After really enjoying 'Train to Busan' (2016) I thought what better film to follow up with than the animated prequel that was released the same year. As I sat down to watch 'Seoul Station' (2016) my expectations were quite high. 'Train to Busan' was still very much fresh in my mind and I had really enjoyed the film and so I was excited to step back into that world. Unfortunately, 'Seoul Station' did not live up to my expectations. The film follows Hye-Sun (Shim Eun-kyung) who is wandering the streets of Seoul after arguing with a boyfriend, Ki-woong (Lee Joon) after he tried to pimp her out for cash. Soon after a viral outbreak starts to infect the city, turning hundred of people into violent, flesh-eating monsters. Hye-Sun's father, Suk-gyu (Ryu Seung-ryong), and Ki-woong desperately search the city for her, while she fights to survive the zombie horde.
This film is described as a prequel to 'Train to Busan' and this is correct in the loosest of terms. It takes place before the events of 'Train to Busan', but none of the characters from that film are involved or even hinted at in this film and we learn nothing new about how the zombie outbreak started. It feels more like a side story to the original film rather than a straight-up prequel. In fact, if I didn't know going in that it was a prequel I may have not even realised the two films had anything to do with each other. One thing that is carried over into this film is the comment on the class war and poverty in South Korea. This was done in quite a subtle way in 'Train to Busan', but it is at the very fore of this film. This lends itself to the much darker tone of the film where the humans in the film are almost worse and more dangerous to each other than the zombies are, and at times the film didn't feel like a zombie film at all. This can be seen especially in the last twenty minutes where the film turns into much more of a depressing human drama, and I wasn't a huge fan of it. It felt a little too much and turned the film's tone, which was already dark, super dark. This is not so much a criticism of the film in general as it managed to keep its tone consistently dark throughout the film, but after 'Train to Busan' I didn't necessarily expect it and I think that hindered the film a lot. It also doesn't help that the film is quite slow and feels a lot longer than its ninety-minute runtime. The frenetic action of 'Train to Busan' is replaced for a slower pace and focuses on the dark side of humanity and it just didn't work for me.
What made me struggle to connect with this film the most was the animation itself. I actually quite liked the look and art style of the film overall. The character design and look of Seoul, in general, is pretty good and there were several great visual moments. One, in particular, came towards the end of the film where a very violent act is shown to us through a shadow on the wall. It is a visually pleasing moment but also shows just enough that you know whats going on but where you fill in the horrific blanks yourself. Unfortunately, the majority of the animation in the film was not for me. Despite all the characters looking great their movements did not match up. A lot of the animation looked quite janky and not as fluid as I feel like it needed to be, especially during the moments of action. The biggest problem I had with it was that a lot of the time the characters just looked like old school video game characters in the way they moved. You know in old school games when the characters didn't have mouths and so they just repeated body movements to signify that they are talking, a lot of this film felt like that. It was really distracting and completely took me out of the film several times. This may have been a style choice from the filmmakers but for me, it just didn't work.
'Seoul Station' is a film that I felt quite disappointed by, but I feel like this came more from my expectations than the films overall quality. It doesn't set out to follow the same tone or style of 'Train to Busan' and I praise the filmmakers for that, but it wasn't for me. I also did not like the animation style as it felt janky and off a lot of the time. I don't know if this was a style choice or not, but it didn't work for me. I don't think I will recommend this film, but you should watch 'Train to Busan'. That film is bloody brilliant.