Yeon Sang-ho: Zombie films reflect reality

The Train to Busan director, speaks about the film’s sequel, Peninsula, and the parallels between his fictional world to our real one that is ravaged by a pandemic

Bhuvanesh Chandar

(Originally written on 24th November 2020)

From the early 2000s, zombie-apocalypse films and shows have been on a steady rise. We have seen them in various sizes and shapes, and in 2016, filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan took the audience on a wild train ride that received international acclaim. A zombie-virus outbreak inside a superfast train? Of course, it’s a catchy idea, but Sang-ho believes that plenty of other reasons resulted in the film’s global reception. “It dealt with universal elements like family love, human selfishness during a crisis, and so on. Audiences relate to such real themes.”

Four years later, the director is now prepping for the release of the standalone sequel, Peninsula. The very news of a sequel came as a surprise, as the filmmaker had earlier expressed his refusal to make a sequel. Sang-ho attributes the challenging idea behind Peninsula as reason for the reversal of his decision. “When I got the idea for Peninsula, I could see that it was going to be a wholly…………………….

Read the full interview here:

https://www.cinemaexpress.com/stories/interviews/2020/nov/24/yeon-sang-ho-peninsula-train-to-busan-zombie-films-reflect-reality-21452.html