Peninsula (Train to Busan 2) (2020)

Director: Sang-ho Yeon

Starring: Dong-Won Gang, Jung-hyun Lee, Re Lee

‘Peninsula’ follows a soldier who is sent along with his team to retrieve a truck full of money from the wastelands of the Korean peninsula now inhabited by zombies, rogue militia and a nice family.

Although I’m generally not in favor of sequels, I was really looking forward to this ‘Train to Busan’ sequel. Unfortunately, ‘Peninsula’ is not what I was hoping for.

Where do I even begin with how disappointed I am with this film? Firstly, the most obvious: the CGI. Oh, my goodness, the CGI is so bad, and its all over the place. It looked as if the entire film was shot in a studio, with everything else being added in post-production. Of the many car chase scenes in the film, not a single scene utilized practical effects. Instead, they opted for (terrible!) CGI. The film therefore lost every inch of realism, ultimately looking like a video game. (I do hope this is not the future of film making…)

Secondly, the premise and the characters. Someone watched way too many American films and attempted to make a Korean film Hollywood style, with cliched annoying characters and situations. In fact, the characters were so uninteresting that I didn’t care about any of them (no, not even the lead), and I actually found myself hitting the forward button when some of these annoying characters were on screen. There are also way too many comedic moments that completely ruins the suspense of the film. Come to think of it, there were no suspense whatsoever…

Thirdly, the zombies. This is supposed to be a zombie film, yet the zombies are merely along for the ride – a sideshow, if you will. The film is slow moving with very little revolving around the zombies. ‘Peninsula’ is essentially a crime thriller, with zombies thrown in the mix. There’s so little originality here (almost everything is copied from American crime films we’ve seen over the years). The film also lacks emotional depth, which was so prominent and effective in ‘Train to Busan’. They did attempt emotion towards the end, but since I didn’t care about the characters, it didn’t matter and I was sitting there thinking “oh, just get on with it…”.

I tried enjoying this as a standalone film, but alas, there was little here I enjoyed. The CGI and lack of practical effects – when it easily could have been used – completely ruined the film, as if the premise itself wasn’t enough cause to raise an eyebrow or two…

In Korean.

Would I watch it again? No.