Verdict
Summary
A goofy romantic comedy zombie apocalypse movie, Zombie For Sale comes from South Korea on the heels of the panic inducing Train to Busan, but its inspirations and homages are obvious: It steals or borrows themes and ideas from Land of the Dead (fireworks displays distract the walking dead), Warm Bodies (zombie love is cute), and various others, but it doesn’t have too many fresh ideas of its own.
Plot:
When the illegal human experiments of Korea’s biggest Pharmaceutical company go wrong, one of their “undead” test subjects escapes and ends up in a shabby gas station owned by the Park family – a band of misfits spanning three generations who hustle passers-by to make ends meet.
Review:
A human test subject for an illegal pharmaceutical trial breaks out of confinement and wanders into the country where he ends up sort of waylaid at a gas station, which is the center of town. Being some kind of zombie, he bites an old man on the head, and he’s chased off into the country, but when the old man finds himself rejuvenated and feeling great the next day, his old friends all want to know what his secret medicine is. Turns out that the zombie dude might have some unusual healing properties in his bite, so the old man rounds him up and takes him home to his family, who all struggle and strive at making a living with their broken down gas station in the middle of nowhere. When they band together and force the zombie to bite customers for wads of cash, they turn their zombie medicine into a quick cash cow business. But the zombie is actually a vegetarian: He loves cabbages with ketchup dolloped on top, but as a slave to the family, he ends up biting dozens upon dozens of villagers, with the idea that everyone will feel great afterwards … which turns out to be a horrible mistake. In a few days, the entire town has turned rabid and carnivorous, overrunning the town and all of South Korea in just a few days. The misfit family scrambles to stay alive in the middle of the zombie outbreak they instigated, but a big surprise comes when their patriarch turns out to have been immune to the virus. They have to keep dad and a newborn baby alive as they face an onslaught of insatiably hungry zombies.
A goofy romantic comedy zombie apocalypse movie, Zombie For Sale comes from South Korea on the heels of the panic inducing Train to Busan, but its inspirations and homages are obvious: It steals or borrows themes and ideas from Land of the Dead (fireworks displays distract the walking dead), Warm Bodies (zombie love is cute), and various others, but it doesn’t have too many fresh ideas of its own. It’s overlong at 112 minutes, and veers into parody and farce several times too often, but for a movie set mostly around a gas station, it sure looks nice, with scenic cinematography and a cast that seems committed. It didn’t really tickle my fancy, though, but if you want to try something familiar but with a slightly unusual flavor, it might be a win for you. From director Lee Min-Jae.
Arrow Video recently released Zombie For Sale on Blu-ray, and it includes a new audio commentary by the filmmakers, a Q & A, a video essay, and more.
