Words by Samantha Radaza • July 2, 2026

Non-fiction • Reviews

6.5/10

OUR RATING FOR HELL UNIVERSITY SEASON ONE

I first read Hell University (HU) by KnightInBlack (KIB) when I was a kid, so I was absolutely not equipped to be critical about it. I just loved it. So when it was announced that streaming service Viva One would adapt it into a series, I was bursting with excitement.

A big part of that was the casting. I had already seen Heart Ryan as a main cast member in Viva’s Ang Mutya ng Section E alongside Jastine Lim, Derick Ong, and Andre Yllana, and Heart did a good job there. Zeke Polina had also appeared in the same show as Mykel, a side character, which felt like a fun detail.

Seeing Heart and Zeke together at the show’s press conference proved that they were a visually compatible pair, which is always important in a lead romance. The source material was solid and the cast looked promising. I went in with big expectations, which, as any longtime reader of Wattpad adaptations knows, is either the best or the worst thing you can do.

The premise of Hell University (HU) is exciting. The Purge, but make it Filipino dark academia – that’s the inspiration according to the author himself. Students trapped inside a university where gangs run the hierarchy, survival is the curriculum, and the administration is running something in a laboratory that nobody’s supposed to know about. On paper, that’s a show I would lose sleep over. In execution? It’s a show I watched mostly on 2x speed while asking myself why nobody thought to simply overpower the two guards at the gate and walk home.

And yet, I kept watching. That’s the most honest thing I can say about it.

The Story, Or Lack Thereof

The first half of HU is frustrating if you came expecting a tight thriller. A group of friends stumble into what appears to be an abandoned university, get locked in by a single guard, and witness students beating each other bloody. They then obediently follow said guard to the dean’s office and head to the dorms like they’re checking into a hostel. No one attempts to leave. Not once do they try to coordinate an escape after watching the killing start. The students clearly outnumber the staff at any given moment, and yet collectively rushing the gate apparently never crosses anyone’s mind. Because then the show would end in episode 1.

The plotting is messy and mysteries pile up faster than they get resolved. For the first several episodes it feels like the story is withholding information not to build suspense, but because the writers hadn’t figured out what to reveal yet. The Bloody Night, where killing is legal for hours, arrives with genuine intensity, then dissipates into nothing. The Bloody Week follows, in which murder is permitted for an entire week, and it should escalate everything.

Instead, narration carries it while the visuals barely change. 10 episodes in and most of the supporting characters still have no defined purpose, no POV moments, and no reason for viewers to care whether they survive. As one viewer put it plainly: the characters are less co-leads than decoration. You spend nearly an hour per episode with people who remain strangers. Or flat.

The logic holes compound everything. Who is supplying the formal gowns, the food, the alcohol for all these events? Where do the hundreds of other students sleep when we only ever see one dormitory? Why has no parent filed a missing persons report in years? Why does Zein get chosen as SSG secretary on her first day – a newbie, a stranger – while the SSG President who chose her is simultaneously supposed to be terrifyingly powerful? These aren’t nitpicks, but the kind of questions that break immersion completely once you start asking them.

The episode count makes it worse, starting at 7 episodes, stretched to 9, extended to 18. The bloat is visible from the inside. It took 16 whole episodes for the show to actually commit to its own plot. Pacing? Stalling? Kamo na mag-ingon.

That said, the second half picks up significantly. Supremo and Zein’s arcs develop into something genuinely interesting once the show stops hiding them behind vague mystery. The plot twist sticks its landing. The final episodes caution: be wary of people who present themselves as friends, because the face people show you is not always who they are. It’s the most thematically coherent the show ever gets, and it arrives just in time.

The Adaptation Problem

The comparison to She’s Dating the Gangster (2014) keeps coming up in discussions, and it’s worth sitting with: that adaptation famously changed enormous amounts of the original novel, including the entire ending, and is now considered one of the best Filipino Wattpad adaptations ever made.

The lesson isn’t that adaptations should change everything, but that adaptations should serve the screen version of a story rather than the page version. More production involvement from KIB’s team, while well-meaning, may have actually worked against the show by anchoring it too closely to material that needed significant reworking for a visual medium.

