Gangnam Zombie is the latest single-location horror flick about the walking dead. The gravely serious opening sequence, which is a preview of what’s to come for these sudden survivalists, doesn’t quite convey the movie’s overall tone, though. As a whole, zombie apocalypses tend to mean serious business, but here you should expect to see more silliness than unadulterated thrills.
It’s Christmas Eve when an office building in the Gangnam District of Seoul becomes a festering zombie hotspot. Yet before the flesh-eaters even show up, this cast of unlucky characters is fighting to stay alive in a post-Pandemic world. In fact, the trouble begins when two crooks hope to find something valuable inside a shipping container from China. Instead they discover a feline stowaway whose bites turn one of the criminals into patient zero. As things tend to go in these kinds of movies, the infection spreads and chaos ensues.
Gangnam Zombie wouldn’t be the first movie to capitalize on the Pandemic, and it probably won’t be the last either. Director, co-writer, and producer Lee Soo-seong at least spares the audience the pre-installed dystopian aesthetic found in other similar movies, and the overall tone is grave without being bleak. A brief glance at the titular setting would suggest life in this bustling city has resumed some semblance of the ordinary, but there is still no glossing over the occupational uncertainty of these times. From everyone struggling to make ends meet to a woman tolerating sexual harassment for the sake of her career, this movie shows survival in various forms.
The protagonist of Gangnam Zombie, Hyeon-seok (Ji Il-ju), isn’t a typical everyman; this charmer is a former taekwondo champion. Yet his lousy and unfulfilling vlog job makes him more relatable. He and his two coworkers can’t make rent all thanks to their inept boss (Choi Sung-min), whose YouTube channel is flopping. He also can’t seem to keep his pervy hands off of Hyeon-seok’s workmate and love interest Min-jeong (Park Ji-yeon). Add in the office building’s browbeating landlady (Jung Yi-joo) always looking for the rent she’s owed, the characters’ situation is dreary prior to the zombie outbreak. The movie uses humor to keep these realistic moments somewhat light, although the jokes are as awkwardly unfunny as they are random.
The movie never loses sight of its goal: zombies finding their way into a building and creating pandemonium. The task is simple, and the execution is even simpler. The survivors have no time to speculate about the zombies’ origin, so once Hyeon-seok and his peers spot their ferocious visitors, the movie maintains a steady pace and provides adequate action. Of course, most set pieces involve Hyeon-seok beating and kicking the undead into submission, so a feeling of monotony will set in quickly.
Out of all the movie’s shortcomings, the greatest is the zombies themselves. You can look forward to questionable makeup and — most bizarrely — vampire-like teeth. And when in the process of feeding, the zombies don’t always commit to the bit. The bloodless attacks are equally baffling as well. The actors make do and deliver lively performances, especially the original zombie who started this mess. The movie didn’t make every zombie look as convincing as the next, but Jo Kyung-hoon’s infected character stands out as the most embellished and believable.
With Gangnam Zombie coming in under eighty minutes, it is neither tedious nor overlong. After witnessing the unresolved ending, though, you might even say it’s too short. Overall, what we have here is another meager and by-the-numbers zombie movie with little bite. A cool and likable lead with fierce moves and a habit for heroism partly helps set this apart from other recent Korean zombie pics, but even he can’t kick this story into shape.
From Well Go USA Entertainment, Gangnam Zombie bites into Digital & Blu-ray on September 26.
Poster: Well Go USA Entertainment
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