Hellbound has recently been released on Netflix. It was widely advertised on social media and the makers were trying hard to create a buzz around the same. The reviews that it got were pretty decent. It also gave us some thought-provoking moments that we love in a Yeon Sang-ho film or series, whatever you say. That was the thing we loved the most in the same director’s highly successful project “Train to Busan“. Well, the cult classic film is getting remade into Hollywood and speculations about its worthiness does not look good as of now.
Regardless, talking about Hellbound, as of this moment the series is not as successful as Netflix was hoping it to be. Earlier this week, we saw that Squid Game has broken all previous set records and became the most-watched show in the history of Netflix. It came out to be a huge unexpected blockbuster and earned huge revenues.
My Name, another Korean series revolving around crime, saw a similar response. Quite obviously it was not as big as Squid Game but people loved the new female mafia queen. Because the protagonist seemed more believable than O-Ren Ishii from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill ”, and it was not ultraviolet to the extent that it became unsettling.
Following the success of these two Korean series, Hellbound got a strong foundation for its success. As the people would watch it anyway, given the acceptance Korean series are getting.
But, instead of all these factors working in the favour of the series, it is still waiting to get recognition. Netflix is trying hard to promote it through social media handles and other tactics but it has come as a slow buzz. This might be too early to judge as a few series that got not so great initial response came out to be a huge success later on. Tabbar from SonyLiv can be a good example of this.
So whatever is happening regarding the response needs to be refreshed. Lately, we have discovered that people are getting less interested in conventional horror films. The reason for this may be the clichéd tactics that the filmmakers have been using for decades.
Still, Hellbound has a long way to go before it can find itself in the same queue of Korean series as Squid Game or My Name.
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