New York Asian Film Festival 2016 Review : Seoul Station

Seoul Station is almost too good a "zombie movie".  On the one hand you have intense situations where you're wondering how the characters are going to make it through and the next you're smacking your head over really "bone-headed" decisions.  Going into the film with a group of friends actually helped as we all had little things we praised and complained about and it was fun to talk about afterwards. Just like any other zombie movie should invoke!

We all wanted the characters to be as smart and as strong as possible because "...if I were in that situation I'd do it like this..." bla bla bla

The problem with characters knowing exactly what to do when surviving a zombie apocalypse however, is that it probably makes for really boring cinema. You need flaws and you need someone who isn't going to make headshots with every single round. No one wants to watch two characters strategically wait it out on a rooftop for 90 minutes with the occasional small talk or in-film bathroom break. Actually... I'd watch that premise just to see if a director could pull it off - "An unlikely friendship developed set against the fall of Hoboken, NJ during a zombie outbreak." 

The main story follows a runway girl getting kicked out of her boyfriend's place when arguing over how to solve their money troubles. *Hint - it's very sleazy* As the chaos breaks out and she's swept up in a literal "run for your life" scenario, her father and boyfriend reluctantly team up to find her while surviving the onslaught of monsters themselves.  Typical zombie movie fluff; if you've seen one you've kind of seen them all. You have near death saves, someone beating someone over the head with a large blunt object, police incompetency, the inevitable military involvement, and finally someone dying trying to be the hero when they really didn't need to be.  This had me literally yelling out "Oh, come on..!"

A surprising thing this movie doesn't have that's become a staple with the dead rising is someone getting disembowled.  If you've come for the gore then you might be disappointed. But as a lover of the genre I can't help but keep coming back and wanting a new take on it. There's a scene where the main character is locked up in a jail cell with 3 other survivors as a pack of zombies are reaching in trying to grab them.  Obviously one of the survivors is bitten and it's only a matter of time before he turns and they have to figure out what to do. Sure this has been done over and over again but you can't help but feel, "Ok... how are they going to get out of this?" Yes, someone is going to get out of this impossible situation somehow and you're going to either love how it worked out or just yell at the screen as a deus ex machina saves the day.  In this movie, it's a little bit of both.

What sets Seoul Station apart is it opens with a really great social commentary about the homeless living amongst us and the zombies they eventually become.  Some of them are crazy and most unfortunately reek of foul odor but they're ALL pushed aside and basically ignored by the mass public.  Having the outbreak start with a homeless man trying to get help for his homeless infected friend really pushes the problem to the viewer. The tension this builds as he's ignored for his social status plays great against the female lead's financial situation and soon we see her join the ranks and settle into sleeping in the subway station.  No one wants to be bothered with these people which makes the monsters really seem to come out of nowhere even though they were there the whole time.  When the flood of bodies come charging out of their underground dwellings (the Seoul subway station) you can't help but feel we all kind of deserved this.

Another surprising thing about this movie is that it's all cell shaded. Yup that's right, an animated Korean zombie movie. Can't say I've ever come across this before! Sang-ho Yeon uses this method once again to some strangely mixed results. The cell shading technology is really improving, especially since his film The King of Pigs, and looks almost hand drawn in some cases.  The problem though is that the animation itself isn't always up to par with the acting. There's a scene later on in the film where two characters touch on their utter despair of just "wanting to go home" and begin crying out loud in front of each other. What was probably(?) supposed to be a pitiful scenario had many people in the audience laughing. The look and movement of the homeless man sobbing just came across too cartoony is this dread filled movie.

What frustrated me about Seoul Station is that you can almost feel like it's steps away from being a good movie instead of just being a fun, late night zombie movie. Characters are pathetically weak at times and only one makes an arc for short-lived heroism.  At the end of the movie the message of financial stability is really shoved in our faces almost asking us, "do you get it?" Despite a great reveal, the film's main antagonist turns in a final scene performance that goes way over the moon in terms of villainy.  Sure, everyone get's what they deserve in the climax but it doesn't feel justifiable enough. As my friend put it "...that ending felt very Korean." 

 

*please note - this was published before the article was actually finished. I beleive I pushed the "SAVE AS DRAFT" button but I got an email the next day saying it was on line.*