The cinematography has some excellent moments, particularly in establishing shots and the BBG sequences. At its best, HU looks like a show that knows what it wants to be. At its worst – and this happens frequently – the camera work becomes lazy and uninspired in dialogue-heavy scenes, and the editing choices are baffling.

Most egregiously, we get four different angles for a single cheek kiss between Matt and Zein in episode 8, “Bloody Week,” where the stakes should be higher than ever. Is this a survival thriller or a rom-com?

The sound design is above-average in its best moments. A sequence in episode 9 (“Fairy Tale”) showing the synchronized footsteps of Black Blood Gang (BBG) members and recruits is crisp and satisfying in a way the show rarely achieves elsewhere. The OST has superb songs, like the intro theme by boy band ALAMAT.

However, there are missteps in the audio too. There’s a scene in an early episode where a speaking character’s voice disappears entirely. Dead air in the main friends’ hangout scenes that even a casual viewer would clock immediately. These are not the marks of a production that reviewed its own cuts before broadcast.

Bobby Bonifacio Jr. is the credited director, but the visible difference in quality between the protagonist and antagonist sides of the story makes me wonder if the two halves were handled very differently on set. Whatever the cause is – different coaching, different editing approaches, different on-set experience among the supporting crew – the result is a show that feels like two separate productions stitched together, one of which is significantly more confident than the other. Maybe dark survival thrillers may simply not be Bonifacio’s strongest register?

The Cast: Two Very Different Shows Happening at Once

The quality gap between the leads and the antagonists in this show is wide enough to drive a truck through. The casting was largely good. The execution was uneven in ways that aren’t always the actors’ fault.

Heart Ryan as Zein Shion is committed and has real presence. Her character is frustratingly reckless by design: she keeps wandering into dangerous situations at night, gets surprised when danger finds her, and makes decisions that would get a normal person killed within forty-eight hours. That’s Zein’s characterization, and Heart executes it effectively enough that you can still empathize with and root for her.

Naa lang gyud siya uban scenes that could have been executed better, a pattern that affects several cast members, pointing more to direction and coaching issues than to individual ability. Her improvement is visible across the run, and her passion for the project is palpable. For instance, she designed the HU uniforms herself, a detail that speaks volumes in itself.

Zeke Polina as Ace Craige carries the heaviest material in the show. He’s the most consistently convincing among the leads. The problem isn’t his performance. The problem is that Ace Craige is fundamentally one-dimensional on the page: a spoiled, power-tripping figure whose internal logic the adaptation never takes time to properly establish, and the show doesn’t do enough to fix that. Episode 10 onward, he’s given more to work with, and it shows. Zeke is doing everything right with what he’s been given. He just hasn’t been given enough. I think medyo nagtuyok ra gyud ang POV kang Zein.

The main friend group as a unit is where the show struggles hardest. There is no onscreen rapport between them collectively. Their scenes feel like people dancing out of sync with the music. The Zein-Ace romance as aired is also significantly underdeveloped, though Heart and Zeke do their best to generate sparks between their characters, despite the paper-thin material.

Andre Yllana as Matthew “Matt” Hart is dependable and brings warmth to his scenes. Naka-follow na ko sa iyang performance from previous shows so medyo naa na ko expectations sa iya, not to mention nga anak pud siya sa beteranang aktres nga si Aiko Melendez.

Jastine Lim as Vanessa shows promise, particularly in her solo scenes, though she occasionally breaks from the scene when she’s supposed to be reacting rather than speaking. Maayo siya when it comes to “mata-mata acting.”

Although we see far less of Lance Carr and Aubrey Caraan than marketing might lead you to believe, their strong work in their limited screentime here and sa ilang niaging project nga Avenues of the Diamond makes the potential second season Chasing Hell – where they will lead – look promising.

The Black Blood Gang Saved This Show

The real Hell University, the one this show was always capable of being, lives entirely in the scenes involving the original Black Blood Gang trio Nicky Colt, Nazzer Lumia, and Luke.

