Tag Archives: Yeon Sang-ho

Colony

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Vampire Owl: Do you remember the last times vampires established a colony?

Vampire Bat: In the shadow world? That was an outpost to keep an eye on shadow demons.

Vampire Owl: Nobody knew about the existence of creatures of shadows then.

Vampire Bat: The northern witches had foretold the existence of such creatures.

Vampire Owl: I feel that they were the nightcrawlers, the vampire half-breeds.

Vampire Bat: The vampire half-breeds have always lived among us.

Vampire Owl: They are not allowed within the boundaries according to the laws.

Vampire Bat: You can say that we have been a little too tolerant than others.

Vampire Owl: This is exactly what Dr. Frankenstein warned Uncle Dracula about.

Vampire Bat: Dracula does not need Mr. Frankenstein’s pseudo-vampire advice ever.

[Gets a wheat porotta and three cups of Wayanad tea].

What is the movie about? :: Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) warns the police that he would launch a bio-terrorist attack at the Dongwoo-ri Building, then injects himself with the supposed vaccine to the virus which he intends to unleash on the unsuspecting people who are attending a science conference there. Meanwhile, a former professor in the same field, Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) who had just recently lost her job is attending a conference dealing with the same in the targeted building with her former husband Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo) who is determined to help her. Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), a biotechnologist and current wife of Han also hopes that he could help Kwon at a time of need. Meanwhile a security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) is also at the building with his mobility-impaired older sister, Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), when something seems to happen in the building with the CEO who has planned and led the event being injected with something by Seo who infiltrated the building.

So, what happens with the events here as we just keep looking? :: It is seen that one after the other, all the nearby employees of the building and people attending the conference are infected, triggering a strange viral outbreak. Counter-terrorism team which gets the information about the bio-terrorist attack arrives in the building and tries to capture the man who is responsible for the same while expecting backup, but they end up finding only the infected with no clue of the bio-terrorist, with the building is placed under lockdown by the authorities to prevent further spread outside, thus trapping them inside. The infected quickly turns into zombie-like creatures with one bite and seems to have a collective mind having information shared from others who become the same type of infected creature without individual minds. Many civilians become trapped in the building which also hosts a shopping mall with restaurants, cinema halls and different branded stores. During their escape attempt, Gyu-sung dies saving a confused female student who becomes stuck all of a sudden.

And what more is to happen here as the bio-terrorism brings more of the infected to the scene creating further chaos? :: It is revealed that the infected possess a certain amount of advanced swarm intelligence, as they share sensory information between them like ants and would quickly evolve and get better as a group after each failed attack on humans. Using perfumes, anti-freeze and sprinklers to confuse the infected, the small group of survivors led by Kwon, decides to get to the top as instructed by the security, but ends up finding the bio-terrorist on the way, who has other plans for everyone. He is connected to each of the infected, and they all hear what he hears and sees what he sees, making it difficult for them to keep him with them in hope for a vaccine. They would need to blindfold him and none of them could talk when he is around. It is revealed that the man who caused all of these have even bigger plans, with the infection spreading all over the world, and his idea is that it only makes humans better with a shared connection and no selfish individual needs – this would be his idea of perfect humanity. Can he achieve the same or the people inside building, government, scientists or armed forces put an end to this?

The defence of Colony :: This one would forever be called a zombie movie by many people, but instead of having the mindless undead, the infected network that keeps developing has us more interested with the innovation. As the creatures communicate and coordinate tactics, as well as adapt to the human escape plans in real time we have them as smart and strong antagonists in one way or the other. With the outbreak within a sealed high building which has moments within elevator, narrow passages and parking lots has us connecting more, and with tension only increasing as time passes. Jun Ji-hyun leads the way with the performance as she stands strong as a character that we all would admire in her fight against all odds; in a supernatural movie in the dark, she would make a fine scream queen, and once again the final survivor among them all. Koo Kyo-hwan makes a fine menacing antagonist whom we all remember for how well he unleashes himself out of vengeance as much as the evil desire for the weirdest of changes – the cool determination that we see around him is very much memorable.

Positives and negatives :: The movie could have made the situation scarier for sure, as there was always scope for some unparalleled frightening scenes and situation. People transforming into part of a hive like ants have been nothing less than unlimited terror, and we see that during these moments, characters keep making some strange choices too. Despite the idea being so good, there is no further development with the same, and sometimes we feel that there is not enough thought regarding the same. Some more darkness, and people turning into something terrible and scary due to the scale rather than the looks could have also done wonders here. Ji Chang-wook as Choi Hyun-seok also has his moments, but the character could have been provided more to do in the end. Kim Shin-rok as Choi Hyun-hee also had more potential, as the skills were already there to be seen. Most of these characters do not seem to reach their best potential when we look at them. The work as the infected is quite nice, as we see how they go around and deviate from the usual zombie world.

