Seoul Station: These Undead Are Dead to Me

Without a doubt, Train to Busan was a great horror movie, a great Korean movie, and just a great movie. Nevertheless I was trepidatious about watching its animated prequel Seoul Station which chronicles the day before the action in the live-action film. Sure, the writer-director is the same (Yeon Sang-ho) but "cartoon" movies, like superhero movies, often get on my nerves because the characters tend to be two-dimensional and the portrayal of women is as a rule offensive. Sadly, my grievances were unchallenged by Seoul Station which features a series of cardboard cut-outs who walk around looking like they've got diaper rash, and sweat what appear to be beads of rice or sleeping maggots. Visually, aside from the hordes of undead running around with bloodsplattered shirts, missing eyes, and varicose veins, Seoul Station isn't much to look at. And the storyline in which the primary female character (Shim Eun-kyung) is a prostitute with daddy issues didn't draw me in either.

With neither eye-candy nor a gripping narrative, I started to pick out holes in the plot. Like is there really only one hospital in Seoul? Would the cops really focus their attention on shooting non-infected people before they got to the zombies themselves? Do shattered car windows eventually just turn into empty windows? Are most Korean bathrooms built with windows that can be easily removed by hand without tools? If you break a window and then climb through, can you really walk right in with bare feet without worrying about broken glass? Is the best way to locate a single person in a giant city to go to the top of a high bridge and look around? If you were in a car and there was a struggle for the steering wheel between three people and you were the driver, would you continue to keep your foot on the gas pedal? And finally if separately, are all animators horny, lonely men who have issues with women and so they put the one female character of note in a dress that's so short that her spotless white underwear keeps appearing? Someone get those guys a date and hire someone else for the job next time.