HELLBOUND is one of those supernatural dystopias that looks fantastic on paper but not great viewing.

Maybe it's me not liking the dystopia genre but this is just relentlessly depressing and the violence sometimes feels gratuitous while most of the characters from the main cast of both seasons are pretty unlikeable.

For dystopias, if the viewer isn't given something or someone to root for, it really falls apart. The reason why other dystopian dramas like HAPPINESS or KINGDOM or TOMORROW succeed is because we have characters we actually like and plot-wise everything is set up well.

Relentless doom-and-gloom in the bid to be edgy always falls flat.

I watched this on election night in the US, and finished it in the next few days. For whatever reason, it totally hit the spot. Well. Lots of people reacting to deaths that have an extra-human origin by blaming and violently victimizing each other? It's only a thinly disguised version of our present moment with the results of climate change. It's satisfying to me that the entire drama valorizes parents who love and sacrifice for their children.

But it's also depressing that I can recognize a society in which people can harm and kill people they should protect and think they are in the right.