How it finishes :: South Korean movies have been good with zombies, and we remember the same with Train to Busan and Peninsula within the chaos of horror. This one with a deviation in zombie-mode makes it interesting in the same scale, but the divergence keeps it different. We have all appreciated vampire movies with difference as the creatures kept changing in from, and this is the chance for zombies to have different forms – Warm Bodies did that long ago and World War Z had its own voice, but Resident Evil kept it moving in the exact same direction with sequel attacks. This variety and the detailed science fiction model surely works, but the characters and the emotional depth are on the struggle for sure. The predictable horror and a climax which never really elevates the movie can always try to bring it down, but one would feel that whenever there is a low, there is a journey that goes higher, and this one surely manages the whole thing well. Let us answer to the call of the zombies yet again here.

Release date: 28 August 2026
Running time: 122 minutes
Directed by: Yeon Sang-ho
Starring: Jun Ji-hyun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Kim Shin-rok, Shin Hyun-been, Lee Dong-hwi, Park Ji-hwan, Kim Sung-cheol, Lee Re

<<< Click here to go to the previous review.

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@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Peninsula

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Vampire Owl: So, we do have the return of the zombies after a long time.

Vampire Bat: Well, Train to Busan always deserved a sequel.

Vampire Owl: We remember that it was the one movie which took us to Korea.

Vampire Bat: It led to our first Korean films on Movies of the Soul.

Vampire Owl: I remember that there are many other films which followed.

Vampire Bat: That was our entry into South Korean movies.

Vampire Owl: Only to have movies in many other languages follow.

Vampire Bat: South Korea should be among our dream nations too.

Vampire Owl: As far as Asian nations are concerned, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be.

Vampire Bat: Yes, we have visited only Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia in the east so far.

[Gets a marble cake and three cups of mixed tea].

What is the movie about? :: As a zombie outbreak occurs in South Korea, nobody has any clue about how it started, even though a particular bio-facility is suspected, and there is also no idea about how to contain it. There was pandemonium breaking loose in South Korea though, as people were believing in rumours circulating online, and traveling to safe areas further south – in the end, no place was safe, except for, maybe North Korea. As Captain Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won) of South Korean Marine Corps drives his family to safety, he ignores everyone seeking help on the way, suspecting that they could all be infected. But the infection has also spread in the ship, and more and more people are transformed into the zombie-like state. His nephew and sister are among the people who are bitten and lost to the disease. As they are re-routed to Hong Kong, while the world nations try to quarantine South Korea in whichever ways possible.

So, what happens with the events here as we just keep looking? :: South Korean refugees were no longer accepted in other countries, and the quarantine continued for four years, without any break in between. Later in Hong Kong, Jung-seok and his brother-in-law Chul-min (Kim Do-yoon) are recruited by some Chinese gangsters for a mission which includes retrieving a truck containing millions of dollars from South Korea. They would be paid half of the money if they come back with it alive. As they are certain that they won’t be given refugee status, and are going to be discriminated, they decide to take the offer. They go in at night hoping that they can stay undetected from zombies and most of the ships patrolling the peninsula, and for others, they can pay cash. With the help of the gangsters and their influence, they manage to get there and also find the truck, following it up with the murder of the zombie driver. But this mission won’t be that easy as they thought, as there is something else.

The defence of Peninsula :: Train to Busan was a favourite, and as Peninsula maintains the same spirit up to an extent, we can say that there is enough around here too – the focus on action would be the big change around here. The setting of the post-apocalyptic South Korea is also worth seeing with some fine visual quality. The devastated city is a scene to remember at night as well as the day. The film offers a lot of zombie action as expected, and the fighting sequences happen naturally, as it has always happened with Resident Evil and its sequels, even though this is a more believable one in comparison. The zombies remain as good as they were, even though the attention is less on them this time in comparison to the first film. Well, the world has changed, and we are into another environment now. There is enough action, and some emotions to be added here, and things work well. It is an interesting, thrilling ride from the beginning to the end.

