Peninsula, the 2020 follow-up to the excellent Korean blockbuster Train to Busan, brings to mind Zack Snyder's more recent Netflix effort Army of the Dead, both films revolving around a mission to retrieve a vast sum of money from a city infested by zombies. Peninsula isn't anywhere as good as Train to Busan, but it's still superior to Snyder's bloated mess of a movie.
Set four years after the first film, this sequel sees a team of desperate Korean refugees hired by Hong Kong criminals to recover $20m from a truck abandoned on the quarantined Korean peninsula. When they arrive, they discover that zombies are not the only threat: the city is also home to a rogue military unit who prey on other survivors, pitting their prisoners against the living dead for entertainment.
The majority of Peninsula centres on the human threat, relegating the undead to a supporting role, the film feeling more like a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic movie than a traditional zombie flick. This fact seems to have irked many fans of the first movie, but I quite enjoyed the new approach. However, I do agree with this film's detractors who complain that too much of the film relies on sub-standard CGI action that make parts of the film feel like a computer game: I'm sure a digitally rendered car chase is easier to produce than the real deal, and a CGI zombie horde is cheaper than hiring and making up extras, but it looks terrible and pulls the viewer out of the film.
I also didn't like certain aspects of the final act: is it ever a good idea to lay down your guns when a villain holds someone hostage? And did we really have to have the happy happy joy joy wimp-out ending when the downbeat option would have been much more powerful?
Still, even with the video-game action scenes and the Hollywood happy ending, this kicks Snyder's film to the ground and tears its throat out. 5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.
