Korean filmmakers are on a roll this year. First Squid Game became a global sensation early in the fall, and Hellbound has now reportedly claimed the title of Netflix's all-time most-watched show (from Squid Game no less) despite being released only a week ago, on Nov. 19.
As a commentary on Korea's social inequality, Squid Game presented a fictional world where the debt-ridden gamble away their lives in order to win a big cash prize. Hellbound starts with an equally improbable but compelling premise: random humans receive messages—"decrees" as it has been translated into English—from an other worldly apparition that they are doomed to die at preordained times and will be taken to hell.
Sure enough, at the appointed hour monstrous creatures spring out of thin air and beat the victim into a pulp before incinerating the body for good.