Seoul Station (2016)

This is a new one on me. I don’t believe that I’ve ever reviewed or ever even seen an animated zombie movie. At least one that tells a traditional outbreak story anyway, which seems weird since you could animate such a thing much easier, at least budgetarily, than you could trying to shoot it live action. This is also a prequel to Train to Busan, which I loved and was one of my favorite movies of the year.

The story follows a couple different characters as they search for each other during the initial stages of the zombie outbreak. We have Hye-sun who lives with her boyfriend that has been pimping her out to pay the rent! She finds him listing her on the internet and freaks out, so he kicks her out of their hotel room. Homeless she wanders into the train station just as the zombies start running around. The boyfriend is visited by her father, who saw the ad and came looking for his daughter. Together the two of them fight their way thru the zombies in an effort to find her. Eventually they all meet up and a big twist is revealed. If you have seen Train to Busan, you have an idea how well the city of Seoul does with the zombie outbreak.

I’m not sure how I want to review this one. Normally I’d talk about the cast and how well they did in their roles. But here we just have voice actors and the movie is in Korean so there is that barrier. I can say that the plot is fairly well paced, and we get the sort of set pieces you would expect in a zombie flick. There are close calls and lots of chase scenes. There is even a bit in a police station where they lock themselves in ala. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Though this movie plays it straight and not for laughs. Mostly I found the movie to be pretty entertaining. Though the big twist at the end didn’t work for me. Not sure if it was because it came out of left field or if because such a twisted thing doesn’t play well animated but regardless I wasn’t a fan. Again, other than the ending I thought it was overall not bad.

The animation is fairly solid. I thought the zombie attacks were well staged and while they could have been bloodier it still looked decent. There are some limbs off and a lot of throats torn out on screen. Plus, plenty of blood sprays. Though we don’t get any good gut munching which bummed me out. I also noticed that there are scenes with lots of characters where they repeat the same figure more than once. Not only that but they don’t move. Not sure if that was to keep costs down or to save time animating the movie, but it bugged me. Additionally, they do a mediocre job of showing Hye-sun running. It just looks awkward, which is odd since the other characters look fine.

Seoul Station is a decent movie, but I wouldn’t spend any money on it. Additionally, there is zero reason to watch it more than once. I found it on Shudder and thought ‘what the hell’. I really just watched it because I love Train to Busan so much that anything from the same filmmaker I wanted to check out. If you find it on the cheap or for free like I did it is worth a look.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer