Wen 丨 Yellow Millet
After the second season of the Korean drama "Kingdom" and the Japanese drama "Alice in the Land of the Dead", Netflix has launched an addictive apocalyptic Korean drama "Sweet Home", I suspect that there is a type of drama that is particularly suitable for this kind of platform to release the whole episode at once, so that the audience can chase the drama mode overnight, summed up: chasing the drama is cool for a while, and it is difficult to think about it. Because even if you have dissatisfaction or doubts about a certain episode, you can't wait to watch the next episode, even if the show is more and more ordinary after the fact, anyway, it has been watched.
Sweet Home (2020)
The story of "Sweet Home" takes place in the large apartment community of "Green House", which is so large that there is a nursery and a small supermarket, and all the doors are locked and become a closed island. The bereaved autistic young man Cha Xiuxian wanted to say goodbye to the world after playing the game (speaking of this year's apocalyptic survival film, the fairy life of the otaku eating instant noodles to play the game is easily interrupted, the beginning of "#活着" and "Alice" are like this), the monster appeared at this time, the residents of the building became all kinds of monsters, not to mention, the whole of Korea has also been rampant, even the president has performed a monster on the spot to the people, since they can't go out, the remaining humans in the building can only gather on the first floor in order not to be invaded by the monsters in the building. Cha Soon shows early symptoms of turning into a monster.
Like Alice in the Land of the Dead, Sweet Home is a comic strip adaptation of the popular webcomic Home. However, "Alice" is basically loyal to the original book, which is a safety card, and "Sweet Home" has made drastic changes to the original book. People who have not seen the original will also see some obvious plot bugs and incomplete characters.
The monsters in "Sweet Home" are more surprising than traditional zombies in that each one is different, the factors that become monsters are also randomly selected, not contagious, and what kind of monster a person will become is related to the obsession in the person's heart, the monsters that appear in the first few episodes of the series, from cyclops (because they love to peep), long-handed monsters (because the "living" hand is not long enough to save children) to long-haired monsters (I am a bald head wearing a wig) Some have excellent visual effects, and some are scary with cuteness.
Therefore, in comparison, the next few episodes appear to be monsters. Many interesting monsters in the comics have not been really "humanized", such as the narcissistic monster who chases people and asks themselves whether they are beautiful, and the mud monster who finally saves the overall situation.
And the humans who fight the monsters are also remarkable: the male protagonist needless to say, each battle comes with super-burning background music (Imagine Dragons' Warriors appears several times); former special forces member plus former firefighter Xu Yijing is a character not in the comics, she brings professional fighting skills, escape spider monster action scenes and shapes such as Lola in "Tomb Raider"; electric guitar girls with baseball bats and saber-wielding priests quickly team up and cut off half of the monster's face , make it lose its vision;
Lee Eun-hyuk, the glasses brother of the brothers and sisters with different surnames, is calm and clever, unarmed and naturally becomes the head of the survival group in the building; his little sister is a middle two-year girl, although she has no fighting power, she has excellent ability to spit and is good at exposing the hearts of others; the wheelchair uncle who lives in Room 1408 is a former colonel, although his legs are disabled, he can use ordinary objects to make weapons, and his first help to help Xiuxian deal with the Cyclops is probably the most handsome scene in the whole play, although sitting by the window drinking beer like advertising implants, it is also the most handsome advertising implant ("1408") is the title of a short story by Stephen King).
The sick father and daughter appeared late, and they were also prepared, so that the audience knew that the original monster was afraid of fire attack; Scarface rogue was not a resident of this building, but went to the building to find a pervert to seek revenge, and as a result, he was trapped in the building, and there were not many people talking harshly, and he helped the residents to beat the monster; at first glance, some mentally disturbed lost mothers did not hesitate to fight with the monster in order to protect the two orphans, and the kind she finally became a female fetus that would not harm humans; the monsters were not all hostile, but there were also well-intentioned monsters, like the transparent water monster that rescued the little brother.
