South Korean writer/director Sang-ho Yeon made his move from Zombie animation to Live-Action Zombies on this award-winning hit.* And while it’s hard to find a fresh angle among the Living Dead (tropes as over-bred as ‘50s tv Westerns; viewers a beat ahead of twists let alone storylines), Yeon skirts the issue by switching genres halfway thru: Ta-ta Waking Dead/Hello Disaster Pic! Though confidently handled right from the start, there’s not much Yeon can do to refresh the usual masses of ravenous flesh-munching monsters or surprise us when police, military and the government target infected & uninfected alike; or when ‘safe’ havens prove contaminated/unsupportable. Better dramatic opportunities are found by testing family bonds or in seeing how need & skills can be trumped by cash, by social position or by sheer muscle power. But what really brings this to life starts on a long dangerous train journey to a rare uninfected city which sees the film flip from monster pic to disaster movie. Specifically, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE/’72 with two antagonist leads who need each other (Gong Yoo; Ma Dong-seok), not so far from Gene Hackman & Ernest Borgnine; a rising tide of the undead in for rising waters on an upside-down ship; and a series of logistic problems for a motley group of ill-matched strangers to solve together . . . or die. (Alas, no one fat enough for the old Shelley Winters spot. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/poseidon-adventure-1972.html) Yeon does put us thru five or six endings when two could have sufficed. But the last two, along with a music-driven coda, tie things up nicely.
DOUBLE-BILL: *His animated prequel, SEOUL STATION/’16, made first/released shortly after (free on IMDb - TV) never gets past expected Zombie tropes, mainly of interest as comparison.
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