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Pierce Conran

4/5 stars
Lead cast: Kim Hyun-joo, Kim Sung-cheol, Moon So-ri, Kim Shin-rok
Dystopian stories became a big trend in Korean entertainment during the coronavirus pandemic and, while no one person is to be credited for this boom, someone more responsible than most is Train to Busan mastermind Yeon Sang-ho.
Yeon, who parlayed a career as a gritty animation director into mainstream success with his zombies-on-a-train phenomenon, brought his unique mix of pulp and cynicism to Netflix in 2021 with Hellbound.
He has made many of his subsequent projects for the streaming platform, including manga adaptation Parasyte: The Grey earlier this year, and now Hellbound season 2.


With this second season of cults, demons and mayhem, adapted from a comic – penned by Yeon and Choi Gyu-seok, who also wrote the series – the director reminds us why we got excited about Korean dystopias in the first place.
Dystopian tales can scare, thrill or excite us, but the best ones challenges us to look at the world we are living in, warts and all. Unfortunately, recent shows and films like Black Knight and Badland Hunters have gleefully referenced dystopian action movies such as Mad Max while having painfully little to say.
The set-up is always the same: after society has crumbled, powerful organisations rule over the weak. These intensely mainstream narratives tend to follow the blessings of the biblical Beatitudes to a T, particularly the fourth – “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth”. Jesus is simply replaced by a macho man who rises up to save them.
Yet the dystopian tales that endure in our minds tend to be made by those who avoid offering us platitudes – creators like Yeon, Hwang Dong-hyuk (Squid Game) and Bong Joon-ho (The Host).

They see the world for what it is and fit it into the pressure cooker of genre cinema or television. People die unexpectedly, not always heroically, and, rather than neatly tied up, endings are generally frayed and fraught with uncertainty.
Yeon completely tosses out the binary of good and evil in this new season – not that it was there to begin with.
Rather than one organisation, Hellbound season two features four organisations wrestling for control in a world attempting to come to terms with the fact there is a hell, and sinners who receive “decrees” are physically dragged there by smoke demons in violent displays known as “demonstrations”.
Societies are governed by a collection of institutions that is constantly changing. In season two, the player who most understands the game they are all playing is Lee Soo-gyeong, the senior secretary to the country’s president, played with calculating sang-froid by Moon So-ri.

The use of this political player, rather than the figurehead she represents who never makes any decisions, illustrates Yeon’s desire to expose the nature of the systems that control us. It is not the figureheads we should be worried about, it is the sinister power brokers who operate in the shadows.
Representing the government, Soo-gyeong despises the religious groups that have grown hugely powerful since demons started appearing on Earth. She recognises that they cannot be eradicated, they just need to be kept in check and offering only a semblance of freedom to their followers.
In her dealings with the New Truth Church, the most mainstream and malleable of the religious cults, she urges it to create a new testament when one of the “hellbound” sinners from season one, Park Jung-ja (Kim Shin-rok), returns to Earth.
The other cults are the Arrowheads, who fall somewhere between the lunacy of Mad Max’s War Boys and the anarchist chic of The Warriors; and the splintered group Sodo, which flirts with terrorism.

Soo-gyeong wants New Truth to seduce its flock with grandiloquent but empty sayings, suggesting they use the kind of words that seem to make sense in any context, as “these tend to stick around the longest”.
Hellbound season two has a lot to say about the systems that control us but also the dangers of idolatry.
Sodo member Min Hye-jin (Kim Hyun-joo) returns to deliver the action this season, but her status as a hero is constantly challenged. Despite her good intentions and physical skills, her actions are largely constrained by people and events beyond her control.
New Truth founder Jung Jin-su (formerly Yoo Ah-in, now played by Kim Sung-cheol) also returns from hell. He still wields massive influence but, while he was a mysterious figure in season one, this time he is shown to be completely self-serving.

Beyond the political theatre, Hellbound season two is once again a fun and pulpy ride. It changes course constantly thanks to Yeon and Choi’s many twists, which keep things fresh whenever the narrative begins to spin its wheels.
While the global audience response will ultimately decide its fate, there is clearly some more gas in the tank to keep this dystopian engine purring along for another season.
Hellbound season two is streaming on Netflix.


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Yeon Sang-ho’s second season of Hellbound is a fun, pulpy ride that reminds us why we got excited about Korean dystopias in the first place


Yeon Sang-ho’s second season of Hellbound is a fun, pulpy ride that reminds us why we got excited about Korean dystopias in the first place.


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Review | Netflix K-drama Hellbound season 2 review: Yeon Sang-ho’s worthy demon dystopia follow-up

Yeon Sang-ho’s second season of Hellbound is a fun, pulpy ride that reminds us why we got excited about Korean dystopias in the first place