Zombieverse: New Blood is the second season of Zombieversea hard-to-categorize quasi-reality series that is best described as Netflix Kontent (sic). This bizarre Korean show, which Netflix officially calls “real variety,” falls somewhere between the scripted/unscripted divide, featuring YouTubers, musicians, and other miscellaneous people. Famous people somehow play themselves by participating in a staged zombie apocalypse. They must work together to overcome various quests and challenges that never involve the classic zombie movie move of shooting and/or smashing zombies in the head to kill them, since real actors play the fake zombies and the real ones. participants who who somehow “act” through it all (read: pretend somewhat convincingly, but not entirely convincingly, that zombies are real) don’t want to be prosecuted for murder. If that seems rather slippery and difficult to pull off convincingly, well, it’s bingo.

Opening shot: Soldiers and zombies clash in bloody mayhem in a season one recap.

The bottom line: Seoul is overrun by the undead, so the survivors take boats to Jeju Island, where there is an abandoned compound that has been turned into a makeshift encampment with tents, food, and more. It’s a good place to play ping pong and have a picnic, and I’m not kidding. It’s just bliss here and it’s completely safe and there will never be any zombies at the end. No! It’s a lie! Zombie action is inevitable, people! Lackiest zombie action! But first, we have to meet the contestants, including a few newcomers to the show: Cho Sae-ho, Yook Sung-jae, Taeyeon, Kim Seon-tae, Defconn, Code Kunst and Andre Rush. They join first season participants Dindin and Tsuki for this nonsense.

Now, while we wait (too long) for the participants to joke – in character or not, who can say – and try to elicit a laugh or two, we relax and wonder if there are any “rules » » for this “competition”. And all we have to do is wonder, because nothing is ever really explained to us. I guess the only motivation here is “survival”. The pop-up graphics direct – or occasionally misdirect – the action, sort of, and tell us that zombies don’t see very well or respond to sound very well, things like that. Very often pop-ups explain what’s going on because everything is too vague and hard to follow if they don’t. Great show you have there!

Anyway. There’s a fake out when a guy comes out from under a blanket stumbling and groaning, but he’s not a zombie, he’s just drunk. Haha, good! Then the participants are divided and when the zombies finally give in, the two groups face two different challenges: one group runs around the encampment trying to escape a staggering horde of hungry brains, while the other stays . inside and discover how to escape the trap of five zombies. The first challenge is confusing; the second is endless. Don’t worry, though, there are a few other challenges in this episode that won’t leave you overwhelmed!

What shows will this remind you of? It is The Walking Dead crossed with American Ninja Warriorbut don’t get carried away by the promise of this idea.

Our opinion: There’s a gray area between scripted and unscripted series, and within that gray area is a small but long, dark, empty black hole into which projects that don’t work on any level fall, never to be watched again. It’s there Zombieverse resides. One can appreciate an ambitious attempt to adapt zombie movie tropes into a kind of game show, but this series’ attempts to merge reality TV and fiction are a sloppy failure. It’s hopelessly dysfunctional by the standards of both genres.

The idea is to set up the storyline and let the celebrities work on it, but that seems far too complicated to execute effectively, so we end up with heavily staged elements, edited like connective tissue to make the actions weak more exciting, and “unscripted portions that are either boring and uninspired or obviously pushed by the producers and directors so that all the necessary exposition is crammed into the series. The opening episode takes place without the momentum of increasing competition, nor the life and death drama of a scripted series Why not just make it a Japanese-style OTT game show with a host shouting the rules at full volume and colorful, crazy contestants who are. ready for anything? I realize it’s a tired formula, but it would work better than Zombieversewhich, admittedly, is trying something new. But he stumbles out of the door and never finds his place.

Sex and skin: None.

Starting shot: A low-angle view of a window falling onto the camera as a zombie bursts through a window to “attack” a participant who is climbing an obstacle course net.

Sleeping Star: Andre Rush is an American celebrity chef with the physical build of someone who could bench press a blue whale. You won’t be surprised to see him rush into a scene and show a handful of idiot contestants how to hug a zombie and put it in a tent in order to incapacitate it.

Most pilot line: A Code Kunst line, taken out of context, reviews Zombieverse overall: “It’s the perfect setup for chaos. »

Our call: Zombieverse: New Blood? Instead Zombieverse: New failure. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.