PIC of the Week – Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
Article Series by Ray Schillaci
SOME SPOILERS WITHIN (with warning – feel free to skip to the next paragraph to avoid)
As you were all munching down on your turkey, ham, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, I took a ride courtesy of Well Go USA on the Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula, watching a variety of the most violent and crazed zombies eating their way into my heart. The sequel to the runaway undead hit from South Korea, Train to Busan, is certainly bigger, but not always better. Surprisingly, the film pulls at the heartstrings from the very beginning and then goes into overdrive action like a cross-contaminated version of Mad Max, Escape From New York and World War Z.
Peninsula is a stand-alone sequel, so you don’t have to see the first one in order to catch up. The first film was basically zombies on a train. But, well-defined characters, non-stop insane action, and a captivating story had it rise over so many other films in the dead franchise. It was a fun and memorable nail-biter. This time around it appears that writer/director Sang-ho Yeon has taken a nod from the Indonesian franchise, The Raid: Redemption and made the action set pieces bigger while delivering a multi-faceted story with a variety of apocalyptic characters.
Captain Jung-Seok is attempting to escort his sister, nephew and brother-in-law out of South Korea after a zombie outbreak. He gets them to an ocean liner only to have one of the infected rage havoc as the ship is traveling to Hong Kong. ***SPOILER ALERT*** the captain’s sister and nephew never make it out alive, leaving a devastated brother-in-law that wishes he died with his wife and kid while insisting his sister’s husband never did enough. It’s a very heavy scene, and it leads to four years later in Hong Kong where these two broken men are approached with a mission from underworld thugs: return to the peninsula and retrieve $20M in cash residing in a truck that was abandoned during the outbreak.
To complicate matters,***SPOILER ALERT*** the two men with a rag-tag crew are split up during the heist and encounter a rogue militia and a very resolute family – a woman, her two young daughters, and their grandfather – that have learned to outwit the zombie horde. Meanwhile, the rogue militia entertain themselves by taking their captives and placing them in a giant cage to fend off zombies. The captors are timed as they try to keep from being devoured or turned while the militia places bets on who will live beyond the time limit. Another side story involves a rift among the militia between a sadistic sergeant and a quietly crazed captain who toys with suicide.
There is a lot going on in Peninsula and it doesn’t always feel as cohesive as its predecessor. This could be due to the change of writing partners. Joo-Suk Park was writer/director Yeon’s partner for Train to Busan. The writing felt much tighter while new scribe Ryu Yung-jae’s contribution on this sequel veers between homage and borrowing from popular American action movies. At the same time, Yeon’s direction has a flare for the melodramatic, hammering a few points across. Those moments slow down the tension rather than ratchet it up. But, the sum of the whole ends up being a bone-crunching, action-packed roller coaster to hell.
Visually, from the very beginning and sight of the first zombie, this 4K gives you the undead like you’ve never seen them before. Every line on the gaunt-faced dead is accentuated. There are several moments where the hyper-realism makes you feel like you’ve been placed in a video game due to the onslaught of CGI zombies. This may make some critical of the film while others will eat it up and just have fun with it. Everything about the landscape pops out – the rust, the grime, the devastation of both South Korean peninsula and mankind. You will have little trouble with the darker scenes that are generally crystal clear with only the exception of some of the heavier CGI sequences that have brief blending of shadows of the hordes.
The Dolby Atmos sound is expansive and will rock the house if given a chance. I had to lower my bass level because my wife thought we were under attack. It’s not just the wild munchin’ and crunchin’, you’ll practically feel the bullets fly by and the roar of the vehicles racing through your living room. The impressive surround does not take away from dialogue although most of it is in Korean.
Now, the death blow. A ten-minute “making of” and trailers are all we’re afforded. Well Go USA disappoints big on this release that should have given us at least an hour of makeup effects, CGI, stunts and a spotlight on the actors.
Die hard fans of the zombie genre will not be disappointed while more discriminate followers of the cannibalistic dead may pick at the bones of some of the over-the-top melodramatics that feel like a bad anime. Some of the CGI chases and massive undead clashes will either be off-putting or just chalked up as fun and games (or gaming). The thrills and chills more than make up for some of the cheesier slo-mo moments. All around, one cannot help but feel how much better this could have been with less or better CGI, tighter script and direction. Although, there is no denying the thrill of it all.
Lowest Price – 4K/Blu – $23.49 – Amazon & Target, Blu/DVD – $16.99 – Amazon
Visit Ray’s blog at themonsterinmyhead.com
