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Pierce Conran

2.5/5 stars
Lead cast: Jisoo, Park Jung-min
Blackpink’s Jisoo and Park Jung-min juggle love and the undead in downtown Seoul in Newtopia, a horror comedy that is the latest event series to tap into the Korean zombie craze.
Despite its big budget, big stars and global streaming distribution on Amazon Prime Video, this Coupang Play original series has had a tepid response, which makes us wonder what the problem is. Is there something off about the show itself, or have people finally grown tired of the K-zombie wave?


The truth is probably somewhere in between. A middling series might have ridden on the coattails of a popular genre, but if viewer fatigue sets in for that genre only a strong show could prevail.
Newtopia is nowhere near as sharp as previous high points of this Korean subgenre – which include the film Train to Busan and previous series Kingdom and Happiness – but technically it is no slouch.
The mise-en-scène is stylish and a colourful array of zombies, not to mention methods to dispatch them, litter the screen. It is in other areas where the show struggles, namely in tone and narrative.
Those problems are evident very early on and, while the show eventually settles into a more comfortable register, the damage has already been done.

Long-time fans of K-dramas know that genre fatigue is part and parcel of the package. Romantic comedies, period dramas, fantasy series and legal and medical shows recycle the same tropes again and again.
Viewers generally do not seem to mind as long as shows have charming leads and respect the codes of the genre. A nominal twist is often all you need to earn yourself a pass.
No creator wants to copy what has come before, but innovation entails a degree of risk. Unless you make something extraordinary, playing around too much with the DNA of a genre can land you in hot water.
The rules of zombie stories are particularly strict and, since the dawn of the genre in the 1960s, have been crystal clear to viewers around the world.

The makers of 2004 film Shaun of the Dead, a horror zombie comedy sensation that is probably Newtopia’s chief inspiration, understood this so well that it revolved completely around characters knowing these rules from the films they grew up watching and then using them to navigate the zombie apocalypse.
This made the film seem incredibly fresh and witty, but aside from its tongue-in-cheek self-awareness, it followed the pre-established genre template to a T.
Those same codes were ported over to South Korea for Train to Busan – not the first Korean zombie film, but the one that launched the craze – and the novelty was again incredibly simple and effective: zombies, but on a train.
Newtopia lacks a similarly strong hook and attempts to compensate for that with a variety of twists on the genre. Two of these are not terribly fresh – it is a romantic comedy and a slapstick comedy.

Romcoms are the beating heart of the K-drama industry and the broad comedy is a way of softening the gore for the very fans that would typically consume those romcoms.
Perhaps it is also an acknowledgement that by now zombies are a little passé, but in this case it proves to be a crucial miscalculation.
For all its slick and stylised mayhem, Newtopia does not possess one iota of tension. What is the point of putting all that money on the screen if we are not even supposed to take the zombies seriously?
Yet it is Newtopia’s most novel innovation that proves to be its least effective – incorporating the military service obligatory for males in South Korea.
Whereas shows like D.P. have struck a chord with Korean viewers owing to the way in which they explored the rigid hierarchy, bullying and social impact of military service, Newtopia has nothing to add to this phenomenon beyond “I miss my girlfriend”.

Park Jung-min’s lovesick conscript Lee Jae-yoon is stationed with an aerial defence unit atop a downtown city skyscraper housing a five-star hotel.
Like Train to Busan but vertical, this gives the show the opportunity to present a stylised zombie microcosm. Yet despite its vast sets – or perhaps because of their sheer size – the show misses the mark here as well.
The half of the show devoted to Jisoo’s protagonist Kang Young-joo fares better as zombie lore on street level and particularly underground. The show’s best idea is probably giving her a chainsaw, although again the carnage is played strictly for laughs.
Since All of Us Are Dead season two is currently in the works, the K-zombie wave looks to have a way to go still. But it is probably time to acknowledge that it has crested.
Newtopia is streaming on Amazon Prime.


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Jisoo of Blackpink as Kang Young-soo in a still from Korean zombie romcom Newtopia.

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Jisoo as Kang Young-joo in a still from Newtopia.

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The Korean zombie subgenre has rules, and creators break them at their peril. Newtopia is stylish, but its tone is off and it lacks tension


The Korean zombie subgenre has rules, and creators break them at their peril. Newtopia is stylish, but its tone is off and it lacks tension.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


Review

Review | Amazon Prime K-drama Newtopia review: zombie romcom with Blackpink’s Jisoo misses the mark

The Korean zombie subgenre has rules, and creators break them at their peril. Newtopia is stylish, but its tone is off and it lacks tension

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