Newtopia, the review: a love story to be saved in a zombie apocalypse
The series centers on a clumsy soldier and his girlfriend, a couple in crisis who try to find each other while the streets of Seoul are invaded by hordes of the living dead. On Amazon Prime Video.
In terms of zombies, the Korean film and television scene has nothing to envy from Western-themed giants, on the contrary. Since the now seminal Train to Busan (2016) onwards, national productions on the theme of the living dead have multiplied, both on the small and big screen, with often excellent quality results.
This new series with the curious title Newtopia, broadcast in its homeland on the Coupang Play streaming service and available, in Italy as in other countries, in the Amazon Prime Video catalog, with the first two episodes available to date, therefore aroused a certain curiosity. A good appetizer to already get an idea of what the story promises, with a narration that lays the foundations for future events and establishes that mood suspended between horror and irony.
Newtopia: Beating Hearts
Lee Jae-Yoon is twenty-six years old and has lived up to his reputation as a latecomer even in his military service, being the second oldest member of his team, as well as one of the most clumsy together with his patrol partner. The protagonist is engaged to the beautiful Kang Young-joo, an employee of a large company, and he usually obsesses her with repeated calls at all hours of the day and night, to the point of exhausting her beyond measure.
In addition, her charming and very rich boss has also set his sights on the girl, an additional danger for Jae-Yoon, who still has many months of military service ahead of him. The relationship therefore seems to have reached a potentially decisive crossroads, when the city of Seoul is the victim of an epidemic that transforms people into the living dead, who in turn infect those who are unfortunately bitten or attacked. As the disease spreads, Jae-yoon and Young-joo will try to reunite in an attempt to survive while violence spreads through the streets.
Newtopia: Laughter and horror
From the scene that officially opens the series, with the shadows of some people suggesting an attack on a helpless victim, it is clear that Newtopia intends to adopt a light style to tell this latest zombie apocalypse. An impression is further amplified in the first minutes after we meet the main characters, two lovers struggling with a deep sentimental crisis.
He is exasperated with his constant phone calls - to the point that he and his platoon will have their cell phones taken away, with all the consequences that this entails given what will happen shortly thereafter - she is intent on getting drunk to not think about it and increasingly undecided about their future together.
Figures that seem to potentially come out of a classic K-comedy, ready to face - at least in the first phase individually - the constant threat given by the ever-increasing number of infected and the chaos caused by the proclamation of martial law (a very sensitive topic in those shores, given what happened just a few weeks ago in South Korea).
Even the eye wants its part
From a purely genre point of view, Newtopia knows its stuff, with excellent special effects and relative "make-up and hair" in giving life to these zombies with a relatively common imagery, in the sprinter version to which we are now more than accustomed. The violence itself is pulp-style and based more on a macabre irony than on mere disgust, ensuring healthy entertainment for both fans and the casual audience, more easily impressionable and not accustomed to excessive brutality.
Behind the camera is Yoon Sung-hyun, who had made a good impression a few years ago with the tight Time to Hunt (2020) - catch up on Netflix - while the basis is the hard-boiled novel Influenza by Han Sang-woon, adapted into a serial form by a "certain" Han Jin-won, already an Oscar winner for the screenplay of Parasite (2019). Big names for a result that at least in the episodes now available seems to have found the right key to reading between its apparently antithetical, in reality complementary, moods.
Conclusions
In a zombie apocalypse, will love to save us? Find out in Newtopia, a new Korean series on the theme of the living dead where the two protagonists, engaged, in crisis, try to find each other while panic and violence spread through the streets of Seoul and the entire nation.
An outbreak in the name of lightness, which boasts important signatures and direction, between black irony, solid special effects and equally convincing make-up, confirms for the umpteenth time South Korea as fertile territory for themed productions.