Why so much hype?

The first must-see film of the year.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The beginning and middle of this movie were decent. Not perfect by any means though.The zombies were a bit strange to me. They seemed robotic. Meandering around and then suddenly swiveling their heads to lock onto people that they just happen to know are there. Also, the lunging onto people and then the other zombies completely ignoring the freshly downed human flesh didn't seem realistic to me. Is there a one zombie per person rule I should know about? The worst part of the movie though, and least believable part, was the dude pretending to be the father the entire movie and then being revealed as some person trying to collect a debt. Are you serious? The fucking zombie apocalypse breaks out and you are that determined to wade through a city of the undead and punch policemen to find a girl that owes you money? Hahaha.Overall, I find that last part of the movie to not only detract from the quality of the movie but also add some comedy that wasn't there before the reveal.Watch Train To Busan if you want a really well done foreign zombie flick and leave this one for the bottom of the barrel.

'Seoul Station' is decidedly different from its predecessor 'Train to Busan' which stuck to its action roots with a tender tinge of family sentiment. Directed by Yeon Sang-ho, the animated prequel to the popular South Korean zombie flick adds a fair bit of social commentary to its proceedings. A sick, homeless man makes his way to Seoul station and eventually leads to wide-spread contagion across the entire city.The film juggles between being a zombie actioner and social satire while not lending equal prominence to either. The set-pieces are way bleaker and less explosively choreographed than you'd expect, given this is an animated film (the budget is obviously a lot lower). The cel-shaded animation style is stylish eye-candy per se, although it does look vapid at times. The lead characters are not exactly the ones we'd call 'likable' but the screenplay does provide ample moments for the viewer to empathize (especially the homeless character who accompanies Hye Sun).There are a couple of tension-raiser scenes worked to good effect by the writer/director. The climax I felt could've been enacted better; the twist really lacked the 'wow' factor. The voice-overs tend to get slightly irritating when the characters take time out to weep over their appalling fates (I'm sure others would've felt so too!). And oh, there's no deep-rooted connection between the events of this film and 'Train to Busan' in case you were anticipating. This is a stand- alone flick with a denouement of its own.Verdict: Nowhere as solid as 'Train to Busan' in terms of storytelling, although there are certain other things worth appreciating!

If I am not wrong, Yeon Sang-Ho's Seoul Station was made earlier than Train to Busan, but it was not released because the studios feared it will be a disaster because animated feature films don't do well in Korea. But of course the massive success of Train to Busan changed all that. Seoul Station is neither a prequel or sequel to TtB, but it uses the same father-daughter plot device to great effect. How the zombies apocalypse began is never told and the story zooms in on certain groups of people who are trying to survive in the zombie pandemic and the government locking down hard on the people. ST (my local newspaper) gave it 4.5 and said it is the better of the recent two Korean zombie flicks. IMHO it is not. It doesn't push the envelope of the genre to anywhere new. In all fairness to it, neither did TtB. But what TtB managed to do awesomely right was it suddenly made the genre fun all over again. The energy was infectious and relentless as the motley crew was stuck in a fast train going to God knows what. I just love the amazing ideas the rag-tag team comes up with to move from one zombie-infested train car to the next. Seoul Station, on the other hand, just isn't that fun. The tone is much serious and ominous. Unlike having some good-looking actors we can ogle at in TtB, we get the disenfranchised of Korean society. By that I mean the homeless and the other people at the lowest rung of the social ladder. Yeon is obviously commenting on the Korean society and the narrative is not even subtle. He also explicitly implicates the government in its elitist way of running the country. I like the bare animation style - the characters are drawn in hard lines and Yeon is adamant in portraying the unlikable characters in unlikable ways. There is no sugar- coating here. But the unlikable qualities give way to more interesting characters. I found myself getting sucked into the story as different pockets of people try to handle or escape their dire situations. Our attention is focused on the father and daughter who are trying to make their different ways towards each other in a city crawling with zombies. I thought the story is just moving towards the inevitable and was totally gobsmacked by a twist I didn't see coming. Even the irony of climatic setting hit me in the guts. Seoul Station is a good companion piece to Train to Busan, but on its own it feels somewhat smaller in scale and less urgent.

Train to Busan is a hit now, and deservedly so. Although it is a zombie flick, it reaches deeper into the societal issues of corporate greed and class stratification, albeit in a way that is predictable and at times clichéd. Not so with Seoul Station - this animation delivers not only highly poignant commentary about class, poverty, social malaise, the ending is a whammy of a climax that is unexpected yet wraps up the narrative arc neatly without succumbing to familiar tactics.Unlike Train to Busan, it is Seoul itself (and its denizens) that is at the epicenter of the drama. Likewise, the characters are well fleshed out according to their role and societal stature. As a horror thriller, the zombies are up close, omnipresent and quite effective. The characters kept up a good pace, and are resourceful in adapting to the dangers they face with intelligent and believable methods.Like The King of Pigs and The Fake, Seoul Station belongs as much to the poignant social narrative as the zombie horror genre. It is a must-watch, and in my opinion, a superior film to Train to Busan.