Seoul Station

This film has been touted as the prequel to Train to Busan. Being a standalone film, however, would not have been successful, because animations, from my understanding, don't do well in Korea.

Anyway, I thought this animated film is excellent. Animation is good, the voice acting is over the top at times and, as the header states, it has a satisfying ending that pulls the movie together. I was invested with Hye-Sun and her boyfriend throughout their struggles to try and survive the night. If you liked Train to Busan, you'll like this.

While others not only boarded but also ride the Train to Busan (title of the live action picture), we also get this animated feature which plays in the same "universe" as the other movie. Having said that, you do get different characters in the starring roles and a movie that does indulge in what would happen if a zombie epidemic hit a city. Relationships between characters and story-lines begin to unfold, as much as some of the human psyche is.

It's a nice little add-on or spin off to Train to Busan, but it's not a must watch to get the other movie or vice versa. It's also very explicit with its violence as is the other movie and we get a lot of action scenes too. It does get a bit cliché here and there (father/daughter story) and has some minor flaws along the way. Even so it is more than entertaining to watch

If I am not wrong, Yeon Sang-Ho's Seoul Station was made earlier than Train to Busan, but it was not released because the studios feared it will be a disaster because animated feature films don't do well in Korea. But of course the massive success of Train to Busan changed all that.

Seoul Station is neither a prequel or sequel to TtB, but it uses the same father-daughter plot device to great effect. How the zombies apocalypse began is never told and the story zooms in on certain groups of people who are trying to survive in the zombie pandemic and the government locking down hard on the people.

ST (my local newspaper) gave it 4.5 and said it is the better of the recent two Korean zombie flicks. IMHO it is not. It doesn't push the envelope of the genre to anywhere new. In all fairness to it, neither did TtB. But what TtB managed to do awesomely right was it suddenly made the genre fun all over again. The energy was infectious and relentless as the motley crew was stuck in a fast train going to God knows what. I just love the amazing ideas the rag-tag team comes up with to move from one zombie-infested train car to the next. Seoul Station, on the other hand, just isn't that fun. The tone is much serious and ominous. Unlike having some good-looking actors we can ogle at in TtB, we get the disenfranchised of Korean society. By that I mean the homeless and the other people at the lowest rung of the social ladder. Yeon is obviously commenting on the Korean society and the narrative is not even subtle. He also explicitly implicates the government in its elitist way of running the country.

I like the bare animation style - the characters are drawn in hard lines and Yeon is adamant in portraying the unlikable characters in unlikable ways. There is no sugar- coating here. But the unlikable qualities give way to more interesting characters. I found myself getting sucked into the story as different pockets of people try to handle or escape their dire situations. Our attention is focused on the father and daughter who are trying to make their different ways towards each other in a city crawling with zombies. I thought the story is just moving towards the inevitable and was totally gobsmacked by a twist I didn't see coming. Even the irony of climatic setting hit me in the guts.

Seoul Station is a good companion piece to Train to Busan, but on its own it feels somewhat smaller in scale and less urgent.

After a homeless person a zombie virus spreads rapidly and a woman must reunite with her boyfriend while her father also searches for her.

From director Yeon Sang-ho, packed with social realism especially around gender, this is an animated prequel to Train to Busan. Seoul Station is refreshingly different from its predecessor. It's avoids stereotypes, has plenty of tension, atmosphere, has all the blood, guts violence you'd expect but also has a solid twist at the end.

Highly recommend.

The movie itself was good with decent plot. But the main character that it follows around was infuriatingly stupid and useless. By far one of the least useful people i have ever seen in a movie. They were put there solely to make drama and get people killed. Their complete inability to shut any door ever was by far the most frustrating thing to watch in any zombie movie i have ever seen. They just lack all basic skills.