The claws of flaw :: Peninsula wouldn’t get the appreciation that Train to Busan had gathered long ago, as there is not that much innovation being added here. It could have been stronger with the continuation of the original tale. We know that there is a lot that can get added to a post-apocalyptic world, much more than what is seen here. With all the vehicular mayhem that goes on in the end, things do get a little confusing with so much of fights between everyone. The graphics goes closer to a video game than the live action movie at times. It was surely built for the big screen, no doubt about that. The inspiration from other similar post-apocalyptic films to create this particular world cannot be ignored either. The possible messages about selfishness and sacrifice are mostly not there to stay, and are often lost. The focus on the story is not that much maintained when providing too many zombies to kill on the road.

Performers of the soul :: The cast here is led by Gang Dong-won, who manages to stay ahead with ease. He has his moments from the beginning stages itself, mostly emotional, even though that changes later. Lee Jung-hyun is the next one to catch our attention, as she plays the strong mother who has had to make some tough decisions, and lives with a purpose for her children. She goes strong with the emotional side, and becomes part of the big action very soon too. Kwon Hae-hyo adds a funny side at the same time too. Kim Do-yoon plays the brother-in-law role in a believable manner. Lee Re gets a lot of action with the vehicular mayhem, and its a glorious drive through the zombies as far as she is concerned. Those scenes could be taken right into a video game at some point. Lee Ye-won plays the young child in an interesting role. Kim Min-jae and Koo Kyo-hwan plays the two major antagonists, and they do the job well enough. Kim Kyu-baek also adds some humour here.

How it finishes :: We have waited for very long to have a sequel to Train to Busan, and here we have it – that film along with The Wailing are the two first Korean movies which I had reviewed, and that was indeed a game changing moment, the next Korean film reviewed being The Divine Fury coming much later. When Peninsula makes sure that the same zombie feeling returns, there is the similar feeling. We get to see the zombies in Korea yet again, and during the time of Corona virus pandemic, we are seeing the viral apocalypse again. It does feel different when we look at it now, after going through the COVID-19 pandemic, and seeing the viral outbreak unfold before our eyes. The movie continues the journey through the world of zombies in a way that keeps us interested, and I would recommend this film for all fans of the first one too. After all, what is better than a group of fully powered zombies in this world of quarantines and lock-downs? Especially when they come with so much of action on the streets. Well, zombies are forever too, just like vampires and werewolves.

Release date: 15th July 2020
Running time: 116 minutes
Directed by: Yeon Sang-ho
Starring: Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun, Lee Re, Kwon Hae-hyo, Kim Min-jae, Koo Kyo-hwan, Kim Do-yoon, Lee Ye-won, Jang So-yeon, Moon Woo-jin, Kim Kyu-baek, Bella Rahim

<— Click here to go to the previous review.

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Train to Busan

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Vampire Owl: I had the feeling that you were never going to write on foreign movies.

Vampire Bat: Yes, that was the earlier intention, but there are so many good titles among them. To add to it, I had written about a foreign short film.

Vampire Owl: So you mean to say that you are breaking the rules.

Vampire Bat: Yes, but only this rule. I will not be writing on a movie which gets a score of 70/100 when it is from last year, or 50/100 if it is new. I will also not write on any movies older than the previous year.

Vampire Owl: It is fair enough. So just more categories at Movies of the Soul?

Vampire Bat: Yes, an expansion was needed. These are the days when there is not much of a place for honest reviews.

Vampire Owl: Yes, I see that people take money from the movie makers and write positive reviews, no matter how bad the movie is.

Vampire Bat: It is where we choose to write on only the movies which are good, thus not writing about at least half of the movies that we watch.

Vampire Owl: Well, we need more reviews then, because most of the movie pages and celebrities are only sharing those reviews for which they have paid for.

Vampire Bat: This is an undead movie. So let us start the new saga with this one, and expand our territory.

[Gets three cups of Wayanad tea with Patanjali Doodh Biscuits].

What is the movie about? :: Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) a fund manager so obsessed with his work that he rarely think about the rest of the things in his life. Due to the same reason, he rarely get any time to spend with his only daughter, Soo-an (Kim Su-an) who wishes to be with her parents. But that wasn’t going to happen as her father and mother and divorced, and she could consider her lucky enough just to have some moments from her father’s busy schedule. Hoping to see her mother again, Soo-an makes the birthday wish to see her who is at Busan, to her father, who really had no clue what to buy his daughter for her birthday. Even though he really wants to keep on working, Seok-woo takes his daughter to the Seoul railway station to board the Korea Train Express. There seems to be something strange going on in the city with ambulances, police and fire fighters rushing, but they ignore the same.

