Review by Frank Plowright

Hell is serving notice to people, supplying a message informing them they’re hellbound, also notifying the time they have left to live. As the time of death approaches mysterious skinless creatures act as escorts, and there’s no escaping a very public final fate that’s then infinitely available online via onlookers.

Having set up a sensational premise, writer Yeon Sang-ho shows greater interest in the effect on society and ordinary people than on repeating horrific scenarios. With cults growing around the phenomenon, all sorts of online speculation, and those intent on uncovering the sins of the newly damned, Yeon’s horror holds a mirror to our world. His central character is police detective Kyung Hoon Jin. Listless and lacking ambition since the murder of his wife, and concerned about his son, he finds himself having to interview Jingsoo Jung, leader of the New Truth Society who personifies the rational believer, yet is also manipulative. Fanning the flames are those justifying their atrocities in the name of god.

Yeon is a film director who’s graduated from animation to live action, and has a dramatist’s instinct, but this works both for and against The Hell Bound. Keeping the focus on human reactions engages audience sympathies, but there’s the constant feeling of The Hell Bound always being intended as a film project long before the eventual TV series. It’s there in conversations that take pages to read whereas their duration on screen would be far shorter, and it slows matters down. Worse still, it instils an inclination to skip through rather than absorb, and Yeon has a couple of shocks to drop.

Choi Gyu-seok may not be greatly known to English language audiences, but he’s one major talent. There’s very little flash about his pages, but everything necessary is included from action to emotion, and the work rate is phenomenal considering this opening volume runs to more than three hundred pages, and the conclusion in Volume 2 is only a few pages shorter.

There’s a distressing view of humanity supplied by Yeon, with too many people willing to follow the herd, and violence a first resort rather than a last, with the worst culprits having no qualms about attempting to batter confessions from people. It means The Hell Bound is hardly comfort reading, but you’d not expect that from the title. Misgivings about the pacing aside, Yeon sets some uncomfortable questions, and by the end of this opening volume has shifted the ground considerably.