Jake

History Matters, Context matters, Not a watch for everyone: By far one of the most horrific watches of my life, and not because of the monster. The actors and production are all incredible A list. It's Netflix, so the budget is well funded, production is extremely good, and the actors are fantastic. The plot was okay. All the great aspects of this show were completely overshadowed by the absolute brutality and horrific nature of the fictitious depiction of World War II Japanese war crimes in South Korea. Unit 731, the real biological and chemical human testing component of the Imperial Japanese conducted immensely cruel and inhumane experiments on humans. While the show will hopefully engage more discussion into Japanese war crimes and finally bring more attention to them, being dropped into the show with such visceral and graphic scenes left me having to take breaks between episodes and scenes. This is the first piece of media I have had to skip scenes in. Maybe it's due to the real world history that I couldn't stand the scenes, and because the notion of the impossibly horrifying nature of the pain depicted. I have seen plenty of gore movies, horror films, war films, but this one takes the crown for being faulted by its depiction of war. I was absolutely stunned by the degree of tonal shifts, from watching mass grave burnings to suddenly shifting to upbeat soundtracks with comedic undertones, then immediately back to watching a South Korean person get tortured by the Japanese. This show is so brutal, and cannot decide whether or not it wants to be a commentary on World War II and the immense pain and suffering endured during this era or a piece of entertainment for Western Audiences to chuckle at the ensemble cast's funny script. This show is the epitome of whiplash in writing, and is by far one of the most traumatically violent depictions of U731 I have seen in this decade. If you are not bothered by the historical connotations and the abhorrent messages behind the backdrop of 1945 in Korea, then by all means this show is probably going to be a fun horror mystery adventure for you. The violence in this show is not the same fictitious entertainment as Squid Game or the more extreme body horror films such as Human Centipede. This show depicts some of what has happened to real people in the past (Exempt the whole sci fi monster plot), and that is what has made it so hard to watch.