A soulless followup to 2016’s Train to Busan, this sacrifices the first movie’s emotion and depth in favor of over-the-top spectacle and tiresome tropes. There is some good camera work, quality performances, one or two decently drawn characters and a fun arena sequence, but that’s the exhausted list of good points. The writing is mediocre, the villains cartoonish caricatures, there are iterative leaps in logic and loops of ludicrious reason and plausibility, where you watch characters do the same dumb mistakes repeatedly. In addition, there are ludicrously indulgent driving sequences where precocious children mow through a city of zombies with leet drift driving. The annoyance and boredom evoked is impossible to overstate, and it happens multiple times. The zombies themselves are variants of the rage virus with some of World War Z’s swarming, but somehow… dull. There’s nothing exciting, inspiring or remotely original presented in this film, and less to find frightening. It’s mostly humans being horrible, despite a core redemptive arc. Everything is certainly bigger and more bombastic, but empty, joyless and ultimately missing the point and poignancy of the original’s intimate setting and polished script. There was no need for this followup, and there should be no need for further films.
Peninsula (2020)