Seoul Station

Even if it is animated, the characterizations and dialogue are pretty good including the facial animation.

The tension builds slowly and spares some time for some exposition but it creates a very effective atmosphere of slowly growing paranoia and fear.

There are enough interesting twists to keep you engaged until the ending and the climax is pretty dark. Like most apocalyptic films it has a final decision that you didn't see coming.

This is the first animated zombie film I have ever seen so I have to rate it the best. Well worth watching.

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.

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.

A few years ago I saw the South Korean animated move The King of Pigs (2011). I was very impressed with this dark, compelling and adult work. The director of that one, Yeon Sang-Ho, has now released a new animated feature, which is a zombie film called Seoul Station. The story focuses on various small pockets of characters as they try to survive the zombie pandemic in different parts of their city. The characters are all disenfranchised members of South Korean society, such as the homeless and members of the sex trade. Therefore, like is so often the way with zombie movies, there is an underlying subtext to this one which looks at these social issues as well as the undead mayhem.

Like The King of Pigs before it, Seoul Station is typified with an animation style that is not afraid to make its characters look like actual South Koreans, which is something that Japanese anime often avoids. It's a factor that adds a nice sense of authenticity to proceedings, with downtown Seoul itself presented in an equally realistic manner. The characterisation is also very strong, with a set of people here who you really root for. This fact means that we are more invested in their plight and so the various suspenseful scenes then have considerably more impact. This really is impressively tense for an animated movie with some moments that are genuinely pulse-pounding. It's also not afraid to pull its punches and has one effective dark unexpected turn in its story which only adds to the horror already witnessed. By the end, you would have to say that it's a pretty nihilistic movie which doesn't provide too many comforting answers. But it's all the better for not being afraid to execute its material this way. All-in-all, this is yet another very impressive animated work from Yeon Sang-Ho and a great example of that very rare beast, the animated horror movie.