My Review of "Peninsula"

Peninsula is a zombie movie that came out back in 2020. It's not only a zombie movie, it's supposed to be a movie that comes out of the same world as Train to Busan. I loved that movie so I was overjoyed when I heard there was another zombie movie that was coming out of it's world. Boy was I disheartened when I finally got to see what it was about. This movie doesn't have any of the nuance or subtle touches that the previous movie had. It's an entirely different type of movie, which isn't a bad thing. The problem is it's actually a terrible movie.

The movie starts off with our hero Jung Seok. He's in the military and he's trying to save the family that he has left. This includes his sister, his brother in law and his nephew. As he's racing to get them to safety everyone notices the amount of people asking for his help. Understandably, he's hyper focused and needs to save his family first. Fortunately, the family makes it to the ship okay.

All of a sudden, they realize that there is a contaminated individual and this guy just zombifies everyone in the ship including Jung's sister and nephew. He's able to save his brother in law but he's shaken from the incident.

Years later Jung and his brother in law are living in Hong Kong. They're marginalized citizens because they came from the peninsula of Korea. The whole peninsula has become quarantined. I guess this kind of makes sense with the times because it replicated the 2020 Covid situation. Maybe this is kind of a social commentary but honestly it would be hard for citizens in Hong Kong to distinguish that they were outsiders.

To get out of this horrid situation there are some triad members that make a deal with Jung, his brother in law and a few others. Go back to Korea to pick up a truck full of cash. Half of it is theirs if they can get it back to them in Hong Kong. It's supposed to be an easy grab and go situation. Of course this wouldn't be a movie if it was.

The premise of this movie is interesting and they have some good ideas on paper but the execution of this movie is quite terrible. They draw things out a lot. It's overly dramatic when it doesn't have to be. Then there's the superhero kids added to the mix. This movie is quite absurd and I don't think they intended it to be. They take themselves quite seriously and that's part of the problem when you add such crazy ideas to the mix.

My biggest gripe was the addition of the kids super skills. One would be good enough but there's two kids with super abilities. You didn't need this and it really throws the whole movie off. The second problem is probably the overly dramatic crying and pauses. It's as if this movie forgets its in a zombie world sometimes. This movie sometimes goes into a fast and furious situation as well.

They have over the top action sequences that are so ludicrous that they took me out of the movie. It's heavily reliant on CGI and at times it's really bad CGI as well. This movie sometimes feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be. It tries to add too much into one thing and not let things just be.

Overall, this is one terrible movie that I would not recommend to anyone. I wonder if it would be more watchable if they could trim off maybe a half hour of it. As it is right now it is a snoozefest at times and an eye roll during the other times. This is why I have to give this one a 4 out of 10. Do not watch this!