So, what happens next? :: There they come across Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok) and his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong (Jung Yu-mi) who are looking forward to a rather peaceful and undisturbed journey. The journey has two of the strangest passengers, one being a homeless man (Choi Gwi-hwa) who has shut himself inside the lavatory being afraid of something, and there is an injured girl (Shim Eun-kyung) who has run into the train without the ticket checker noticing. While the former had just seen the attack to get scared, the latter had just been bitten by a zombie in the outbreak which had plagued the city causing panic all around. The girl turns into a zombie and spreads the infection beginning with an atttendant, and then on to the passengers. Along with the father, daughter, husband and the pregnant wife, a cheerleader Jin-hee (Ahn So-hee), her lover and baseball player Yong-guk (Choi Woo-shik)are among those who escape by getting them all into one compartment.

And, what is to follow next in the adventure? :: The zombies await the survivors in the very next compartment, but they are not able to get in, as they are not that smart. Sang-hwa is doubtful of Seok-woo as his a corporate man and was hesitant to open the door of the compartment for him and his wife. Seok-woo is not that fond of him either as he is concerned about his daughter more than anything else, and is afraid to do anything that has the slightest possibility of putting her in danger. Then there is the rich and selfish COO Yon-suk (Kim Eui-sung) who just wants to get him safe, even if it means that everyone in the train has to die a painful death. But time keeps running out for them, but hope comes as they are supposed to stop at Daejeon Station, where all passengers are to be quarantined. Seok-woo calls one of his influential colleagues and makes sure that he and his daughter would be able to get through without being quarantined. But you can never be safe as long as there are zombies anywhere, right?

The defence of Train to Busan :: There are not many zombie movies this quick, as this movie goes on as fast as the train itself – there is absolutely no dull moment in this flick which moves forward as if it is a bullet shot right out of a gun, and people used to say that the zombies were slow, or rather the slowest among all of the undead. There are so many thrilling moments here that we get to stop counting – there are so many of the undead, and there are so many occasions when our protagonists need to keep running or even fight back to keep the creatures out. We get to care for so many of characters like never before in a horror movie. All these are so nicely shot, and whatever we see have smartness behind them. There is the corporate evil shown with all brutality here, as we see the man in suit being the most selfish creature, even worse than the zombies. We also see a lot of emotions, and acts which define humanity in one way or the other – there heroes when least expected, and some acts of sacrifice will go very far down deep.

The claws of flaw :: A ninety six percent approved movie from the critics should mean to be something more when you look at it – and there are zombies, which means that you never bring the expectations down. Train to Busan is one of those rare Korean movies which got its release in the multiplex near our place, and we know that it got everyone’s attention by a huge margin. The movie’s biggest predictability is that a lot of people can figure out the two people who are to survive by the end of the movie – it seems like that is meant to make sure that even families are going to like it, even though the horror movie genre rarely make any inroads there. We have also had a lot of zombie movies, and we were looking for something that deviated like no other – there was also the need for an explanation of how zombies came into being; it would help, as it was proven by a franchise like Resident Evil which was rather one-dimensional in its content even though it was three-dimensional on the screen.

How it finishes :: We have had many zombie movies with the outbreak of something resembling a plague, which spread through bite – even if we forget those earlier movies, we have had quite a good number of interesting ones in the last few years, and the biggest money-maker has been the video game inspired franchise which never really seemed to have an end until they released one movie titled the final chapter, Resident Evil. Then there was the most divergent of them all, the one which had a zombie love story which threatened to take away more than just a few Twilight fans – Warm Bodies. Then there is World War Z which might be the most similar to Train to Busan, but we see that this Korean flick here is rather the improved version – a zombie movie which will stay in your minds with not just the action, but with all things combined. Well, the point to be noted is that it is not Hollywood who has come up with this all-rounder zombie flick. Even we had Go Goa Gone.

Release date: 20th July 2016 (Korea); 21st October 2016 (India)
Running time: 118 minutes
Directed by: Yeon Sang-ho
Starring: Gong Yoo, Ma Dong-seok, Jung Yu-mi, Kim Su-an, Kim Eui-sung, Choi Woo-shik, Ahn So-hee, Choi Gwi-hwa, Jung Suk-yong, Ye Soo-jung, Park Myung-sin, Jang Hyuk-jin, Kim Chang-hwan, Shim Eun-kyung

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.