Seoul Station

I came into this with high expectations. Train To Busan was my #2 movie for 2021's Hooptober, and is my favorite scary movie of 2016. I expected more of everything that made Busan excellent: the tight pacing, the tense atmosphere, the well-defined characters, and the excellent direction, only in animated form. I got well-DRAWN characters. And that's it. Seoul Station suffers from a whole basket full of problems that undermine its effectiveness. To start with, almost every character you meet ranges from unlikable to downright loathsome. Whiny, selfish, annoying, incapable, they're all people that, if a zombie apocalypse happened, you'd trip to distract the zombies and aid your escape. You won't care when anybody dies, because it gives you no reason to cheer for anybody ... and for the few that seem cool, it soon takes away a reason to like them. That's a terrible way to spend 95 minutes, Add in that this movie is another in the frustrating pantheon of movies that Have Something To Say About Something, but all they want to say is that [social issue] exists. In the case of Seoul Station, it's that prostitution and homelessness gets marginalized and forgotten. Yup, it sure does, movie. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Maybe there's subtlety lost in the translation from Korean to English subtitles, I don't know. But I do know that it doesn't do anything with the social commentary it wants to make; it just declares a thing is a thing, and then abandons it so it can zombie. If the movie had been set entirely in the homeless community, perhaps they would've been onto something. But no, two of the four main characters are a homeless guy and an ex-prostitute, and it's mentioned in passing. You don't get points for trying, Seoul Station, this isn't the Olympics. The zombies also don't follow rules. And I don't mean like there's some universal set of zombie rules; I mean they can't stay consistent within the movie itself. Zombies are fast but dumb and can't negotiate obstacles ... until the plot needs them to get around obstacles, or even climb. Some people take a long time to become infected, some take minutes, regardless of where the wound is on the body. When villains don't have rules, it turns the stakes into a joke. Why hope when the villains can do anything in any situation? And then there's the overall blandness of this movie. Had I not known this was a "prequel" to Train To Busan, I would've assumed this was one of the many generic zombie movies made when zombies became fashionable again. It has nothing in common with Busan besides the country of origin. It is as basic a zombie movie as you get: people scared by zombies, run, encounter more, run, lather, rinse, repeat. There is nothing special to see here at all, a sin that's compounded by being a "prequel" to Busan. I'm glad that this isn't a Solo: A Star Wars Story kind of prequel that seeks to answer every unasked question, including ones you never asked. But there's also no connection whatsoever. By tying it in spirit to Busan, it adds the weight of comparison to it, and that drowns this movie. Busan was a white-knuckle thrill ride. This is a slow stroll on a Sunday afternoon, and when you put them up against one another, that stroll develops a limp. It is beautifully drawn and directed, I'll give it that. Visually, you'll enjoy it. But in every other way, this movie doesn't do different from a hundred other zombie movies made that year. Unless you're a hardcore animation fan, or a zombie nut, Seoul Station is pure boilerplate. Hooptober 2022 movie #26/31