Ticket to ride: Train to Busan trilogy simulwatch

Peninsula

Unlike Train to Busan I hadn't seen this before this thread existed.

For me this film is another disappointment after the brilliance of Train to Busan, it's association to the former being nothing more than a passing remark about Busan apparently not being as safe as people thought it was and it also having the same kind of zombies.

This felt a bit like Mad Max meets the Walking Dead, and I struggled to really get into it because we left behind the realism of the first film (at least in so far as a zombie film can remain realistic), for what was clearly a film that relied on it's action more than it's intelligence. Apparently they also found the Korean Stig 🤣

The whole entire reason they went to the zombie infested place was dumb and sketchy to begin with, $20M isn't such a great sum of money to make it worth even considering for most people. The people hiring for the job were clearly untrustworthy. There was a whole load of small issues along the way like "how are these people feeding themselves?" and "how are they getting electric?".

I think if you can switch your brain off and enjoy this type of film it may be a decent watch for some.

I'd probably give it 5 or 6/10, so to split down the middle, 5.5/10.
 
Hi, guys. I haven't fallen off the train here or anything: I've been watching the films but haven't found the time to post until now. So...

Seoul Station, I'm genuinely a fan of. It greatly surpassed any expectations I might've had of it when I first watched it and, my god, I certainly didn't see that late twist coming, or the shocking violence it led to. I could never forget that now, so objective very much achieved on leaving an impression on the viewer.

It's continually surprising (in a very good way) how different people respond to the same thing very differently. For example, @Lordhippos, you mentioned how one of the things that turned you off was how you didn't like any of the main characters. That's really interesting because, now you mention it, I'm not sure if I really do either, and that would ordinarily be a deal-breaker for me, but apparently not with Seoul Station. I think that, for me, I saw early on that the film was going to be another case study in how extreme situations bring out the best and worst in individual people, and so right off the bat I was able to settle down for that without the particular need for anyone to "root for", if you will, and also safe in the knowledge from watching Train to Busan that events would likely turn everything on its head, and that it would probably do that several times over to challenge my perceptions.

Any animation quirks just flew over my head because I was so engrossed in the film, perhaps much like the occasionally janky The Case of Hana and Alice, which is one of my favourite films of all time.

I also enjoyed Peninsula. It was sold to me as a disappointing sequel, but I admired it for being another extension of this trilogy's study of ethics and the very tangled web that those weave. Perhaps that advance caution helped adjust my expectations, but I try my best anyway to always go in with as few expectations as I can and then invite being pleasantly surprised.

It's again interesting you should mention Mad Max, @Lordhippos, because the same thought occurred to me with only the most passing knowledge of that film. It must've been an influence here.

I totally agree that the film is made very much in the mould of a big dumb Hollywood action-fest. In fact, I was initially worried that our protagonist might never have to reload a gun during the entire runtime! 😅
(Corpse Princess anime, I'm looking at you. 😒)

That fear proved to be unfounded, thankfully, but we still had the ridiculous spectacle of him being thrown through a windscreen and clean out of a speeding vehicle unharmed. Seriously?! 🤣

There were moments where I thought that the established logic of how the zombies function might be sacrificed for the sake of spectacle, but I thought that that held together well also. The double-crossing that followed the eventual delivery of the money was another spectacular moment of brutal violence that I honestly never saw coming. Perhaps I'm just very naive, but that really helped make that scene what it was for me: a chilling example of how something that initially appeared like a disastrous turn of fate for our group actually turned out to be life-saving.

I'll be watching the on-disc extras for all the films that @WMD mentioned and see if there's anything else to maybe add here about those but, otherwise... thanks for coming along on the ride, you guys. It always makes for more interesting viewing as part of an audience. 👍
 
Neil.T said:
The double-crossing that followed the eventual delivery of the money was another spectacular moment of brutal violence that I honestly never saw coming.
Click to expand...

That to me was the most obvious conclusion of them all even before they set out, why share the money with these people when you can kill them all and take all of it? Also zero payment up front no matter what, I think that entire plotline with those guys was designed just to add the double crossing bit in.

It may have been more believable if they'd done it in the same style as something like Inception, get your crew together to retrieve the cache (cash!) and then you don't need to pay people upfront to go risk their necks, then one of them double crosses the rest when they get to the destination. Such things are generally kind of obvious though.
 
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