It took South Korea to rejuvenate the American zombie film with 2016’s Train to Busan. With writer/director Yeon Sang-ho returning for the sequel, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula, lightning strikes twice — albeit at a notably lower voltage.
Necessity gives us a new protagonist in Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won, 2010’s Haunters), a former soldier. After suffering a whopping double tragedy in the prologue, the more reckless Jung-seok joins what certainly seems like a suicide mission to the titular site. There, among hordes of the hungry undead, he and his team are to retrieve an armored truck containing $20 million in the back — and a desecrated corpse in the driver’s seat.
That setup marks a unique and exciting spin on the heist film, but Peninsula is not really about a heist. The crime merely serves as the backing for the first act’s big set piece. The second act delves into a tri-generation family Jung-seok meets and has a guilt-ridden connection to; here, the story bounces between the unconventional family’s unity under immense pressure — some real Omega Man stuff — and Jung-seok’s own brother-in-law unwittingly ushered into a sort of zombie fight club (which is more engaging than the actual, terrible Zombie Fight Club).
Finally, as everything comes to a head, the film palpably sweats an Escape from New York musk — by no means a negative. More action-oriented than its predecessor, the hard-charging Peninsula is what a sequel should be: an extension of the original, rather than a repeat. (World War Z, take note!) In doing so, that means this second round of the Train to Busan franchise doesn’t yank on the heartstrings to deliver a devastating, memorable end, so if you have tissues at the ready, save them for your brow. —Rod Lott