‘Peninsula': Cannes-Selected ‘Train to Busan' Sequel Disappoints [Review]

I was excited to catch “Peninsula,” writer-director Yeon Sang-ho’s follow-up to “Train to Busan,” his zombies-on-a-bullet-train movie from 2016. In this sequel, lazily retitled “Train to Busan Presents Peninsula” for American audiences, the zombies are back again to wreak havoc on a South Korean family. The end result is disappointing, as returning director Yeon Sang-ho’s sequel lacks the freshness and originality of its predecessor, replacing the exciting set-pieces in favor of bigger-budgeted spectacle.

Set four years after ‘Busan’ in the port city of Incheon, Yeon immediately introduces us to a TV scientist (cue the exposition) telling us that the zombie virus of the previous film has spread North to the Korean peninsula, where the government has lost all control of the quarantine. Focusing on a downtrodden soldier, his sister, her husband, and their young son, Yeon puts our protagonists in the dilemma of having to accept an offer from mercenaries to go to a zombie-infested zone and retrieve 20 million US dollars from an abandoned truck filled with walking dead who turn blind in the dark — or so the mercenaries falsely claim to this family of four.

Of course, since this has been billed as an action movie, things go very wrong, but it’s not just the zombies, it’s also the addition of Unit 361, a group of psychopathic soldiers, led by a suicidal Capt. Seo and his evil sergeant. It is then that Yeon, already losing grasp of his narrative, has his movie turn into a misguided ode to “Mad Max: Fury Road,” mimicking the George Miller-created stunts with his own clash of cars, trucks, and freaks. Too bad most of it, unlike ‘Fury Road,’ is done via cheesy CGI and the most generic-looking action imaginable.

The blending of genres here is insufferable, ditto the over 2-hour runtime, and the foolishly sentimental ending. Yeon also overstuffs his film with an innumerable amount of characters, so much so that the lack of character development hampers down this sequel. I gave up halfway through it, due to lack of caring for anyone involved on-screen. Yeon’s message is quite clear, and lame — we are more dangerous than the zombie itself — but “Peninsula,” one of the biggest disappointments of the year, is so low-IQ that it feels like it was directed by the walking dead themselves. [D+]