Hellbound: Who needs the devil with human being to make life hell?
Synopsis and sweeping opening scenes
In a South Korean coffee shop, a group of young people watches a video in which a young pastor (priest, leader, whatever), president of the New Truth Religious Group, talks about a phenomenon that has become increasingly common: one person has a "warning" from an "angel" that they will die on a certain day and time, and their soul will be taken to Hell. On the appointed date, three executioners appear and kill, in fact, they not only kill, but brutally liquidate the condemned person (whether the unfortunate person goes to Lulu's land - I mean, Lucipher's Land -, we don't know). As the group discusses the veracity of what they are watching, another man looks incessantly at his cell phone as he shivers and sweats. He's about to be executed and (apparently) taken into Tinhoso's lap (he really wanted to get serious about it, but I fail miserably every time).
What follows is pandemonium: The Church of the New Truth (the name already clarifies its real intent, but I'll let you, by yourself, as you watch, come to this conclusion) makes it clear that this is just happening, because, the human being systematically ignores the Word of God for some time, and now He would have made a more "direct" gesture. In the sect's view, it is checkmate, a last opportunity for humanity's correction and redemption.
The counterpoint of Church leader Jeong Jin-Soo, played with considerable skill by Ah-In Yoo, is Detective Jin, played very well by Ik-joon Yang. The detective and a large portion of the population look for a plausible explanation for what they think murders are and look for a way to find those responsible for the killings.
As time goes by, the "sentences" are becoming more and more frequent, people will, in a short period of time, however large, of "trials" letting despair take over, and they become more captivated by the words of the New Truth, and more submissive to what the church's own extremist group (although unofficially) preaches as punishment, causing Korean society to become more of a Theocratic, prohibitive and manipulative (and cowardly, when a group becomes, according to themselves "owner of truth and correctness" and decides to violently fight what thinks wrong. It's a good thing it's fiction, isn't it? Phew!) rather than democratic law.
By the way, Arrowhead, the extremist group of the Church of the New Truth, has the most annoying YouTuber I've ever seen. I understand the purpose of the character, and because he's the group's spokesperson on the network, but was it really necessary to be so tiresome?
This increasingly claustrophobic and castrating atmosphere wears down and, at the same time, instigates the spectator to want, and need to know how it will develop and where that torrent will end.
Arches and sub-arcs within a single season
The expectation for conclusions does not take long to be remedied. As in Squid Game, the progress is constant and only some major questions are slow to answer. In fact, something happens here that I haven't seen so well executed since Doctor Who: the arcs and sub-arches in a single season.
If the clash between Jin and Jeong is the high point of the beginning, it certainly isn't the only one. There's a big and profound shift from the third to the fourth episode that gets you in an almost intoxicating way, and by then everything you might have already understood is over. Any certainty that one had is no longer sure.
This could very, very much be a step towards the abyss if the writers and, above all, the director (who, in this case, is also one of the writers) didn't know how to lead the narrative in an intelligent way.
One thing that bothered me, but in a good way and that I had never experienced in audiovisual before, was the growing sense of terror of living in a Totalitarian State, where it becomes chaotic and impractical to have the least amount of freedom, making everyday life a torment . The amazing thing is that, the only time I felt such suffocation, reading George Orwell's 1984 classic, it really was a government dictatorship. Not in the series! There is no coup, no takeover. The population, because they feel desperate and lost, is willing to let themselves be manipulated and fall into the barbarism disguised as the practice of faith that the Church of the New Truth preaches. It is a dictatorship allowed, authorized and maintained by the population itself. It would be absurd if it weren't so dangerously real.
Impacting performances
In addition to a highly competent direction and a script, at the very least, very well written, the acting is an enviable dexterity.
I've already said how the actors who play both the leader of the Sect and the detective who think they're facing a farce are great.
I certainly wasn't the only one, but the performance that captivated me the most was by actress Hyun-joo Kim, who plays the wonderful lawyer Min Hye-jin. In her minimalist and discreet interpretation, Kim passes through the desolation of the gaze, the despair that the character feels when seeing the world being swallowed up both by an illogical phenomenon and by the sordid manipulation of human despair.
The changes and twists in which Min is a key player would be a challenge for any actress. Her trajectory could be called dizzying, even. But Kim has so much clarity of reasoning and is so sober as the role she plays, that such changes, despite being noticed, are felt naturally.
It's not as if Yeon reinvented the wheel, but the paths he takes with it, and the way he handles it is like someone who knows how to move it very well. And really move, because the way he handles the camera, sometimes filming from a single angle, sometimes following the actors as if it were a documentary where the cameraman runs with the element to be documented (for the elderly: as if they were watching an article from Aqui e Agora, with Gil Gomes), in a frantic way and making everything more distressing, once again, it could go very wrong, however, he does.
I don't remember who said that, but it's (or was) common in football to hear the expression "He went to the ball like someone on a plate of food", and I believe that is the style of Yeon's direction: Hungry! A suffocatingly hungry direction, yet somehow still sober and rational. A director who knows how to evoke and explore the factors that cause human misery, who manages to build a hopeless scenario, in which he inserts a single fantastic/supernatural element, and yet treats it realistically, and from there, extracts the best the necessary reflection to understand the chaos generated by such situations.
That said, I just hope this critique did justice to the sheer talent of the director, screenwriters, actors and crew and convinced you to at least give Hell's Prophecy a chance.
Grade: 8.2
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