Peninsula (2020)

By 2020, South Korean cinema was riding a wave of international attention that showed no signs of breaking. Four years after Train to Busan became a genuine global phenomenon, turning a simple premise (a zombie outbreak on a high-speed train) into one of the most emotionally charged horror films of the decade, director Yeon Sang-ho returned to the same infected world with Peninsula. The follow-up is not a direct sequel in the traditional sense. It shares no principal characters with the first film, shifting instead to a much wider canvas: the entire Korean Peninsula, now quarantined and abandoned by the outside world four years after the original outbreak. Where the first film was essentially a pressure-cooker survival story in a confined space, Peninsula opens things out into something closer to a post-apocalyptic action epic, with the Korean peninsula itself serving as a vast, desolate wasteland. The tonal shift from the outset signals something quite different from what fans of the original might have been expecting.

Yeon Sang-ho is a director who came up through animation before making the move into live-action features. The animated Seoul Station, a prequel to Train to Busan, arrived in the same year as that film and demonstrated his range across formats. Peninsula was produced by Next Entertainment World alongside RedPeter Films and Contents Panda, the same broad production framework that backed the original, and it runs at a brisk 116 minutes. Leading the cast is Gang Dong-won, one of South Korea's more prominent film actors, playing a former soldier haunted by events from the early days of the outbreak who is drawn back into the peninsula on what amounts to a cash retrieval mission. Alongside him, Lee Jung-hyun, Lee Re, Kwon Hae-hyo and Kim Min-jae round out a cast that, on paper at least, brings considerable experience to the project. South Korean genre cinema has, of course, produced some exceptional work in recent years across thriller, horror and action, from the psychological precision of something like The Handmaiden to the procedural intensity of films rooted in real historical events, and Peninsula arrives with plenty of goodwill banked from that wider tradition.

Train to Busan Peninsula (2020) is a baffling step down from its predecessor. A chaotic, tonally confused mess that trades the emotional depth and tight suspense of Train to Busan for over-the-top action, cringey CGI, and a plot that feels like Mad Max directed by someone who’s never seen Mad Max. Set four years after the original outbreak, it follows a former soldier (Gang Dong-won) returning to a quarantined, zombie-ravaged Korean peninsula on a dangerous mission for cash. It quickly devolves into a bloated, exhausting spectacle with no heart. The car chases are absurd (wasteland drifts, flip stunts, and slow-mo explosions straight out of a video game cutscene) but they’re so drenched in fake-looking CGI that none of it feels real or thrilling. The zombies, once terrifying, are reduced to background noise, barely a threat compared to the human villains: a bizarre cult-like militia that speaks in riddles and wears tribal paint while driving souped-up hatchbacks. Even worse are the drawn-out dramatic scenes that drag on far too long without earning any emotional payoff. The film can’t decide if it wants to be a breakneck action flick or a heartfelt drama, so it tries to be both and fails at both. A soulless, noisy, poorly written disaster. Not scary, not exciting, not moving. Just a total shit show. Stick to Train to Busan and skip this unnecessary, overblown sequel.

For me, that's really the crux of it. Train to Busan worked because it kept things human, kept the stakes personal, and trusted its audience to care about a handful of characters under pressure. Peninsula seems to have looked at that formula and decided the problem was that it wasn't big enough, which is about as backwards a reading as you could manage. I'll admit I sat through the car chase sequences with a kind of weary disbelief, waiting for something to feel real and finding nothing. If you're curious about where Yeon Sang-ho's imagination sits when it's firing on all cylinders, go back to his earlier work. As for Peninsula, well. Some sequels expand a world. This one just inflates it.

Rating: ★½  | Year: 2020  | Watched: 2025-10-27

View on Letterboxd →

Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Peninsula (2020) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS Apple TV Channel · Studiocanal Presents Amazon Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Philo · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from Yeon Sang-ho: Seoul Station (2016) · Train to Busan (2016)
More from South Korea: Memories of Murder (2003) · Lost in Starlight (2025) · The Handmaiden (2016) · Yellow Colt (2014)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)