbound there isn’t anyone that you can call “the protagonist” of the story. Thus, as a watcher, you don’t have anyone to follow and process the story with. This is actually the reason that everyone seems irrelevant with each other, there isn’t a protagonist to bound all of them together.
Don’t get me wrong though. Good stories without a certain protagonist can exist but I believe that Hellbound isn't one of them.
~Netflix~
The second problem, that I believe is the most serious one, is Netflix.
Netflix has started to produce more and more Kdramas lately and some of the dramas it has made had huge and global success. Even though I really loved many of them, I have to say that there’s a different aura in these dramas, a more “Netflix” aura that slowly takes the K from Kdrama away.
The main problem I have with Netflix original dramas is the “see you in the second season that isn’t even confirmed that’s gonna happen” thing. As a regular asian-drama watcher, I have been used to watching a drama that has one season with a story that has a start-middle-closure which in the end I like or dislike and then, move on to the next watching adventure. I, and many others I have talked to, like asian-dramas because of this. I’d lie if I’d say that I haven’t liked dramas which have multiple seasons but Netflix has just overdone it lately.
Thus, I started to think if I dislike the fact that Hellbound is another Netflix drama which will have a second season, or if there was something wrong regardless of the fact that Hellbound has to have a second season. The answer here is both.
Hellbound is based on a webtoon by the same name. I haven’t read the webtoon. I don’t know the full story, so I don’t have an opinion about it. Maybe the webtoon is a hidden gem, when I read it, I will see for myself. For now, everything I based this review on is the 6 episodes that I have watched.
The webtoon’s original run was from August 25, 2019 to September 21, 2020. This means that the story was completed and Netflix could have released the whole story in one go, but it didn’t. This led to the creation of a drama which basically has no story progression. It’s remarkable, the first season ended and it answered literally nothing, on the other hand, it raised more questions than the already existing ones. The first season could have been described as the “backstory” of the Hellbound but it’s nearly the beginning of the story.
Maybe, if Netflix had released the whole story in one go, the progression and the escalation of the story and characters, that was needed, would be there. Unfortunately, Hellbound’s story was bound by Netflix to not develop as it should, and this is really sad. As the story hasn’t ended yet, to see the story’s full potential we have to wait until the second season is released (if it will be released) or read the webtoon instead. For me, Hellbound will be saved if the second season comes to set the record straight and puts everything in its proper place.
~~~What went well~~~
Despite the fact that the storyline is messy, there are some things that I quite liked about Hellbound.
~The concept~
!!WARNING ~The concept~ part contains SPOILERS!!
Hellbound has managed to build a dystopian world that's based on a very -as nonsense as it sounds- realistic depiction of human thought. Humans through the years tried to explain the world and the natural phenomena around them using logic. In the early years though, humans couldn’t understand all of the things around them. Thus, they attributed the nature of these phenomena to God and God’s Will and many times humans were scared by them. A perfect example is Greek mythology. One of the Greek mythology myths is saying that God Zeus was using lighting as a weapon and to punish but in many myths, he didn’t use lightning to punish but to seek solutions.
Likewise, in Hellbound we see people become witnesses to a supernatural phenomenon which they couldn’t explain. In their fear and lack of knowledge they attributed this supernatural phenomenon to God’s Will to punish sinners. At the end of episode 3, Jun Jin Soo explains exactly the feeling of human’s fear to the unknown perfectly.
“Do you honestly believe true justice can be served through man-made law?”. This is the moral question that Hellbound asks through Jun Jin Soo and answers through the 6 episodes of the fist season. Law was made by humans when society was created to ensure harmonious coexistence between people. Of course, nothing man-made is perfect and the same applies to the law. Through the years, humans fight for their rights and always try to improve the law as much as their human nature allows them.
In Hellbound, we see people turn a blind eye to the law and only believe in the God’s Punishment, which was actually the product of human fear. The deviation from legal life led to the creation of Hellbound’s dystopian world. Thus, through this world, Hellbound shows the value and the importance of human law and how humanity would end up without them.
