HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 10
2nd of 6 Asian horror films

Although I was pretty discouraged to hear the poor critical reception given to this hotly anticipated (by me at least) sequel to the brilliant Train to Busan, I decided I was probably going to like it quite a bit. Most of the criticism seemed to be about the film not really giving us anything we haven't seen before, but I'm less of a stickler for originality than most, so I still had hopes this would be OK at least.

This really was profoundly disappointing. I can't even quite get my head around how a film by the same director as Train to Busan, which is so smart, so thrilling and so moving, can be so thuddingly lifeless. It is true that there is literally nothing new here as far as zombie movie ideas go, but there's not even any compensation from well-structured action set pieces, an engaging plot or characters with any depth or interest.

I'd say this comes off like a cheap cynical DTV sequel except for the fact that the production looks expensive. I'm not at all sure they pinched any pennies with this one - although there is a dismaying reliance on CGI for - and this is egregious - things like car chases. Car chases! Couldn't they be arsed buying some cars and employing some stunt drivers? We're treated to these long sequences of cars (sometimes driven by a teenage girl, just to be even more ludicrous) driving around the wastelands of Seoul and it looks like we're watching the inserts to a computer game. What could be more boring?

Well, I suppose there's also the CGI zombies in those sequences which look as realistic as the zombies in Hotel Transylvania. And our main protagonist who, as well as having little in the way of personality or motivation (given the film kills off everyone he loves in the first 5 minutes), is grossly miscast. In fact, he looks like a Korean version of Adrien Brody in Predators action hero mode (hint: that's not a good thing).

Don't get me wrong: there's a modicum of entertainment here if you like zombie action films, but I'd argue this makes World War Z look like a masterpiece. Which is interesting, because it was World War Z which was given a bit of a lesson in "how-to-be-a-zombie-action-movie" by Train to Busan in the first place.

Pretty mystifying. Almost as mystifying as to why anyone bothered to make Zombieland: Double Tap (although this gets an extra half a star for not featuring Jessie Eisenberg - for the record, if that Negan baseball bat scene in The Walking Dead had somehow involved Eisenberg instead of Steven Yeun, I would have fucking cheered).