"Train to Busan 2" tells the follow-up to the zombie incident in the first "Train to Busan", a story that happened four years later. Four years ago, Han Zhengxi and his brother-in-law, who escaped from the zombie disaster, were assigned a mission by a Hong Kong rich man. In order to survive in the outside world, Jung-seok once again returned to the Korean peninsula, which was completely isolated from the outside world. The task of Zhengxi and others is to secure the designated truck within a limited time and escape the peninsula that has been in ruins. Compared with the first one, the story of the second one takes place four years later. After the last zombie incident, the virus could not be suppressed in time, so that the virus continued to spread in South Korea. At this time, the zombie virus has completely broken out, and it has spread to the entire peninsula. In this case, a lot of torture of human nature happened again. At this time, Junshuo returned to the Korean Peninsula, and Minzhen was the leader of the survivors. They would unite to escape the peninsula controlled by the zombies and 631 troops.
When watching the movie, I only felt the feeling of a European and American routine doomsday zombie movie. Compared with the shock that the first part brought us to the in-depth research on human nature, the second part is relatively weakened a lot.
Due to the dilapidation of the city and the abandonment of the government, Unit 631, which remained on the Korean mainland, became demons. They use the remaining resources and weapons of the city to become the overlord of the city. They called the people they found "wild dogs" and sent them to the arena to fight zombies but only gave them a little food. In this place without legal constraints, human nature will indulge itself without limit because there is no limit. This unit has become in some ways more dangerous than zombies.
But the biggest failure of "Train to Busan 2" is the change in the theme of the story. "Train to Busan" mainly reflects the brilliance of human nature through the use of various details between small characters in the confrontation between humans and zombies. But in "Train to Busan 2", zombies seem to be just an introduction, using zombies to trigger the most primitive intrigue between people. If the title of this film were changed and the zombies in the background were removed, it would be more like a road movie or a gangster movie. If "Train to Busan" is the best film in South Korea and even Asia to study human nature, and it has created a new perspective of zombie movies in the world, then "Train to Busan 2" can only be used as a commercial film. The last word-of-mouth film was at the box office. Not only are the two rarely related, even "Train to Busan 2" is just an extension of some settings in one. It can be said that "Train to Busan 2" is just a derivative adventure story under the IP of "Train to Busan".
It is precisely because of the nature of the film that it is mainly a Hollywood-style commercial filming method, so in the film, while simplifying the characters and stories, the director focuses on the action scenes and the presentation of the zombie apocalypse world. The zombie scenes in "Train to Busan 2" are more grand and terrifying, and the action scenes are denser. The zombies that have appeared in "Train to Busan" are more sensitive to sound and light, and their reaction speed is also more agile. The director's love for "Mad Max" has also been transferred to the film. Although the use of many intense racing scenes and the use of details of lighting reflects the maturity of shooting techniques and ideas, it is still out of standard compared with the previous work. From the intimate exploration of human nature in a small space to the survival game of escape, because the scenes are too grand, even the shaping of some characters is out of standard. Maybe these problems are the reason for the collapse of "Train to Busan 2" in word of mouth. But objectively speaking, it would be better to abandon "Train to Busan" and simply look at this film as a European and American zombie film.
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