Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Yeon Sang-ho returns us to the Train to Busan universe in Peninsula, set a few years after the zombification of Korea, with Korean refugees in other nations not being all that warmly received due to the typical prejudice against undead outbreaks. One such refugee is a Marine Captain Jung-Seok (Gang Dong-won), who managed to survive along with his brother in law, Kim Do-yoon’s Chul-min, although his sister and nephew did not.
The pair of them are struggling with survivor’s guilt and living borderline illegally in Hong Kong, where they soon become embroiled in a mafia scheme to slip back into Korea to quickly recover a truck full of cash and get out. This, as you will imagine, did not quite to plan, with their team being attacked not just by zombies, but by a squad of rogue militia members who are surviving in the post-zombocalypse Seoul, who mistake the truck for one containing food and other more useful supplies, given the situation.
Chul-min is captured by the militia, Jung-Seok is saved by the intervention of two resourceful youngsters, Jooni and Yu-Jin, who take him back to the hideout of their mother, Lee Jung-hyun’s Min-jung, and grandfather Kwon Hae-hyo’s Elder Kim. At the risk of slight oversimplification, Jung-Seok convinces them that recovering Chul-min and the truck will be all of their tickets off the peninsula. Their plan does not survive contact with the enemy, hence a whole bunch of chasing going on.
Peninsula has approximately twice the budget of Train to Busan, but unfortunately about half of the charm. That’s not to say that is a completely unenjoyable film, as it’s falling squarely into the “fine but broadly unremarkable” category, but almost all of the things that were cool about the predecessor, like the imaginative sequences in the claustrophobic confines of carriages, are replaced by CG laden action setpieces that aren’t all that interesting, and the characters are a lot blander and therefore harder to empathise with here.
To be blunt, that’s nigh on everything I’ve got to say about Peninsula. It’s an enjoyable enough film to pass the time with, and I don’t think it’s doing anything it sets out to do badly, but it’s ultimately quite characterless and I doubt I shall remember any sequence in this next week, let alone next year.
Four stars says Paul Ross.