In addition to these main characters, there are several rabble-rousers in the building, who are protected objects and sources of right and wrong, these characters give a deeper meaning to the original bloody monster drama, and it is also one of the themes that many monster movies will deal with: people are more terrifying than monsters.
The supermarket owner of the selfish and abusive wife refuses to let the neighbors share food in times of crisis, while a few small men only care about their own comfort, and others will only watch, this group of people after learning that Cha Xiuxian is becoming a monster so that he has an immortal body, they are comfortable using him as a tool person, every day he makes a list for him to risk going upstairs to each person's house to get things, and then put Xiuxian in the quarantine area, and finally sold him out in exchange for military protection.
Of course, these plots have their practical significance, but the darkness of human nature is not particularly fully unfolded, and they also quickly unite and blend together, resulting in the collapse of the middle of the rhythm of the series, the middle of the episodes are in a boring state of waiting for the monster to invade, many scenes are just two or two talks, explain some character background stories, and then let several characters engage in a little ambiguity, there is really no talk, for the custom of catching weeks can also talk about a few rounds, the role of the second little sister is heavier than the comic, But most of her scenes are just idle, despising everyone.
I don't think these idle and boring passages are too problematic, but a cartoon in the New Yorker this year shows a man and a woman sitting paralyzed on a couch with a wooden plank nailed to the window, with the caption: "Apocalyptic movies never mention sitting dry." No, "Sweet Home" has a lot of idle sitting paragraphs, everyone helps with "porridge", and the scene of mask chat has its own warmth.
The ghosts in the original manga can also be reborn as emotionless people, and the series abandons this concept of "reincarnation", but retains the mechanism of a fifteen-day isolation observation period, as long as the deadline has not become a monster is a very rare "special infected person".
This privilege of course falls on the head of the male protagonist Cha Xiuxian, whose transformation from waste wood to hero in the original work is weakened, because the last monster war is gone, and we finally see him with a single wing (reminiscent of the shape of "Tokyo Ghoul"), but we still don't know how he feels about the human who betrayed him. From this ending, it seems that the producers are still planning to shoot a second part, and the main battlefield has shifted from a closed building to a wider world.
In addition to the fight and suspense, the laughter point of "Sweet Home" cannot be ignored. Some may be caused by accidents due to poor plot consideration, and some are the cold-sided funny in the original work: the weapons transformed by the wheelchair uncle are like the inventions in Stephen Chow's "Big Inner Secret Agent Zero Hair", the male protagonist's weapon is a reinforced version of the broom, always carrying a backpack to charge, and the electric guitar woman's bat has become like a wolf's tooth stick, which has been proven effective in the American drama "The Walking Dead";
When the building manager who appears at the beginning of several episodes reappears, the fly is full of faces, which is the most disgusting monster in the whole series, he was bullied by the residents before he died, and this time it is really "a ghost and does not let everyone go"; the beauty-loving man secretly bathes in the absence of water, and the result is the black water flowing from the polluted water tank, and he wants to cry without tears;
The "transformation" of the supermarket manager couple was originally expected, but the result was anti-climactic, there was no dazzling CG effect, the former long hair batch was not lethal, the latter was a vicious version of himself; the electric guitar woman suddenly got cecalitis This section is simply a fly out of the sky, the glasses big brother sent elite troops before she did field surgery, took a modified chariot to go out to obtain medical resources, and the funny thing is that the handmade chariot that gives people great expectations is overturned by a large monster that looks like the Hulk Hulk as soon as it leaves the building. And the operation on the side of the glasses brother is going on as usual, and there is no lack of necessities.
I don't know how others are, anyway, my personal goal for 2020 has long been adjusted to live, the episodes of the last surviving theme are watched in order to find excitement when there is no trouble, watch more in this year to seek psychological comfort, even if the plot has a number of unreasonable points, it is the same laugh, see "Sweet Home" this year, it is inevitable to feel that it is a "metaphor for disease", everyone may be recruited, the people who have been recruited look like monsters in the crowd, others can't avoid it, I hope that if there is a second season, the monsters still have the opportunity to return to the human world, Gives hope that everything will return to normal.