As Nicky, Jemima Rivera – a member of the rookie girl group RAYA – drops the bomb immediately in her very first scene and keeps the fire blazing hotter all the way to the finale. I didn’t have any expectations when she was first announced in the role. Nicky is an annoying character in the book, not the most compelling presence on the page. Plus, I had no idea who she was at the press conference, as this is her screen debut. Yet she turned out to be the most consistently thrilling thing in the entire season.

Jemima’s performance outdoes the source material in every possible way. She’s the show-stealer, and every scene she appears in has more energy and specificity than almost anything else the production manages. She is truly a revelation in this role.

As soft-spoken BBG leader Nazzer, Keagan De Jesus gives a sophisticated performance despite being one of the youngest in the cast. He delivers a stirring monologue in episode 9 that stunned me and other viewers. His scenes with Jemima have believable chemistry. His physical commitment, including a burn-marking scene that is among the most viscerally effective things the show does, is remarkable for someone at this stage of their career. Maayo kaayo pagkahimutang iyang delivery labaw na ang facial expressions.

Last but certainly not the least, ALAMAT’s Alas Alvarez as the red-haired BBG member Luke is a screen presence that is difficult to ignore. Fellow OG reader Howell Zabala and I agree that in HU, Alas comes across as a formally trained actor, so the fact that this is also his acting debut is surprising. What stands out immediately is how confident and deliberate his performance is. It is controlled, but definitely not stiff.

He can express emotions well when needed, like when Nazzer, Nicky, and Matt confront Luke in episode 17 (“Alas”). Howell says that sometimes, Alas is even too expressive, but he attributes it to the show’s lackluster direction. Alas’s fight scenes are equally convincing. His athletic background is evident, keeping his body language effortless in such sequences. Alas has a bright future not just as an “idol who can act,” but a fully-fledged actor-musician. The natural talent is clearly there. If he continues to study the craft, his acting skills will further develop in no time.

The BBG trio are young, raw, and completely committed. They didn’t play it safe. Jemima, Keagan, and Alas came to work, in a show that didn’t always deserve them.

Final Word

Part of what makes Hell University so frustrating, especially if you know the source material, is how it handles the original novel. KnightInBlack’s book is a product of its era: a mid-2010s Wattpad story written and originally self-published by a teenager. It had the bones of something interesting, but the writing itself was rough in places. The show had every opportunity to improve on those bones.

Instead it sticks close to the source in exactly the moments it shouldn’t, and deviates in ways that don’t always help. The worst moments are often when they follow the book too literally, including dialogue that simply does not survive being spoken out loud. For example, Roxane Allister (Ashanti Gorospe) delivering the line “H-how dare you” as “Ha-how dare you,” as if reciting the written text exactly, comes across as unintentional comedy. Books can do things cameras cannot. Unfortunately, the production team didn’t always know which was which.

The BBG storyline is the exception, and it’s not a coincidence that those are also the scenes where the show stops worrying about being palatable. Jemima, Keagan, and Alas were given material with real stakes and characters with actual edges, and they ran with it completely. The villains in this show are more interesting than the heroes not because villainy is inherently more compelling, but because those performers were allowed to fully inhabit their roles in a way the lead cast frequently was not.

And another thing: fan shipping culture going into overdrive is holding Hell University back from its own premise. This is The Purge inside a university. It should be visceral and uncomfortable. Instead it pulls punches and spends the majority of its runtime refusing to fully commit to the darkness its story is built upon. Filipino love team culture, and the parasocial entitlement that comes with it, are stopping productions like this one back from reaching their full potential.

Season one is a wasted opportunity. The bones are there. The cast is stacked. Given better direction, a tighter script willing to deviate from the source where it should, and a production environment insulated from outside noise, this could have been one of the best Filipino web series ever made. Instead it’s a frustrating watch that occasionally surprises you.

If Chasing Hell comes with Aubrey Caraan and Lance Carr leading, there’s potential for a course correction. And if Viva is smart, they’ll get the BBG trio their own proper showcase before this universe moves any further along.

Watch it for the Black Blood Gang. Watch everything else at 2x.

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