Review | Netflix movie review: Badland Hunters – Ma Dong-seok in post-apocalyptic action thriller full of B-movie clichés and brutal violence

In this Korean drama, Ma Dong-seok plays a notorious hunter searching for his kidnapped surrogate daughter, played by Roh Jeong-eui
The movie depicts South Korean capital Seoul as having been destroyed by an earthquake, with gangs roaming the wasteland looking for food and water

Asian cinema: Korean films

James Marsh

Published: 10:00pm, 25 Jan 2024

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2/5 stars

From the producers of Concrete Utopia, South Korea’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards, comes an altogether different kind of beast.

A collaboration between Climax Studio and Netflix, post-apocalyptic action thriller Badland Hunters is set in a similar, but officially unconnected, rubble-strewn wilderness.

Ma Dong-seok produces and stars as a notorious hunter who scours an apocalyptic wasteland for a girl kidnapped from his community.

The directorial debut of stunt coordinator Heo Myung-haeng, who previously worked with Ma on Train to Busan, this stripped-down bloodbath trades allegory for lashings of gratuitous violence and Mad Max-style dystopian mayhem.

Following a gigantic earthquake that levelled almost all of Seoul’s vast urban sprawl, endless droughts have transformed the countryside into an arid wasteland, plagued by marauding gangs of vicious bandits, where food and water are growing increasingly scarce.

Nam San (Ma) and his accomplice Ji-wan (Lee Jun-young) live in a remote settlement, getting by on the spoils from their nighttime hunting trips.

They are forced into action when Nam San’s surrogate daughter Su-na (Roh Jeong-eui) – whom Ji-wan is sweet on – is abducted by followers of the mysterious Dr Yang (Lee Hae-jun).

Roh Jeong-eui as Su-na in a still from “Badland Hunters”. Photo: Netflix

This deranged scientist now presides over one of the only remaining residential compounds like a cult leader, promising that his work can save humanity. But, as Su-na soon discovers, Yang’s help comes at an unspeakable price.

Gleefully eschewing any insight into humanity’s devolution, Badland Hunters is propelled by hokey B-movie clichés and relentless close-quarters violence.

The results are less Train to Busan and closer to that film’s inferior sequel, Peninsula. But that is not to say Heo’s fledgling feature is without its late-night charms.

‘We’re really pushing viewers’: Ma Dong-seok on Netflix’s Badland Hunters

Audiences who embraced the gratuitous bloodletting and mad professor experiments of Project Wolf Hunting should be sufficiently entertained, while Ma ensures his lovable lunkhead lands a few laughs in between skull-crushing blows.

Elsewhere, only Ahn Ji-hye delivers anything more than a wide-eyed one-note caricature, performing all her own stunts as a gung-ho army sergeant who guides Nam San through the carnage.

Lee Jun-young as Ji-wan (centre) in a still from “Badland Hunters”. Photo: Cha Min-jung/Netflix

Ma and Heo already have another collaboration in the can – the fourth instalment in the hugely successful Roundup action series. This will come as welcome news to fans who felt the last film in that franchise had lost its bite.

Judging by the mindless destruction dished out in Badland Hunters, this is a collaboration forged in hell and bathed in blood, with little interest in social commentary.

Badland Hunters will start streaming on Netflix on January 26.

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