Review | Peninsula movie review: Train to Busan meets Mad Max and Escape from New York in disappointing zombie sequel
- Gang Dong-won heads an all-new cast as an overseas marine coerced to retrieve US$20 million in abandoned cash from zombie-ravaged South Korea
- While its predecessor was propelled by a breathless immediacy, Peninsula’s prominent action too often feels weightless and cartoonlike
2.5/5 stars
The film was originally scheduled to open July 15 in Hong Kong, the same day as its South Korea release, but a new round of Covid-19 cases in the city has seen it temporarily shelved. Internationally, the film is likely to creep, virus-like, into markets as they ease lockdown restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic – fitting for a movie set during a deadly, invisible plague.
Gang Dong-won heads an all-new cast as Jung-seok, a marine evacuated to the relative safety of Hong Kong, who is coerced back to retrieve US$20 million in abandoned cash. Promised half of anything recovered, Jung-seok and his brother-in-law Chul-min (Kim Do-yoon) return to an urban wasteland now ravaged by zombies, where pockets of survivors are terrorised by violent militias.
Released in some markets with a “Train to Busan presents” prefix, Peninsula does itself no favours hitching its wagon so prominently to Yeon’s earlier success, which so perfectly balanced apocalyptic horror with sly social commentary.
The 2016 film’s carriage of vividly realised characters is replaced with vaguely sketched archetypes: Lee Jung-hyun’s gun-toting mother-of-two, Kim Min-jae’s snarling mercenary, Koo Kyo-hwan’s slippery kingpin. Instead of fleshed out relationships, characters are now merely related.