The structure of Sweet Home, based on a comic of the same name by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan, is more or less the same as many of the post-apocalyptic shows we’ve seen in recent years. We’re introduced to a group of disparate personalities, all of whom have their own struggles in their lives, and then the zombies or monsters or whatever mutant life forms threaten the remainder of humanity show up. Then these strangers have to band together and figure out how to survive. So how will this one distinguish itself?
SWEET HOME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “SEPTEMBER, 2020.” In a snowstorm, military personnel run to a scene where monsters have attacked. One person stumbling out, though, is human. But as the officers shoot, bullets seem to just bounce off him. A voice says “This is a story about us, the ones trying to find a reason to live in a world where this is harder than merely surviving.”
The Gist: August, 2020. Cha Hyun-soo (Song Kang) is moving into the Green Houses, a rundown apartment complex. All he has is a few pieces of clothing and his computer. He’s severely depressed, and barely fazed when a metal shard whizzes past his head, because it got kicked up by the security guard’s weed whacker.
He’s about to jump off the roof, when he sees a beautiful girl practicing ballet nearby; her name is Lee Eun-yoo (Go Min-si), and she’s not as innocent as she looks, as we see when she curses and lights cigarettes with the filters bit off. Hyun-soo has “Suicide” on his phone on August 25th, the same day as a video game preview invite he receives. He walks out of his apartment when he gets a text about a package, and sees a long hand gutting his neighbor’s cat, with a voice saying “I’m hungry!” His neighbor tries to get in, but Hyun-soo asks to see her arms; the bloodthirsty monster leaves and hurls herself at the door of his upstairs neighbor, bassist Yoon Ji-soo (Park Gyu-young).
In another apartment, Pyeon Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook), eats ramen and watches TV while he more or less tortures a man he has wrapped up in duct tape. Before the monster hurls herself at her door, Ji-soo (Park Gyu-young) and teacher Jung Jae-hun (Kim Nam-hee) awkwardly discuss a neighbor who is still traumatized by her son’s death.
Lee Eun-hyeok (Lee Do-hyun), Eun-yoo’s brother, is about to go to work when he realizes the lights are out. When he gets downstairs, the lobby shopkeepers are agitating for the gate to be open. Eun-hyeok asks a neighbor, firefighter Seo Yi-keyung (Lee Si-young), what exactly is happening, but she doesn’t know.
When cell phones don’t work, she turns to a land line in the guard’s office; when that line says that there is an emergency situation, that arouses her suspicions. They’re confirmed when the people in the lobby see some sort of person-turned-monster, with an elongated body and limbs, shoot out a long tongue and capture one of the people in the lobby. Yi-keyung gets grabbed by the monster, but Eun-hyeok saves her. It’s then they realize that the city has been overrun by monsters of all kinds, all of whom are looking for humans to consume.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Walking Dead, except with monsters.
Our Take: In this iteration of the post-apocalyptic survival series, the people are trapped in the grungy Green Homes, which seems to house people who are running away from something or display some sort of desperation or longing. That will likely play into the plot of the ten episode first season, with people stepping up, others being craven and only out for themselves, and still others going either way depending on the situation. And we’re pretty sure the monsters will pick these people off as the season goes along.
Of course, the other difference here is that, instead of zombies, we have various monsters, who are freakish-looking to say the least. We’re not sure how the population of humans become these monsters. When they’re killed, do they wake up as a version of the monster that killed them? Or do they turn into something else? The question of how these monsters actually infested humanity will probably never be answered, but that’s not as important as the survival story.
Because of the scope of this story, writers Hong So-ri, Kim Hyung-min and Park So-jung had a hard time focusing on what storylines to follow. While Hyun-soo is brooding in his flat, we have Yi-keyung and Eun-hyeok battling the monster in the lobby, who seems to be deterred by simple things like a fire extinguisher and flimsy metal shutters. As the episodes go along, they’ll find who are the best characters to follow.
Sex and Skin: Nothing.
Parting Shot: Hyun-soo looks out the window of his flat and sees the monsters that have overrun the city. Then his nose starts bleeding profusely, one of the first signs of someone who’s infected by whatever this plague is.
Sleeper Star: We only got introduced to Lee Si-young as firefighter Seo Yi-kyeong at the end of the episode, but she’s a main character, and she seems to be one of the toughest people in the building.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re hoping that the CGI of the monsters gets a little better; we understand showing them shambling around in herky-jerky fashion makes them scarier, but it still sometimes reminds us of stop-action filming rather than CGI.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite its flaws and a premise we’ve seen before, Sweet Home distinguishes itself by its setting and its monsters. We’ll see if the drama between the survivors will keep us watching.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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December 19, 2020 at 05:00AM
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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Sweet Home' On Netflix, Where Residents Of A Grungy Apartment Building Hide From Bloodthirsty Monsters - Decider
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