Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula follows a military man who does his best to rescue his family from the zombie virus, but ends up being a man in limbo. When he gets a chance at a better life, he reluctantly agrees in a lackluster way of paying back another for his past shortcomings, but discovers a better way to make up for his flawed past.
If you loved Train to Busan, then you should skip Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula. Whereas its predecessor wisely used zombies as metaphors for more quotidian societal horrors, this standalone sequel (you do not need to see the first to watch the second) is nothing but a schmaltzy action horror heist film with little to no substance whose strength lies in exploiting our sentimentality for family. Initially the film seemed to tap into the present day xenophobia exhibited as disdain for disease, but it is rapidly dropped for the standard dystopian zombie drama where the people are more dangerous than the zombies.
Unfortunately the dangerous people in Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula were boring, loud, messy and homicidal, but other than the opening scene, pretty humdrum standard bad guys. If they had to face off against the villains from RoboCop, they would cry for their moms. For a heist film to work, the crew pulling off the heist have to be innately quirky and riveting characters with standout skills. One member of the crew brings nothing but greed and bad judgment to the table. He spends the entire film scared. Would bad guys even hire him if he did not know one relative bad ass? The dangerous people have to be memorable menacing figures with a modus operandi as horrifying as the zombies. Think Negan and Lucille. The closest that we get is an homage to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, but I have seen some variation on those themes for this one not to move the genre forward by even a little baby step. The protagonist is duller than dirt and all he brings to the table are his fighting skills, which are not so impressive that you will recall one scene when he gets down and want to rewind it. It is as if someone saw Mad Max: Fury Road, but took the wrong lessons from George Miller’s masterpiece. It felt less like world building and more like world filler. For an action movie, there was not one single exciting action sequence that truly impressed me, and I can get chills watching network television.
If there was anything unique about the bad guys, it was how respectful one was when he thought that he interrupted a same sex couple. Anecdotally it is my understanding that South Korea is not that progressive, but good for the filmmakers. On the other hand, they are the villains so maybe the filmmakers are exploiting the depraved homosexual trope. I defer to the experts! Side note: when I watch South Korean films and television series, I cannot tell if a character is gay or not unless the character’s sexuality is explicitly verbally referenced.
Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula also has a tone problem. Kids play a prominent role in the action, and I have not felt so uncomfortable since watching Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. I know that I am supposed to be thrilled how they use toys to navigate the ravaged landscape, but they were driving the car from Grindhouse: Death Proof, which leads to the uncomfortable question of how did they get it and do they know about the car’s history.
Car chase sequences are tedious, but they are the bread and butter of Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula. The closest that I get to chills is Chekhov’s random glass tunnel of zombies, and even that goes off with a whimper, not a bang though it should have been thrilling. The most interesting characters were the women, but they do not get a lot of screen time, and the movie clearly thrives with a Smurfette angle—there can only be one woman on screen at a time. The protagonist should have been the mother since it would have been more interesting to learn how she managed to independently survive without having to deal with the local gang for so long. When she appears, I immediately considered her a potential love interest for the protagonist, and I am not normally a person looking for a romantic pairing, but he has nothing going for him. On her own, she has an innate momentum in her story, but he cannot say the same. Instead the movie makes her a sister figure, which is so lackluster and anticlimactic for him that I do not even know why he exists-a void of nothingness.
A better alternate protagonist for Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula would have been the cab driver. If a Hong Kong criminal group hires a middle-aged lady to run game, and she is smoking unruffled by the challenge, I want to learn more about her childless ass who just wants to make some bank and considers zombies a mild obstacle in between her dreams of living in the lap of luxury. There was a fun story that could have been subversive and unique. At least there is never a rapey moment. Even at its worse, South Korean film character dudes will not go there. They will kill a little girl, but rape never crosses their mind.
It does not take a savvy movie watcher to sense the stink wafting off of Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula like an animated dead person. I have enjoyed most of the South Korean movies that I have seen, but this one is the first that seems as if it was trying to cater to an English-speaking audience with patches of dialogue in English and the early frequent appearances of Westerners. If you see Western actors in Asian films, they are not usually the best at their craft otherwise they could stay home and practice their art. Everyone has to start somewhere, but we are not sending our best, and they further weigh down the momentum of the film. Dear South Korean filmmakers, do you! I do not mind subtitles, and I do not need to see a generic, familiar face to get into your films. I like your work because you are not like our empty, predigested, forgettable movies. You are going in the wrong direction.
It also does not help that as we live in our own dystopian plague ridden world, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula breaks our suspension of disbelief with cars that work after being idle for four years when they barely start after four weeks. I do not mind a fast zombie, but dead bodies still speedy after four years of rot strained credibility. These zombies are too uniform to be distinctive and strike chills that will keep us up long after the movie ends.
Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula is the worst South Korean film that I have seen to date. Even though I normally watch artsy fartsy foreign films, I have seen their more mainstream fare, and it is still the weakest when judged with its more suitable counterparts. Watch the original or if you have more time, check out Kingdom, a television series.
