Well Go USA’s “Gangnam Zombie” on Blu-ray Hi-Def!
In the Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea, former backup to the national taekwondo team Hyeon-seok works underpaid and unhappily for a smalltime viral video streaming company. His colleague and crush, Min-jeong, is a content editor constantly being hit on by the knavish company owner. Unhappy at their jobs, the two miserably plug away while avoiding the elephants in the room until an infected, flesh-eating man walks into their office rental building, biting and infected the surrounding professionals that turn the place of business into a place of horror and survival. With the doors chained shut and no way to call for help, Hyeon-seok, Min-jeong, their small band of coworkers, and the building’s landlady react antagonistically against the quickly devolving situation that seeks to sink its teeth into them. The upstanding Hyeon-seok does the only thing he knows how, to fight his way out while protecting Min-jeong from a mass army of blood-stained teeth.
In the wake of the popular successful running and rampaging outbreak spread of zombie-madness in “Train to Busan,” the 2016 all-aboard the zombie train thriller not only blazed the rails with a hyper-intense, body-over-body, dog-eat-dog infected film confined to the cramped aisles of linked train cars but it also set the tone for years to come with imitators to rake in the cash of the outbreak breakout success. Though the concept is nothing new, South Korea has adopted the fast-running infected flesh-eater and shaped it with mass affect with newer entries being submitted every year since the release of “Train to Busan.” “Rodeukil” director Soon Sung Lee has helmed one of those new entries with “Gangnam Zombie,” a far more contained zombie burst confined to a mall-like office building set in the heart of the Gangnam district, hence the title. “Gangnam Zombie” is a self-produced production of Soon Sung Lee in association with JNC Media Group and Joy N Cinema with co-producer Choe Gwang-rae.
The aphorism less is more can be applied to many things and many situations, often generally true, much like overthinking a simple problem. For the cast buildup of Soon Sung Lee’s “Gangnam Zombie,” the saying torpedoes any kind of chance connecting with the chaos-engrossed characters. Opening to Cho Kyoung-hoon and his partner’s breaking and entering of a shipping container full of boxes of I-don’t-know-what, objectively were lost to the here and why this crime becomes not only ground zero for the epidemic, Cho Kyoung-hoon’s Wang-I is attacked by a container-hitching infected cat of all things, but also the motivation for their transgressions of thievery. I honestly could not tell you what was being hijacked from the container boxes; to me, the contents appeared to be COVID-19 test kits which would make sense since “Gangnam Zombie” forces the paralleling global epidemic done our visual esophagus with a cat instead of a bat. After dispatching his partner with a bite to the neck, in what is a very vampiric method I might add, Wang-I wanders his dazed self into the city of Seoul, especially the Gangnam district, where he steals red meat from a grocer and stumbles with a self-image conflict into Hyeon-seok and Min-jeong’s office building. Indiscriminately unhappy with their jobs with a mild sense of attraction between them, the characters are played by Ji Il-ju and Park Ji-yeon who can’t really get into the tumultuously thrown together chemistry needed to make their emotionally pulling tug work with viewers. The supposed coupling actors’ scenes feel one-sided with Park Ji-yeon in a defensively scared and uncertain shoes but very much guarded against Ji Il-ju who can wear his heart on his sleeve as he roundhouses zombie extras left and right. Cho Kyoung-hoon feels more enthused in his black-eyed, rabid-smile zombie mode while still able to grasp his humanity with close-quarters hand-to-hand, an enthusiasm not really shared by the others when faced with ground zero apocalypse that doesn’t quiver under one-liners and vapid, vacuous vernacular and vigor. Min Choi, Tu-in Tak, and Yi-joo Jung round out the cast.
“Gangnam Zombie” falls into the cheap-thrills trap of comparing itself the deadly strain of COVID-19 not because of the cat and bat reference above but because the opening title sequence hammers in a quick recap of the epidemic era in massive overload of visuals with the occasional infected person flashing into frame. Though not mentioned once of COVID into the dialogue, a tumbling of slowly progressing confusion settles itself inside the narrative of what director Soon Sung Lee is trying to convey comparing COVID to chaotic cannibalism. The exploit is egregiously akin to Full Moon’s capitalizing indecorous “Corona Zombies.” The two not only share germs but also share essentially the same title and are both more comedic and lighter, shadowing over and taking away any intensity it intended in this more comedy-horror than horror-comedy. Zombie carnage is laid waste to bad continuity editing as we see some of the same zombies looking down one hallway and then in the next scene and in a different hallway there is the same infected head, zombies inexplicably rolling on the floor into frame, zombies sneaking up behind people only to hesitate an attack with more of an intent to scare them when the chased turns around, and the infected are not brainlessly dulled and have the ability, or at least only one of them has the ability, to fight back with blocks and other defensive and offensive moves. “Gangnam Zombie” milks the stouter predecessors with a haphazardly duck taped lesser vessel to slog forward what other South Korean filmmakers have previously perpetuated so well in the subgenre.
On Blu-ray now from Well Go USA Entertainment is “Gangnam Zombie” with an AVC encoded, 1080 hi-def, BD25, presented in a listed widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio that works well in the compressed environment of the office building. Exterior scenes of the city, overall general landscape, suggest a wider aspect ratio, perhaps a 2.35:1 to capture more the of the urban landscape. Speaking of the office building, the well-lit environment provides less complexities on the digital image with the same gray, steel, and translucent facing in most of the scenes. Varying saturations of red diverse the blood shading around the body and face with darker tints often looking like motor oil to match the midnight irises. Details in the digital age rarely see a loss of face with natural skin tones, to the minute details of reflective surfaces, and a properly sterile office space. The only audio track built into the release is a Korean DTS-HD 5.1 master audio that’s balanced appropriately with forefront dialogue and a backseat generic soundtrack mix of heavy metal and crescendo builds. The zombie grunts, groans, and roars tear into the channels, nicely through the backend channels, but with cacophonous irritation at times. There’s decent secondary sound design with the baseball bat being hit across infected faces and the floor, despite revealing its rubbery bounce, and Ji Il-joo kick and punch melodies. Sometimes a hit-or-miss with bonus features on the international releases, this particular Well Go USA release comes bare bones with no special features on the software. The hardware, aka physical features, is also not terribly spectacular with a standard Blu-ray casing with a sketch and paint cover that’s slightly misleading where our protagonist will be when the outbreak breaks. Unlatching the case reveals an advert insert for three Well Go USA distributed films, likely rotational with different features, with a unique fascination disc press art of rope tied radio with outstand hands and fingers appearing to grab the bottom of it. It’s a Blu-ray opening enigma viewers will have watch the feature to understand. Clocking in at 82 minutes, “Gangnam Zombie” is region A locked and is not rated. The bite marks of “Gangnam Zombie” are a familiar pang and now nearly a decade after a formidable Korean zombie subgenre began, we’ve become too desensitized for hackneyed carbon copies.
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