Seoul Yeok (Seoul Station) (2015)
This animated feature from writer-director Yeon Sang-ho is an interesting prequel/add-on to his live-action breakout hit Train to Busan – it doesn’t reveal any more about the origins of the zombie virus that breaks out in Korea, but it does show the beginnings of the large-scale outbreak and social collapse. Seoul Station is set during the early hours of a viral zombie outbreak, as the rapidly-spreading plague exacerbates social divisions which are already all too apparent.
Near the city’s main railway station – where, of course, the would-be survivors board their train to Busan in the other film – an odd, eccentric tramp (first seen abusing a salaryman as ‘a dictator’) tries to get help for his ‘bro’, a stumbling/bleeding older guy who seems to be zombie patient zero. Well into the crisis, the word going round is that the heavily-armed cops and soldiers pouring into the city are only facing a riot of the homeless. In an all-too-credible foulup, the authorities use firehoses to kettle uninfected people in a cul-de-sac where they are attacked from the other side by growling, bloody-mouthed zombies.
Train to Busan is an ensemble piece on the disaster movie model, but this is a more intimate story. The central character is Hye-sun (voiced by Shim Eun-kung), a runaway who has escaped from prostitution but whose net-addict boyfriend Ki-woon (Lee Joon) is trying to pimp her out again. On the night of the crisis, Hye-sun breaks up with Ki-woon and falls in with the homeless, just as the infection takes hold. Possible rescue intervenes in the form of Daddy (Ryu Seong-ryong), who has been determinedly looking for the girl. The thuggish older guy tracks down Ki-woon, even as the zombie outbreak catches fire, and they team up to fight through the escalating carnage and find the girl … who has her own adventures in a police station, underground tunnels and in crowds of beleaguered civilians.
The anime look is detailed and realistic, with big blobs of sweat on living characters’ expressive faces … but the zombies are more stylised, their loss of identity conveyed through repetition of design and movement. The take-no-prisoners finale, which springs several nasty surprises, is set in a showroom apartment building where no one lives and prices are put on everything. The short story-like anecdote, which might have been a subplot in another film, makes for an unusually focused horror. Train to Busan, like most zombie apocalypses, lets chaos overwhelm its narrative, but this is as strangely bent on telling its tale as Daddy is on getting back his girl.
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