Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula | Little White Lies

Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula

06 Nov 2020 / Released: 06 Nov 2020

Words by Leslie Byron Pitt

Directed by Yeon Sang-ho

Starring Gang Dong-Won, Lee Jung-hyun, and Re Lee

A person in ragged clothes runs through a muddy, chaotic scene, surrounded by swirling water and debris.
A person in ragged clothes runs through a muddy, chaotic scene, surrounded by swirling water and debris.
4

Anticipation.

Train to Busan was the unexpected zombie smash of 2016.

3

Enjoyment.

Peninsula doesn’t hit as hard but it’s knockaround fun.

3

In Retrospect.

If you don’t expect a Busan re-run, you should find something in this.

Yeon Sang-ho’s sequel-of-sorts to his break­out zom­bie hit fails to deliv­er the gut punch of its predecessor.

Light­ning nev­er strikes twice, and when it comes to mak­ing movies, direc­tors often count them­selves lucky if they have man­aged to bot­tle a cou­ple of bolts. The 2016 film Train to Busan became some­thing of a sleep­er hit when audi­ences around the globe suc­cumbed to its tight plot­ting and breath­less action sequences.

A ram­bunc­tious, volatile genre blow-out, it nails the zom­bie tropes effec­tive­ly coined by George A Romero back with Night of the Liv­ing Dead and sub­con­scious­ly became a crys­tal ball to our cur­rent Try­ing Times. As tired as those words may sound, Train to Busan’s effi­cient skew­ing of class in 2016 is all too telling as the world now faces its own pan­dem­ic in 2020, with the same arche­types we fol­low in the movie becom­ing the real-life vic­tims of COVID-19.

The suc­cess of Train to Busan has allowed the film’s direc­tor, Yeon Sang-ho, to make a sec­ond vis­it to the Busan uni­verse. Yeon wish­es it to be clear that Penin­su­la is not a direct sequel or con­tin­u­a­tion of that sto­ry, although the cloudy-eyed cav­al­cade of sprint­ing undead do make a comeback.

Penin­su­la instead fol­lows Marine Cap­tain Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won), who escaped the zom­bie out­break in Korea while endur­ing some deep heart­break in doing so. Four years lat­er, find­ing refuge in Hong Kong, he is giv­en the chance to return to Korea and earn a fat wedge.

This is Wages of Fear ter­ri­to­ry: a man who bare­ly has refugee sta­tus in his new home has the chance to make seri­ous bank if he embarks on a sui­cide mis­sion. His reluc­tant accep­tance of the deal lands him in a Korea that is now unrecog­nis­able, in which the dan­gers that lie in front of him are not only the roam­ing undead hordes.

Peninsula’s new direc­tion brings with it a glut of pros and cons. Sequels are usu­al­ly about expan­sion. More of the same, but big­ger. And while Yeon’s film may not be a sequel in the tra­di­tion­al sense, he has used this oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand his scope. No longer stuck with­in the con­fines of a train, Penin­su­la has a city to roam in, with Korea now appear­ing as a mish-mash of the dilap­i­dat­ed hellscapes of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York and Sony’s recent immer­sive cin­e­mat­ic” com­put­er game, The Last of Us Part II.

This does make for some enter­tain­ing imagery. Glass stair­cas­es are now tombs of writhing bod­ies. There’s a gold­en-hued are­na for fer­al sur­vivors to watch new par­tic­i­pants of a devi­ous event sim­ply named The Game”. Yeon is also allowed to shoot wider and bring in more char­ac­ters, giv­ing a real feel that the con­flicts seen in the first episode were tru­ly a micro­cosm of the whole nation in turmoil.

How­ev­er, the film’s broad­er set­ting removes much of the inti­ma­cy which made Train to Busan as potent as it was. Penin­su­la mer­ri­ly deliv­ers light­weight yet enter­tain­ing set-pieces, but is bogged down by a stodgy sec­ond act. It fin­ish­es strong­ly, tug­ging on those same heart­strings that the orig­i­nal man­aged to do so well. And the film still shows a glim­mer of inter­est in socio-polit­i­cal aspects. Those who are look­ing for that same gut-punch, how­ev­er, may be disappointed.

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