Review: ‘Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula’ aims to capture original glory

There are few finales as gut-wrenching and emotionally-pulverizing as Train to Busan. When we’re talking the zombie apocalypse, you don’t often get an ending nearly as remarkable and terribly depressing in one swift blow. It’s like that Walking Dead episode called “Killer Within” — but on steroids with heart-pounding action sequences. Four years (plus) after its release, filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho brings the next installment in his world-building pursuits. Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula (now hitting Shudder) attempts to relive the same emotional unraveling (and sometimes, it really does work quite effectively) and invites the viewer into a wasteland clinging to the high-octane thrills of the original, even if those moments don’t pay off in the same fashion.

Opening during the contagion’s inception, Peninsula follows a young soldier named Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won), who’s trying to do right by his sister and her family and hold up his civic duty to the state and follow protocol. While on a contained vessel bound for Hong Kong, panic breaks out when it’s discovered one of its passengers has turned; mayhem and bloodshed ensue, resulting in an early rug-pulling in the story — becoming clear Sang-ho isn’t messing around. This emotional hard-left is upsetting, yet leaves the viewer captivated on what possible could come next.

Four years later, cemented in strangely inserted talk-show clips, Jung-seok has made a suitable, if not totally satisfactory, life for himself. Beholden to a local gangster and his men, he is soon sent on a mission to return to South Korea, alongside his brother-in-law Chul-min (Kim Do-yoon), to retrieve a truck purported to contain loads of cash. It seems like a silly assignment, considering money is of so little use these days, but therein underscores the desperation the film presents. These survivors, many of whom are simply grasping at a world that no longer exists, must discard their predisposed beliefs and way of life if they have any intention of lasting.

Peninsula‘s high-stakes are certainly nail-biting, as Jung-seok and his comrades come under siege from the dead things and the unseen living who seek to side-track them. Where Train to Busan worked so well because of its tight-knit locations, Peninsula aims to expand the world with distracting CGI elements, zipping from Fast & the Furious chase sequences and a mall setting that’s been renovated into a zombie colosseum. The pieces are all there for an effective, spiritual follow-up, but rehashing many beats of the original, from the singular character with a very flawed moral compass that leads to senseless deaths to the use of children for emotional sappiness, leaves it fading in the shadows. Still, Peninsula is a fun, flesh-eating entry, packing just enough punch to warrant a rewatch.

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