~The production and Acting~
The production is not perfect, but it’s decent enough. It has some generally good cinematography and even though the music was average, it was on point and it fitted very well with the drama’s tone and atmosphere. As the drama has a very dark plot, the colors follow this darkness too so the color palette contains strictly cool colors. The visual FX are very satisfying in general but the VFX I think that lacked in some parts. The CGI of the monsters honestly wasn’t bad, the design of them was only somehow weird and not scary enough. Personally, I didn’t care about the monster’s appearance, I had other things that I didn’t like and found them more serious problems. Last, for the acting, Yoo Ah In was exceptional as always and the other actors acted good enough alongside him. Won Jin Ah's performance as mother and Park Jung Min as a father were really remarkable too and I enjoy watching them a lot.
Conclusion
Hellbound wasn’t good, but it wasn’t very bad either. Everything will depend on the second season. Until then, if you want to watch a horror-thriller series and you don’t care about how complex and well-written the story process is, you would definitely enjoy it.
!!!ALL the spoilers will be warned beforehand!!!
Hellbound is one of the examples where a story with an interesting concept was "bound", not to hell, but to not develop fully so that it could reach its true potential.
Hellbound is a supernatural horror drama not for the light-hearted. Even though Hellbound is not scary, it contains extreme violence and gore which makes it very dark, raw and twisted.
The story revolves around a mysterious phenomenon where some weird creatures burn humans and bind them to Hell. As fast these monsters burn humans, so slow burn the drama is. For a 6-episode length drama, it’s really slow paced. Personally, I like slow paced dramas when this factor helps in building the universe of the story, the atmosphere, the suspense or the characters’ depth. In Hellbound though, nothing of these happens. That’s why I found the whole set up (especially the first 3 episodes) a little boring and I don’t think that the drama can be binged-watched easily as its slowness makes it a very exhausting experience.
~~~What went wrong~~~
The real problem of the story though, it’s not the pace. I think that the story has 2 main problems
~ The Randomness~
DISCLAIMER: ~Randomness~ does not contain spoilers but it describes very generally how the storyline works.
The one problem is the randomness. Many random people were involved in many random situations that led to a random storyline.
Hellbound feels like watching a “collection of stories” which take place in the same universe. The storyline is showing some of the actions/situations of many different people during the crisis, but never you’ll never get to see in depth the character's way of thinking or get to fully know their personalities. Also, you won’t even get to know the whole story for some of them. As a result, you can’t get attached with any of the characters. There are only some cases where you can feel sorry for some of them and that’s it.
In addition, the relationships between the characters feel kind of superficial to me. The fact that you see many people with not a certain relationship between them, strengthened the randomness factor because basically, the drama was just throwing random characters and their stories to your face. The weird thing is that the drama isn’t that long and it didn’t even have these many characters to feel like it’s overdrawn with them and their stories, but it did.
And here is where the critical question arises: among all these characters, who is the protagonist?
I asked myself many times and to my surprise, I couldn’t come up with an answer. In Hellbound there isn’t anyone that you can call “the protagonist” of the story. Thus, as a watcher, you don’t have anyone to follow and process the story with. This is actually the reason that everyone seems irrelevant with each other, there isn’t a protagonist to bound all of them together.
Don’t get me wrong though. Good stories without a certain protagonist can exist but I believe that Hellbound isn't one of them.
~Netflix~
The second problem, that I believe is the most serious one, is Netflix.
Netflix has started to produce more and more Kdramas lately and some of the dramas it has made had huge and global success. Even though I really loved many of them, I have to say that there’s a different aura in these dramas, a more “Netflix” aura that slowly takes the K from Kdrama away.
The main problem I have with Netflix original dramas is the “see you in the second season that isn’t even confirmed that’s gonna happen” thing. As a regular asian-drama watcher, I have been used to watching a drama that has one season with a story that has a start-middle-closure which in the end I like or dislike and then, move on to the next watching adventure. I, and many others I have talked to, like asian-dramas because of this. I’d lie if I’d say that I haven’t liked dramas which have multiple seasons but Netflix has just overdone it lately.
