‘Duty After School’ Part 1 review: good dumb fun that goes nowhere fast

Think of an apocalypse and catastrophic imagery like desolate, dilapidated cityscapes and rugged, world-weary survivors most likely come to mind. In Duty After School, however, life chugs on as usual, save for the countless purple-tinged spheres of mysterious origin hanging in the sky.

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TVING’s newest sci-fi series explains – satirically through an animated YouTube video – that these floating spheres simply appeared in the sky out of nowhere all over the globe, just a year prior to the show’s events. Despite numerous governments’ attempts at clearing the skies of the unknown matter, they have since learned that attacking them only causes them to multiply. Laboratory tests ultimately found that the orbs do not contain any harmful substances, and the world thus decided that the best course of action was to go about their daily lives as usual while coexisting with the spheres.

This veneer of normality was unfortunately not made to last. Unbeknownst to the general public, a singular purple sphere has crash landed for the first time – and in a South Korean military base. Despite clear directives from headquarters for soldiers to keep their distance from the object and await further instructions, a rash squad leader decides to completely disregard all rules and shoots the orb, which begins to crackle and glow ominously upon impact.

Four weeks later, an announcement from Korea’s Ministry of Defence is broadcasted throughout Sungjin High School, demanding that all young adults between the ages of 19 and 24 be drafted into the military to combat the risk posed by these alien orbs, along with all third-year high school students. In exchange for their conscriptions, third years will be privy to extra credit for their university applications.

Enlisting teenagers to fight on behalf of humanity is a less-than-ideal situation for a number of obvious reasons. None of these students are taking their military training seriously, nor do they truly understand the gravity of the situation: the boys are romanticising the experience as their favourite combat video games come to life, while the girls are treating it as a vacation of sorts. Not to mention the fact that they are assigned personal firearms. Trigger-happy children with access to dangerous weapons – what could go wrong?

Once a fight breaks out amongst the students and a boy, named Young-hoon, is slammed against the sphere, things quickly go south. The purple mass unfurls to become a massive, gruesome monster. The boys freeze at the sight, and before any of them can react, the creature’s tentacles snake around Young-hoon’s body, before swallowing him whole and recoiling back into its spherical shape.

Duty After School can be somewhat appealing at times, with a knack for tugging at heartstrings. Watching teenagers slowly get their childhoods stripped away from them makes you realise how much higher the stakes are. This is largely thanks to the exemplary performances from the cast – including Shin Hyun-soo, ALICE’s Kim So-hee and CLC’s Kwon Eun-bin – alongside the talents of Duty After School’s screenwriters, who make the best of the source material they’ve been given.

For the most part, though, Duty After School just feels so strangely familiar. From its wildly absurd sci-fi premise featuring high schoolers to the stereotypical group of young protagonists (the class clown, the trustworthy president, the popular girls, the bullies, you get the gist) – it is all painfully predictable, almost like we’ve seen it before. Not to mention the pacing issues, stemming from the need to know the show’s promotional material for a fuller picture of the series.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem like Duty After School will improve in due time, seeing as there’s only four episodes left in the series for Part 2. If all you’re searching for is fantastic CGI, stellar on-screen performances and simple good dumb fun, Duty After School wouldn’t be the worst choice – but as something more weighty, look elsewhere.

Duty After School airs on tvN, and is also available for streaming on Viki and Viu in select regions.

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