Sweet Home K-Drama Review: OH MY GOD Nosebleeds
Sweet Home is a Korean TV show/drama (and Netflix Original!) based on a popular webtoon that is super gory, bloody, and filled with a lot of disturbing imagery. A high school boy named Cha Hyun-Soo (Song Kang) moves into this run-down apartment after the death of his family. Shortly afterwards, Korea becomes overrun by a pandemic where humans “randomly” start turning into super creepy monsters that kill the remaining humans. Sweet Home is like a twist on the zombie apocalypse storyline, where instead of zombies, we have different renditions of monsters instead. We have a classic squad of mixed-personality survivors to give us a variety of character tropes like the brainy leader, the fighters, the pacifist, the technologist, etc. If you like survival, horror stories, this one will be right down your alley for something a bit more refreshing than zombies.
This paragraph is an ode to how gory this show is: OH MY GOD there’s blood everywhere. One of the first symptoms of turning into a monster is that person will get uncontrollable nosebleeds. I don’t even know what kind of behind-the-scenes trick this is, but the makeup & special effects department was somehow able to show liters of blood just gushing out of noses in a really disturbing way. Other than nosebleeds, there’s also a lot of beatings, squelching of flesh, bone-cracking, and gunshots. I usually hate this sort of thing, but I somehow decided to stick around because I was curious enough about where the story was going. What also helped was that the special effects in this series is not the greatest - the monsters look very clearly digitized a lot of time, and the really gory scenes don’t show things to the extent of American shows like Game of Thrones. So funnily enough, the lack of VFX budget actually made this show more watchable and enjoyable for me because I could more easily convince myself how fake and fictional the whole thing was. But of course, that didn’t completely stop me from cringing away in disgust and closing my eyes at certain parts.
But anyway, in terms of actual story, the premise is definitely interesting enough for you to keep going and ask a lot of mental questions. Why are people turning into monsters? Why is Hyun-Soo so depressed? Why is Eun-Hyuk so hot? Shout out to Eun-Hyuk for being eye candy, carrying this ragtag team, and making all of the difficult decisions. In between all of the crazy action sequences (and admiring how ripped the female firefighter, Yi-Kyeong is), there are also quiet and heartfelt moments. I wouldn’t say I was super addicted from beginning to end…Episodes 1-5 went by pretty slowly for me and I kept going out of some sheer willpower because the gore was kind of a turn-off. I liked learning more about the characters and seeing them become a stronger unit. There’s always a point in a survival show when you realize that they might actually have a chance. To me, that’s when things get interesting and the challenges that come their way become more complex.
In conclusion…
With Sweet Home, think your typical zombie apocalypse survival tropes but in a ratty old apartment building and with weird monsters trying to kill everyone. With the main character, Hyun-Soo, this show reminded me a lot of a really popular anime called Tokyo Ghoul. Which is to say that…ANIME ALWAYS HAS THE BEST HORROR IDEAS FIRST. LOL just kidding! This show definitely does something interesting in the realm of horror/action. The last episode is not very conclusive at all and shows a plot twist with a cliffhanger. Whenever season 2 does come out, I’ll be interested to watch more!