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Korea · 2020
1h 56m
Director Yeon Sang-ho
Starring Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun, Lee Re, Kwon Hae-hyo
Genre Action, Horror, Thriller
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Four years after a zombie outbreak destroys South Korea, guilt-ridden former marine Jung-seok and his brother-in-law are hired by the mob for a dangerous mission to recover millions of dollars left in the zombie-invested country, forcing Jung-seok to confront his past in this stand-alone follow-up to the acclaimed film Train to Busan.
By the time it reaches its broad, emotionally manipulative finale, it does have some refreshingly optimistic ideas about small, sacrificial gestures making a difference and that choosing emotion over logic while dooming us in other zombie movies is also what makes humanity worth saving in the first place.
Peninsula feels like the work of an artist who misunderstood his past triumph, squandering his talent for the sake of a pandering, halfhearted encore.
Yeon eventually just throws his hands up and surrenders to the cheesy spectacle of it all with a frenzied third act that finds the entire cast in a death race to the border. It’s here — in an amusingly unmoored but ultimately exhausting sequence that looks like someone trying to recreate “Fury Road” on a Nintendo 64 — that Yeon stops being able to afford his own ambition, and the film’s budget suddenly feels like a rubber band stretched over a hula-hoop.
Director Yeon Sang-ho, who staged genuinely tense sequences in the first film, just seems suddenly out of his element here when expected to produce a grander action spectacle.
Relentlessly episodic and missing the taut focus of the first film, Peninsula compensates with overkill, populating the screen with long-stretches of CGI action (Yeon’s background is in animation) including nighttime car chases and oodles of zombie splatter.
Whereas most of the movie takes place in a grubby, blue-tinged murk — a blend of hokey day-for-night lensing and virtual set extensions that’s badly suited for home viewing, but might look frightening in darkened theaters — day breaks just in time for a big, Michael Bay-style climax. The film has clipped along at a reasonably brisk pace until this point, only to downshift into a laughably protracted slow-motion finale, full of gratuitous lens flares and overwrought strings.
Peninsula combines components from I Am Legend, Mad Max, and the Fast & Furious series for a nonsensical joy ride that, while entertaining, lacks the sharpness of its predecessor.
“Peninsula” is basically a digital effects dumbing down of “Train to Busan.”
The A.V. Club by Shannon Miller
While the first Train To Busan was an affecting, character-driven tale of grief and redemption, Peninsula flounders in generic spectacle. Even fans may wonder if there are any bones left to pick on this franchise.
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