Hellbound Trailer: The Director Of Train To Busan Has A Netflix Horror Series

Yeon Sang-Ho is in fifth gear again, all the better for horror fans.

Titled "Hellbound" (which will trip up horror fans of Clive Barker's "The Hellbound Heart," upon which "Hellraiser" was based), the South Korean series is the latest from director Yeon Sang-ho of "Train to Busan" fame. Based on his webtoon "Hell" with cartoonist Choi Gyu-Seok, "The Hellbound" webtoon is available to English-language readers in Dark Horse's "The Hellbound" Vol. 1, in case you're looking to read the source material first. In the meantime, Netflix has dropped a trailer for the horror series, in which  "unearthly beings deliver condemnations, sending individuals to hell and giving rise to a religious group founded on the idea of divine justice." Check it out below.

The trailer indeed seems to have condemnations, zealotry, and monsters galore! But what's with the death countdown? The webtoon synopsis shines a little light:

One day, you will receive a message from an unknown sender. The message will only include your name, the fact that you are going to hell, and the time you have left to live. When the time counts down to zero, supernatural beings manifest to condemn you to hell. Amid social chaos and increasing hysteria, the people must find a way to survive this inexplicable terror.

You don't have to have devoured the webtoon to see that Yeon Sang-ho is fully in his element here. Social chaos and gut-wrenching life or death decisions are thrown into a blender on high. It's exactly the magic that made a fairly straightforward zombie picture, "Train to Busan," a balls-to-the-wall hit that thrills and devastates with equal measure. Past credits for the director include "The Peninsula" and the animated "Busan" prequel, "Seoul Station."

Further intrigue can be found with the cult element. As anyone who has lived in North America can tell you, in times of desperation there will always be those who attribute tragedies and catastrophes (like an uprising of tendriled beasts) to bad behavior only: if you're hurting, it's because you've done something wrong, you haven't been faithful enough, you're not good enough, and whatever is happening to you is a deserved punishment. It's a chestnut of wisdom that was good enough for the likes of Mrs. Carmody in "The Mist," and for the likes of Bev Keane in Mike Flanagan's "Midnight Mass." 

They sure were some Bad News Bears, weren't they? 

So it's not hard to guess the trajectory for anyone in the vicinity of the masked believers shown in the trailer. The only question left is if they get theirs as Carmody and Keane did.

"Hellbound" arrives exclusively at Netflix on November 19, 2021.