BY JOHN CARTER JR
You are on the edge. A place where time meets void, life meets death, hope meets despair. You stand there with aspirations, dreams, and hopes dried up. Like a flickering birthday candle with barely a flame that has yet to be snuffed out, you wait on the edge. For what? You long for love, kindness, to be remembered, to matter, to be of some kind of importance. The flame has died, your hope has been extinguished, and right before the birthday girl made her wish. As you finally decide to leave the edge, giving into despair as hope has vanished, the flame is reignited. Like a parent who relights the candle for the birthday wish magic, you are pulled from the edge with purpose. For many in life, we have to survive on the energy we get from living for other people. It might be a mother, a friend, or maybe even a little sister. In the case of the protagonist of today’s scare story, the reignition of his hope started with two little kids who needed help escaping a horrible den of monsters.
Tiger Media Network’s Summer Scares Series returns with new thrilling, horrific, and spooky entries. Starting off the series is the Netflix drama series “Sweet Home” starring Song Kang, Lee Do-hyun, Go Min-si, Lee Si-young and many more. The past decade has been filled to the brim with apocalyptic storylines with the likes of “The 100,” “The Walking Dead,” and even “American Horror Story.” However, while this monster-filled apocalyptic drama has some similarities with those aforementioned entries, “Sweet Home” sets itself apart with its unique creature design, character development, and themes concerning hope even when we’ve given up. Our will is the flame and hope is our fuel.
Characters like Song Kang’s Hyun-Su have given up on life at the beginning of the series. However, as soon as the apocalypse hits and people start transforming into monsters, Hyun-Su becomes more inspired by and attached to the people in his apartment building. As his story and past trauma are revealed to us, we understand the darkness that has clouded his heart and hopes. When it dawns upon his fellow neighbors that he is beginning the process of transforming into a monster, the boy who had given up on everything is “othered” by members of the community. After the treatment he received from his neighbors, the question becomes apparent as to whether or not those who transform are the true monsters.
“Sweet Home” shows us both the resilience of human hope and the darkness of willfully blind ignorance. Characters like Kim Gab Soo as Ahn Gil Seop and Woo Hyun as Kim Seok Hyun represent this dichotomy perfectly. While there are certainly many despair-filled moments throughout the run of the first season, the undaunted nature of our main protagonists keeps that small birthday candle flame alight. The show starts a conversation about what pushes people to the edge of life and losing all will. It identifies what motivates us to continue on and what gets us back into the fray of life when we feel all is lost, or all has lost all its importance. It isn’t simply our care for the lives of other people, but it is also recognizing that we are worth just as much as they are.
“Sweet Home” is an excellent apocalyptic drama for its depiction of hope and the motivation we as humans need to continue on. It sparks conversations about mental health and about the human need for other humans. It is drama-filled, action-packed, and has excellent portrayals of the good and wickedness at the core of different kinds of people. The cast should be praised for their excellent performances. With season two coming at the end of this year, we will soon learn the fates of our beloved favorite characters.
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