[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Sweet Home - Season 2" Episode 1

Netflix has already promised a third season for "Sweet Home" next summer. This decision may have been a bit premature. "Sweet Home - Season 2" has had only modest Netflix numbers in its first couple of days. According to the FlixPatrol data, the fantasy horror thriller is the most popular Netflix series in only three territories- Hong Kong, South Korea, and Thailand. A big spike in subsequent days seems unlikely, since "Sweet Home" is very much a known quantity.

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And oof, is it ever a bleak one. To recap from last season- Hyeon-soo (played by Song Kang) has achieved some sort of intermediary form between human and monster. Over the course of the first episode of the second season, Sang-wook (played by Lee Jin-uk), who is also in this intermediate state tries to pitch Hyeon-soo on doing...something. It's not totally clear what, might be why Hyeon-soo is ultimately so unpersuaded, although Hyeon-soo's own plan of turning them in for experimentation isn't much better.

This particular conflict isn't given that much weight over the full episode, with the bulk of the screentime going to the rest of the main cast being escorted to a safe zone. The joke being, there isn't really any such thing as a safe zone since anyone can transform into a monster at any time. And even before the monster inevitably shows up, the military's policy of shoot people first, do any tests to see if they're actually transforming later, doesn't do much to inspire confidence.

"Sweet Home - Season 2" seems to be going for an arc of man being the real monster. More than the originality of the cliche, the bigger problem is just how unrelentingly grim the opening of this story is. I can't imagine anybody wanting to see the first episode of the second season immediately wanting more, just because the anguish is so severe. Very little really happens here except that humans and monsters brutalize each other for little apparent reason, with death and dismemberment being constant recurring motifs.

I wouldn't call "Sweet Home - Season 2" exploitative exactly, since the death and dismemberment is so obviously intended to be discouraging rather than fun. Although I'm not entirely sure at this point who the target audience for this show is supposed to be. There's all the obvious visual pulp of zombie media and massively dystopian worldbuilding. Yet the characters are quite thin, the presentation relying heavily on our remembering who they are from the first season.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Sweet Home - Season 2" is directed by Lee Eung-bok, Park So-hyun-III, written by , and features Song Kang, Lee Jin-uk, Lee Si-young, Go Min-si, Park Gyu-young, Yu Oh-seong. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2023/12/01~Now airing, Fri on Netflix.