Thus, I started to think if I dislike the fact that Hellbound is another Netflix drama which will have a second season, or if there was something wrong regardless of the fact that Hellbound has to have a second season. The answer here is both.
Hellbound is based on a webtoon by the same name. I haven’t read the webtoon. I don’t know the full story, so I don’t have an opinion about it. Maybe the webtoon is a hidden gem, when I read it, I will see for myself. For now, everything I based this review on is the 6 episodes that I have watched.
The webtoon’s original run was from August 25, 2019 to September 21, 2020. This means that the story was completed and Netflix could have released the whole story in one go, but it didn’t. This led to the creation of a drama which basically has no story progression. It’s remarkable, the first season ended and it answered literally nothing, on the other hand, it raised more questions than the already existing ones. The first season could have been described as the “backstory” of the Hellbound but it’s nearly the beginning of the story.
Maybe, if Netflix had released the whole story in one go, the progression and the escalation of the story and characters, that was needed, would be there. Unfortunately, Hellbound’s story was bound by Netflix to not develop as it should, and this is really sad. As the story hasn’t ended yet, to see the story’s full potential we have to wait until the second season is released (if it will be released) or read the webtoon instead. For me, Hellbound will be saved if the second season comes to set the record straight and puts everything in its proper place.
~~~What went well~~~
Despite the fact that the storyline is messy, there are some things that I quite liked about Hellbound.
~The concept~
!!WARNING ~The concept~ part contains SPOILERS!!
Hellbound has managed to build a dystopian world that's based on a very -as nonsense as it sounds- realistic depiction of human thought. Humans through the years tried to explain the world and the natural phenomena around them using logic. In the early years though, humans couldn’t understand all of the things around them. Thus, they attributed the nature of these phenomena to God and God’s Will and many times humans were scared by them. A perfect example is Greek mythology. One of the Greek mythology myths is saying that God Zeus was using lighting as a weapon and to punish but in many myths, he didn’t use lightning to punish but to seek solutions.
Likewise, in Hellbound we see people become witnesses to a supernatural phenomenon which they couldn’t explain. In their fear and lack of knowledge they attributed this supernatural phenomenon to God’s Will to punish sinners. At the end of episode 3, Jun Jin Soo explains exactly the feeling of human’s fear to the unknown perfectly.
“Do you honestly believe true justice can be served through man-made law?”. This is the moral question that Hellbound asks through Jun Jin Soo and answers through the 6 episodes of the fist season. Law was made by humans when society was created to ensure harmonious coexistence between people. Of course, nothing man-made is perfect and the same applies to the law. Through the years, humans fight for their rights and always try to improve the law as much as their human nature allows them.
In Hellbound, we see people turn a blind eye to the law and only believe in the God’s Punishment, which was actually the product of human fear. The deviation from legal life led to the creation of Hellbound’s dystopian world. Thus, through this world, Hellbound shows the value and the importance of human law and how humanity would end up without them.
~The production and Acting~
The production is not perfect, but it’s decent enough. It has some generally good cinematography and even though the music was average, it was on point and it fitted very well with the drama’s tone and atmosphere. As the drama has a very dark plot, the colors follow this darkness too so the color palette contains strictly cool colors. The visual FX are very satisfying in general but the VFX I think that lacked in some parts. The CGI of the monsters honestly wasn’t bad, the design of them was only somehow weird and not scary enough. Personally, I didn’t care about the monster’s appearance, I had other things that I didn’t like and found them more serious problems. Last, for the acting, Yoo Ah In was exceptional as always and the other actors acted good enough alongside him. Won Jin Ah's performance as mother and Park Jung Min as a father were really remarkable too and I enjoy watching them a lot.
Conclusion
Hellbound wasn’t good, but it wasn’t very bad either. Everything will depend on the second season. Until then, if you want to watch a horror-thriller series and you don’t care about how complex and well-written the story process is, you would definitely enjoy it.
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