Television | Society
Hellbound: What Is Hell?
A conceptual review of the show’s themes
Most of us have been raised by religious parents. We also have been taught about Heaven and Hell. If you’re good, you go to heaven, and if you’re not, Hell awaits you.
As time goes on, we question the clarity of good and bad. And the line between it, which is crossed and redrawn so many times by people.
Hellbound doesn’t just show a world where bad people are decreed with a gruesome death and Hell in the same sentence, but it’s a world where people see a phenomenon and bring meaning to it by themselves.
Not realizing that when you give meaning to something, you also give power to the people who derived the reason for its occurrence.
The Decree
Everything begins when a person is given a decree by a large translucent face which speaks to that person. The face only states the person’s name, their time and date of death, and that they are condemned to Hell.
Pretty simple. The message is short and clear.
But the way the person dies is really shocking. Three large beasts descend down, or come out of the ground — whatever they vibe with at the time — and start pulverizing the person. It doesn’t even matter if the person is around other people or not. It’s time for a beat down for them.
And that’s not even all. When the person is finally beaten to a pulp, they are fried to the maximum setting there is, which causes their bodies to completely turn into ash with just their ribcage and skull to be somewhat perceptible.
Talk about hellish.
What is Your Sin?
You have to have one, according to the show, and to everyone else in the entire world.
With only six episodes and currently only a single season — there is violence and brutality throughout all of it. I wondered if the monsters who condemn the sinner to hell were necessary for the storyline, and then I realized that violence is merely a façade.
It tries to scare you with getting beaten to death by monsters when in reality, the real terror is the ‘New Truth’ religion, based around these condemnations, who begin broadcasting all of these killings. They ask the sinner what their sin is in these showings, as if to make sense of why the person was condemned to Hell.
You see where this is leading, don’t you?
You have to have a sin, or else their sham of a new religion wouldn’t have any meaning, and they wouldn’t be able to scare people into following them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to condemn the sinners and shun their families themselves. And if they can’t have an explanation of why this phenomenon is happening to a specific person, there is no such thing as a sinner or saint anymore.
The Mob Mentality
This show is jam-packed with instances where people are not individuals and just the ideologies they believe in. In this show, the New Truth is one of those organizations that takes the front and center as being a new religion. Then there are the Arrowheads, who are a violent extremist group with only one mission: terrorize people as much as you can.
But when one is to see these two groups side by side, one can understand how similar they really are. One group hides it face behind literal masks, the other group hides it face behind supernatural beings and calling them God’s wrath.
The goal is simple, and it is to scare people, to push them into the same herd. Like cattle. Whip one if it dares to step out of the circle. Or in this case, cremate it and pretend it was God’s doing.
Blind followers and believers are what drive this show into resembling real life, even with the fantasy element. These people are willing to do anything to be in the good books of the New Truth. Not God. Because it is the religion, which is going out of its way to humiliate and shun the people who are condemned to Hell.
What is Hell?
It would be easy to say that Hell is other people, but that would make all of this so boring and repetitive. The show is anything but boring. It is deep and humanizing. It can make you cry, it can make you feel horrible, and it can make you feel bad for the sinners. Yes, this show has layers that peel off so beautifully as you watch each episode.
You cannot emotionally invest yourself in the characters because they don’t meet a pretty fate, but you can still relate to these individuals who are being terrorized by the people.
The scene sequence which broke me completely in the show is in episode 3 when the lawyer, who had represented a sinner, is beat up when she goes to her firm searching for her colleague. Her cancer-ridden mother is in the car waiting for her when some extremist teens belonging to Arrowhead find her.
They not only beat up the lawyer with baseball bats but also beat her old mother to death.
Those scenes brought an ugly rage inside of me which refused to die down. I truly believe that people are not the problem, it is the ideologies. People die. Ideologies live forever. But people should be held responsible for keeping them alive.
There should be accountability for all of it.
Hellbound is a straight-forward show. It shows us how people are capable of using anything to justify their actions. They are willing to hold a mirror up for another person, but are unwilling to look at their own demons.
So, what is Hell?
Maybe Hell is other people, considering how most of the terror in the show is caused by people themselves. Or maybe, it is what we do when we believe we are doing the right thing.
To me, Hell is what we do to other people in the name of a higher being.
What is Hell to you?
Thank you for reading this opinionated piece on the South Korean show Hellbound. Hope you enjoyed and you’re welcome to leave your own thoughts about the show and the concepts behind it.
