While on the surface Sweet Home may seem like a typical bloody horror romp with a unique urban setting, the cast and crew feel the series has a deeper meaning. Lee Jin-wook, who plays the intimidating but misunderstood Pyeon Sang-wook, feels the series’ apartment building setting has a lot to say about human interconnectivity. In an article on Click the City, he’s quoted as saying that a big thread of the series is the question of “what we need as humans to live among other humans.”
The actor expanded on those thoughts further in a profile in Forbes. There he said, “We live in a time when individualism dominates our societies, and Sweet Home helps the audience experience, albeit indirectly, a disaster, which will allow them to realize why we need human connections and have to live with each other.”
In addition to those themes, the show’s conceit of humans becoming monsters borne out of their own shortcomings and desires gives the series another dimension of subtext. One of the show’s directors, Lee Eung-bok, felt that the way the series depicts the monsters ultimately ends up being more nuanced than it may initially seem. He told Click the City, “I don’t think desires are [all] bad, and something that looks like a monster is not always all bad.”
Whether you’re in it for the social commentary or the shocking action-horror set pieces, you’ll likely find something to sink your claws into in Netflix’s Sweet Home.
