Rampant (2018) Review

“Rampant” Theatrical Poster

Director: Kim Sung-Hoon
Writer: Won Shin-yun
Cast: Hyun-Bin, Jang Dong-Gun, Jo Woo-Jin, Kim Eui-Sung, Jeong Man-Sik, Lee Sun-Bin
Running Time: 129 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Less than 3 years ago Korea spawned one of its most unlikely breakout hits, with the zombie action thriller Train to Busan. While personally I didn’t find the concept of zombies on a train to be executed as entertainingly as it could have been, there’s no doubt that many did, and there’s already been a US remake announced as being in development. Surprisingly, on local soil zombie mania didn’t take hold the way many expected it to, and it wasn’t until the beginning of 2018 that rumbles of another Korean zombie flick began to appear on the net. When I first heard there was going to be a production featuring zombies in a Joseon era setting, I’d hoped that it meant Ryoo Seung-wan’s long gesticulating period zombie movie Yacha had finally secured funding.

Alas my hopes were unfounded, however I figured a Joeson era zombie movie is still a mighty cool concept, regardless of who’s in the director’s chair. It’s one of those ideas that’s more difficult to get wrong than it is to get right – I mean, zombies running around in ancient Korea, why did Seung-wan have such a hard time getting his idea off the ground 10 years ago!? In any case, in 2018 the idea has come to fruition in the form of Rampant, helmed by director Kim Seong-hoon and scripted by Won Shin-yun (director and writer of Memoir of a Murderer). It’s been 2 years since Seong-hoon’s sophomore feature, the entertaining action comedy Confidential Assignment, and Rampant reunites him with leading man Hyun Bin, who’s kept himself busy in-between with starring roles in The Swindlers and The Negotiation.

Sure enough, Rampant hits the ground running with an assured opening. After some arms dealing with the Dutch on a merchant fleet sees one of the Korean ensemble get bitten by a rabid Dutchman (sounds like the name of a pub), the bitten victim soon finds himself back on home soil with an unquenchable appetite for meat. When his wife returns to their abode to find him feasting on their child (note: this sounds much more graphic than it is, which is to say, not at all), it kicks off the beginning of a zombie outbreak in the small port town. Naturally, this should be the part when all hell breaks loose, but as it turns out Rampant has other ideas. Instead, the plot quickly changes its focus to provide the audience with a dose of palace intrigue, as we’re introduced to a paranoid emperor convinced members of the palace are planning an uprising against him.

Paranoid emperors, so sure of the conspiracies being plotted against them, are to palace intrigue what vengeful students seeking to avenge their master’s death are to kung fu movies. We’ve seen it 1000 times before, so it better be done well. The emperor in question is played by Kim Eui-sung (the selfish businessman from Train to Busan), and there is indeed a plot being hatched against him, but it’s by his trusted Minister of War, played by Jang Dong-gun (Seven Years of Night), rather than those he suspects. When the pure hearted son of the emperor (played by Kim Tae-woo in a special appearance) commits suicide in front of his father, in order to spare the lives of his wrongly accused colleagues, it prompts his brother (Hyun Bin) to return to Joseon from Qing to find out exactly what’s going on.

If you’re wondering why a whole paragraph of zombie movie plot description has gone by with no mention of any zombies, then you’re not alone. Seong-hoon’s movie is a strange one, and more than once it feel like the zombies are a distraction rather than the main attraction. The tone veers wildly all over the place, from the horror of the initial scenes, to the heavy handed seriousness within the palace, to the comedic hijinks of Hyun Bin. Indeed, Hyun’s character of the crown prince is more interested in checking out if Korean women are as beautiful as the Chinese, rather than indulging in any royal duties. Together with his bumbling sidekick, played by Jung Man-sik (Asura: City of Madness), it’s Hyun who stumbles across the zombie outbreak, upon arriving at the same port town where it started, only to find it deserted.

What follows the discovery leads into the first zombie attack, in which we learn the undead of Rampant also share some vampire like characteristics. While their appearance may be distinctly zombie like, they also suffer from being exposed to sunlight, meaning they can only come out at night. Admittedly watching Hyun slash through zombie hordes with his oversized sword is a lot of fun (and a zombie death involving him thrusting said sword while one is biting down on its blade is a standout), however the first scene also serves to highlight everything that’s wrong with Rampant’s zombie concept.

First up – they’re just not that scary. A zombie should have you living in mortal fear that one bite could turn you into an undead cannibal like them. However the zombies here seem more likely to run into the edge of a sword than have any real chance of mauling someone.  Their blatant lack of intelligence is another factor, and never get their numbers up to a level where you legitimately feel a sense of danger. In a depressing trend, all of the complaints I had against Train to Busan are likewise applicable here – there’s no imaginative zombie deaths (with the exception of the one mentioned in the previous paragraph), and nothing that could truly be described as horrific ever actually happens. Much like in Train to Busan, here being overwhelmed by a group of rabid zombies has never looked so bloodless.

Speaking of blood, it’s another issue, as almost all of the blood on display is for the most part CGI, and 2005 looking CGI at that. The hacking and slashing has very little impact, when the blood you’re witnessing has so clearly been added in post-production. Any level of realism is further damaged by the fact that, despite Hyun wading through several waves of undead attackers, his white costume has barely a stain on it in comparison to how many he’s killed. If you’re afraid of making a zombie movie too bloody, then maybe it’s time to rethink if you should be making one at all. Rampant needed to take a page out of Japan’s I Am a Hero, but instead it seems to have looked towards the latest palace set K-drama for its inspiration, with the inclusion of the zombies too often feeling like a novelty rather than a threat.

Even within its own bland set of rules, Rampant strays from its own logic. By the time the inevitable happens, which sees Hyun (who’s now accepted his destiny and rekindled his love for Korea) versus Dong-gun (who’s now become a super-zombie human hybrid), most of the audience will be too busy questioning what’s going on rather than paying attention to the lacklustre sword clanging. Indeed it’s never clearly addressed exactly why Dong-gun manages to avoid fully turning into a zombie, and instead opts for looking like he has a hangover from hell paired with anger management issues. However even less convincing is Hyun’s apparent turn-around from the responsibility shunning, skirt chasing Qing dweller, to Joseon loving king of the people, full of compassion and bravery.

It’s fair to say that Rampant has a bizarre undercurrent of not so subtle patriotism running through it, one which feels more like it belongs in a Park Geun-hye era production than something out of 2018. The final scenes make it clear that a love for one’s country is far more important than any zombie outbreak, a tone which stretches to supporting characters death scenes as well. There are a number of minor character deaths which are inappropriately given swathes of melodramatic screen time, despite us not really knowing much about them, or really caring that they’re dead. It’s a zombie movie, characters are supposed to bite the dust, stirring music and emotional final speeches aren’t required every time.

I said at the beginning that a Joseon set zombie movie would be almost impossible to get wrong, so if anything, Rampant proves that nothing is impossible. What should have been an entertaining zombie romp, combining hanboks and horror, has somehow come out as a dull and lifeless (no pun intended) exercise in monotony. When you have hordes of the undead that don’t feel like a threat, you have a movie that’s destined to fail, and that’s the biggest problem here. Just like the zombies are missing a pulse, although it pains me to say it, so is Seong-hoon’s latest.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4/10