Train to Busan is one of the most enjoyable movies that have seen come out of South Korea the last few years, and one of the best zombie movies ever. The story is so simple and so straightforward and tight, the pacing is just excellent, the action and the horror works well together with the more emotional scenes. It just seems to be able to strike a good balance.

The story in Train to Busan has a good heart with the father-daughter thing at its core. You really do care about those characters while also just being amazing action-horror with a really simple yet effective story that is incredibly fun to watch. And it is really re-watchable.

It was always going to be hard topping that movie and I knew the sequel would never truly manage to live up to it. But I was very hopeful and when I went to the cinemas to see it I was just hoping to have a really fun time.

Peninsula is not Train to Busan in any sense. It does not even come close. It has none of the charms of the first movie and it just feels like it's trying too hard to seem bigger and better, when the simplicity of Train to Busan and the whole movie just taking place in a very limited space was what really made the movie work and gave it that charm and this urge to survive that was really earnest and intense. Peninsula just wanted to much, with the action and the CGI but it totally lacked the story for me. As well as the characters.

The story, what is supposed to be the driving force of the movie and the thing that hook us (and not just people shooting zombies), just wasn't strong enough. Or really that good. It almost didn't feel like it was about anything as we follow so many characters that don't get a chance to shine in an over bloated story as they get limited screen time due to everything else that's also happening, or get that much depth so we actually care about them.

And sure, the movie tries super hard to queue up those emotional scenes that it had and did well in the first movie. But the problem is that none of it really feels earned because we have not spent enough time with a lot of these characters and therefor it just all falls flat. It feels like the movie is telling me to feel sad, while not actually putting in the work of making me sad.

There were some actions scenes that I really thought were cool and fun to watch. But after a while they just feel a bit too much or just the same. It is just people driving cars fast at zombies or shooting them with guns. And my issue with that sort of action might just be that I really do not like guns and I find it really boring to watch people just relentlessly shooting people (or undead people) with them.

People trying to kill each other with swords, magic, or some sort of superpowers? yes, can watch that again and again. But something about people shooting each other like they did here in Peninsula gives me no thrill. I just feel bored.

Train to Busan really made it all about survival and people just being desperate to survive and using whatever they could on that train to do so. This one does not manage that at all. Possibly because the scope of it all was too big. The action to felt so empty. And I know that there is only so much you can do with zombies, but Train to Busan showed us how it could be done. I have seen other movies were people really make that work, while also telling human stories along the way, while Peninsula was just a big blockbuster action-horror and nothing else. It was just made to make money.