Peninsula (2020) Review

“Peninsula” IMAX Poster

Director: Yeon Sang-Ho
Cast: Gang Dong-Won, Lee Jung-Hyun, Lee Re, Kwon Hae-Hyo, Kim Min-Jae, Koo Gyo-Hwan, Kim Do-Yoon, Lee Ye-Won, Kim Kyu-Baek, Moon Woo-Jin
Running Time: 116 min.

By Paul Bramhall

4 years since the breakout zombie hit Train to Busan, director Yeon Sang-ho returns to make it a trilogy with 2020’s Peninsula. Korea’s seen plenty of zombie action in the years in-between, with the genre supplanted to ancient times with Rampant and the TV series Kingdom, given a quirky take with The Odd Family: Zombie On Sale, and most recently in the form of #ALIVE. It’s safe to say that the zombie genre is no longer a fresh one on Korean shores, so the biggest question is can Sang-ho up the ante enough for Peninsula to be as bigger a success as Train to Busan?

As the title suggests, from the initial animated feature Seoul Station, to the confines of a train for its sequel, for the third outing the scope has increased to the whole of the Korean peninsula. We’re introduced to a new set of characters for this round, with Gong Yoo replaced by Gang Dong-won as the main character. Dong-won plays a soldier who we first meet escorting his sister, brother-in-law (Kim Do-yoon, The Wailing), and nephew to one of the ships being used to evacuate the country, now overrun by zombies. While they make it onboard, an infected passenger soon starts wreaking havoc, and only Dong-won and Do-yoon make it to Hong Kong where they’re granted refugee status.

The narrative skips forward 4 years, and the pair don’t have an easy life, having to deal with the prejudices of being considered virus carriers by the locals, and the limitations that being a refugee comes with. When they’re offered a deal by some shady gangsters – enter Korea to locate an abandoned truck loaded with cash, and if they bring it back safely half of it is there’s – it proves too tempting to resist. Returning to a dystopian landscape under the cover of night, the plan is to retrieve the truck and hightail it back to Incheon port to be picked up before sunrise. As expected, things go wrong, thanks largely to the presence of a rogue military outfit that goes by the name of Unit 631. After they capture Do-yoon, Dong-won is resuced by a family who’ve been surviving by themselves in the hope of one day being resuced, and together they make a plan to escape the peninsula, preferably with Do-yoon and the money in tow.

While Train to Busan was a little too on the nose with its critique of those in authority, coming so soon after the Sewol Ferry disaster, Peninsula initially seems to take the same approach, with the way Dong-won and Do-yoon are treated feeling particularly pertinent considering the current COVID-19 pandemic. In the opening we witness a US current affairs show, during which its discussed how North Korea has become the safest place in Korea, teasing the possibility of a narrative which is far more interesting than the one which eventually plays out. That’s not neccessarily a complaint, as the return to Korean shores gives Sang-ho an opportunity to paint a vision of Incheon as a dystopian landscape.  2020 has been a good year for Korean sci-fi, with Time to Hunt also portraying a dystopian vision of the capital, and much like Yoon Sung-hyun’s sophomore feature, to a degree Peninsula feels more like a low key sci-fi than anything else.

In part that’s because of the carry over from Train to Busan. Much like in the previous installment, here the zombies never really feel scary or have that much of a presence.  There’s hundreds of them, but they seem to mostly be there as cannon fodder for vehicles to plough into, or receive a bullet to the head. As per the previous installment, those looking for blood and gore are definitely in the wrong place. Thankfully, unlike Gong Yoo’s dull as dishwater performance in Train to Busan, Dong-won makes for a likeable protagonist. Dong-won has done well to accquaint himself with action roles in recent years, with solid turns in the likes of Master and Illang: The Wolf Brigade, and Peninsula is at its best when he’s prowling the darkened streets, assault rifle cocked against his shoulder.

When he’s offscreen Peninsula suffers. We’re introduced to Unit 631 through Kim Min-jae’s (The Truth Beneath, The Shameless) psychotic sergeant, who inadvertently kidnaps Do-yoon when his group hijack the truck he’s stashed away in the back of. An extended sequence introduces us to their barricaded base, led by an edgy captain played by the effeminate Koo Kyo-hwan (Romance in Seoul, Jane). It’s a scenario we’ve seen plenty of times before, most recently in 2014’s Zombie Fight Club, right down to the presence of, you guessed it, a zombie fight club. The cartoonishly evil bad guys make for a noisy distraction from the slow-burn tension filled scenes that lead up to their introduction, and the whole setup feels overly familiar and derivative of productions which have done it before. With nothing particularly original to add to the setup, the pacing begins to drag and Dong-won’s presence is missed.

The family who Dong-won is rescued by fare better in terms of characterisation, and also serve to provide him with a worthy character arc.  Lee Jung-hyun (The Battleship Island, The Admiral: Roaring Currents) plays the mother to two girls, played by Lee-re (Innocent Witness, Seven Years of Night) and Lee Ye-won (Romang, My Last Love), who live in an old apartment with their grandfather, played by Kwon Hae-hyo (Tazza: One Eyed Jack, Hotel By the River).  While the mentally unstable Hae-hyo spends his days thinking he’s still in the army and talking on an old radio transmitor to imaginery rescuers, Lee-re proves to be quite the driver, more than willing to get behind the wheel and go on a zombie roadkill rampage. Knowing that a satellite phone that was left in the truck is their lifeline out of Korea, Dong-won and Jung-hyun ultimately team up to infilitrate Unit 631’s base to retrieve the vehicle and make a clean break.

There’s a lean post-apocalyptic actioner somewhere under Peninsula’s 115 minute runtime, and in certain scenes you could swear Sang-ho knows it. But the need to imbue his work with social commentary, an objective he’s failed to show any subtely towards since his animated features like The Fake, combined with the commercial inclinaitons of a blockbuster, result in Peninsula feeling somewhat stop-start. At least Train to Busan was limited to the confines of a train, so things could never get too broad. The problem here is the villains so obviously represent the dark side of human nature when left with no sense of law and order, that that they might as well paint it on a placard and wave it around. Dong-won is equally stereotyped as the tormented ex-soldier who hides behind the logic of his decisions, but he plays the kind of stereotype an audience can get behind, and his understated performance doesn’t make it feel as brazen.

Sang-ho’s background in animation particuarly comes to the fore in several vehicular chase sequences, which culminate in a Mad Max: Fury Road-esque finale through the streets of Incheon. Audiences will likely either be able to get behind the aesthetic (particularly fans of his animated work), or be put off by the CGI used to create the scenes. Personally I enjoyed the finale, despite the blatantly frictionless roads and the CGI becoming a little too obvious whenever a vehicle is involved in a crash, Sang-ho and his cast still wring a suitable amount of tension as all parties (and a whole heap of zombies) race to the port.

Being a commercial blockbuster, much like Train to Busan the closing scenes fall back on the melodrama that plagues many a Korean feature, as proceeedings quickly devolve into an extended histrionics filled climax stuffed with more slow motion tear shedding than 100 Hollywood tearjerkers combined. It’s entirely expected, which only makes watching it feel all the more torturous, particularly as its inter-mingled with some wince worthy English dialogue (although nothing compares to the initial US talk show scene, where every sentence has to be pronunced sl-ow-ly and del-ib-er-at-ely). With a more relatable protagonist and a broader scope to work with, Peninsula is arguably more fun than Train to Busan, but only just. 

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6.5/10