Humans turn into raging monsters in Netflix horror drama Sweet HomeBut the problem is that some of them want to keep it that way. That’s the central conflict as we enter Season 3, which marks the final eight-episode series based on a webtoon by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan. Song Kang returns as Cha Hyun-su, a noble if conflicted monster man, alongside Go Min-si, Lee Si-young, and Lee Jin-wook, the latter of whom will co-star in the upcoming second season of Squid GameThe world these people inhabit is overrun by monstrosity, but that is not enough for some, who seek to corrupt its last bastions of stability with their diabolical plans for a new and terrible form of human evolution.
SWEET HOME – SEASON 3STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening shot: After a long summary of scenes from the season Sweet Home Season 1 and Sweet Home Season 2, which is good on their part, because there’s a lot going on in this show. Sweet Home She meets with Hyun-su (Song) and Lee Eun-yu (Go). “Wasn’t Hyun-su in control?” Eun-yu asks. “The real Hyun-su, not you…”
The essence: What do you mean by this? Well, in Sweet HomeOne of the tenets of monsterization is how the transformation interferes with your memories and emotions. People’s mutations become specific to their desires, and for some, an internal struggle for control of the host body ensues. (While it’s not always easy to tell who’s in control — if someone’s eyes turn black, it’s a good bet they have monsters on the brain.) As Season 3 begins, Hyun-su is confident that he can use the massive, spiked wing mutation growing from his shoulder for good, especially in protecting and retrieving Seo Yi-kyung (Lee Si-young) from the monstrous forces torturing her.
As Hyun-su battles Yi-kung in a collapsing asphalt cage of emotions, brave special forces soldier Kim Young-hoo (Kim Mu-yeol) fends off a horde of monsters attacking him and his fellow soldiers. It’s a sequence that reveals two things about Sweet HomeFirst of all, its DNA is in zombie shows, whether we’re talking about K-zombie shows specifically or anything that’s incredibly, impossibly resilient. walking Dead universe. Basically: shambling creatures hungry for human flesh and inpiduals who improvise their killing shots on the fly. Secondly, Sweet Home This isn’t a series that skimps on horror. The monsters are rendered with a mix of practical and digital effects, but they’re always imagined with the creepy machine at its maximum power.
Ever since people started mutating into monsters, the military and disreputable medical professionals have been interested in controlling the phenomenon for their own gain. Like Dr. Lim (played with a chillingly enjoyable performance by Oh Jung-se), whose experiments on human-monster hybrids like Hyun-su spiraled out of control to the point that Pyeon Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook), another former patient, has mastered and weaponized their transformation into monsters. Sang-wook has led the doctor into his small band of weirdo monsters, who have goals that involve extreme bodily harm to the regular humans left in South Korea, and they’re heading to one of the last strongholds in the region. Which is worrying. But maybe not as much as what’s already there, given the rather terrifying glimpses we get of what Chief Ji (Kim Shin-rok) is hiding in an underground lair.
What shows will it remind you of? If you are watching Song Kang in Sweet Home And considering how his appeal is so powerful that it defies monstrosity, then you might be interested in checking out his role as an aspiring ballet dancer in the Netflix K-drama. navillera. And given the often zombie-like behavior of the monsters in Sweet HomeIt is worth considering alongside recent South Korean zombie films like #Alive and We are all dead.
Our opinion: The idea that human emotions become so powerful that they burst out of people’s bodies in monstrous forms has always made… Sweet Home A bit more intriguing than the usual zombie concept. Why do people simply transform into undead brain-eaters when they can instead hunger for human flesh and be tortured by their own transformation? “You can’t die even if you want to,” Cha Hyun-su says at one point in the film. Sweet Home. “You are a monster human.” The series doesn’t always maintain its focus and tends to leave story threads untangled, as if it’s securing its own future by putting characters in new predicaments and just leaving them there. But Song Kang is great as Cha Hyun-su, whose humanity and desire to help people is constantly at odds with his evolving monster form, and Lee Jin-wook plays Pyeon Sang-wook as a sort of supervillain in monster form who gets off on his own cruelties. The handful of central performances in Sweet Home They are your saving grace when the story turns into a dark and hard to follow mess.
Sex and skin: Well, some disgusting nudity, a hybrid between a monster and a human, but that’s all.
Parting shot: Hyun-Su and his massive, pointed wing seem to have saved the day. But with more monsters on the loose and their adversaries gathering strength, it’s sure to be a short-lived victory.
Sleeping Star: Oh shit, what kind of monster is that? that? This is a question you will ask more than once during the episodes of Sweet Homewhich never runs out of novel ways to depict truly disgusting creatures. For example, that thing has fifty legs attached to a giant mouth? It’s astonishing in its creativity and full of respect for horror traditions.
Pilot’s most typical phrase: “The fruit is almost ripe. This time it’s different. Something extraordinary is going to happen. Let’s go to the stadium.” Pyeon Sang-wook returns to the scene of the crime from Sweet Home Season 2, and it brings evil reinforcements.
Our calling: PASS IT ON. Sweet Home It can get a little confusing with its characters going back and forth between human and monstrous forms, and their motivations sometimes going unspoken. But the creation of monsters is always inventive and often wonderfully gross, amplifying the horror elements when the generally strong performances throughout the series can’t entirely save it.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is a freelance writer and editor based in Chicago. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
