Verdict
Summary
The entire film has a slapdash, amateur execution to it, and when it ends after just over 80 minutes, I felt like nothing had really happened. It felt false from the get-go, and so nobody watching it will feel entertained or engaged, certainly not if you’re expecting some kind of satisfying zombie film. This one is a turkey.
Plot:
An office complex in the Gangnam district in South Korea is about to get some zombie action going.
Review:
A cat scratches a guy’s neck, and somehow, this dude ends up being patient zero for the zombie outbreak about to unfold in the Gangnam district in South Korea. He wanders around, bites some people, and in one public display he’s recorded by civilians on the street as he chows down on wet liver. Meanwhile, a couple of misfits renting a space in an upscale office complex are struggling to pay their back rent because their good-for-nothing boss has been trying to make a business out of creating stupid and Jackass-type YouTube content, which makes no sense. Why would anyone rent out a space in an office building to create YouTube content like this? He’s got three employees – one is a cute young woman named Min-jeong (Ji-Yeon Park) who hasn’t been able to avoid the inappropriate physical come on’s from her boss, and her good-hearted protector is a former Tae Kwon Do champ named Hyeon-seok (Il-Joo Ji), who left the farm life for Seoul, but has so far had zero luck in love or in business. The third employee is an overweight dingbat who ends up being the butt of all the pranks the team posts to YouTube, but all of their posts yield less than 5,000 views, which should indicate how ambitious this team is. When the infected vagrant wanders into their office complex, chaos ensues, and pretty soon there’re sprinting zombies infecting everyone they come across, and eventually it’s up to Hyeon to keep his gal Min-jeong safe while the entire complex turns into a mass of infected, sprinting zombies.
The prologue of Gangnam Zombie maps out how Asia is a hotspot for modern-day man-made viruses, showing maps of the globe turning red just like in the board game Pandemic where players have to keep infection rates down to win the game or succumb to global pandemics, but after the first few minutes the movie turns into a silly, inconsequential comedy of sorts as it focuses on a handful of dimwit characters and the mundane microcosm world they live in. The movie tries being cute and almost slapstick, which doesn’t work at all for the situation the movie is trying to convey, and even when the lead hero picks up a baseball bat (that appears to be foam because you can see it bouncing a few times), the ensuing fights and one-against-a-horde encounters don’t look convincing at all. The choreography is sloppy and the kid swinging the bat and all the zombie performers seem unbothered by the chaos or the way in which they’re pushed away. The entire film has a slapdash, amateur execution to it, and when it ends after just over 80 minutes, I felt like nothing had really happened. It felt false from the get-go, and so nobody watching it will feel entertained or engaged, certainly not if you’re expecting some kind of satisfying zombie film. This one is a turkey. Directed by Soo Sung Lee.
Well Go USA’s new Blu-ray and DVD release of Gangnam Zombie comes with some trailers.
