AKA: Zombie for Sale
Director: Lee Min-Jae
Cast: Jung Jae-Young, Kim Nam-Gil, Uhm Ji-Won, Lee Soo-Kyung, Jung Ga-Ram, Park In-Hwan, Shin Jung-Keun, Jeon Bae-Su, Oh Eui-Sik, Kim Ki-Cheon, Jo Eun-A
Running Time: 112 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Korea’s infatuation with the zombie genre may have come a few decades later than its western counterparts, but despite its relatively late-in-the-day appearance, that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a popular fixture on both the big and small screens. While there have been zombie movies before in Korea, it was arguably Yeong Sang-ho’s 2016 production Train to Busan that kicked off the current wave. A sequel to his animated feature Seoul Station, Sang-ho’s take on zombie lore can be considered patient zero when it comes to discussions on the subject, and the series was continued in 2020 with Peninsula. In between we’ve had ancient Korean zombies with the likes of Rampant and 2 seasons of the Netflix series Kingdom, zombies in isolation with #Alive, and in 2019 we finally got a zombie comedy in the form of The Odd Family: Zombie On Sale.
The directorial debut of Lee Min-jae, who also wrote the script, TOF:ZOS (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) opens much like any other zombie flick in recent times – a collection of voiceovers from various news broadcasts explain that a pharmaceutical company has been conducting illegal experiments on human subjects in an attempt to find a cure for diabetes, but has had an adverse reaction on a number of patients, turning them into flesh hungry zombies. As the narration continues Continue reading
4 Comments