All meddling comes biting back

Kingdom (킹덤 Korean, 2013)
Netflix

It seems Man has the penchant for screwing things up most of the time. Look at the story of insecticides. He thought he was smart when he created highly toxic chemicals to kill insects to get a better yield on his produce. He deduced that he would get more returns on his plantation if there were fewer pests to suck on the fruits. Little did he realise that insects were needed to complete pollination. Not only that. He soon realised the following summer had no birds. They were either dying ingesting poisonous insects or had no insects to eat!

Then there was a certain Level 4 Biosafety Laboratory in Wuhan, which claims to delve into combating unknown possible virus epidemics in the future. What it managed to do is just to let out one of its experimental bats infected with lethal and possibly genetically modified viruses to somehow make its way to the Wuhan wet market. And the rest is, as they say, is history for generations after us to tell their kids, "... and children, this is how your ancestors screwed up this world!"

This zombie film is set in medieval Korea during the Joseon period. Legend has it a certain Governor named Ahn Hyeon led an army of 500 soldiers to defeat an invading 30,000 strong Japanese army. Unbeknownst to most Koreans, this victory is attributed to a rare herb known as 'resurrection plant', which resurrected diseased villagers into ferocious zombies. After the battle, they were executed and buried in secret. This miniseries is based on this folklore.

There is much secrecy about the King's health since he was diagnosed with smallpox. The Crown Prince wants to know, but the Queen Consort puts the King under quarantine. The Prince smells a rat. The King has been sick too long. And the absence of any news may indicate that he may be too grimly ill or even dead. In such a situation, he has to take over. No, says the gravidly pregnant Queen, who may soon deliver a legitimate heir to take over the throne. The current Crown Prince is born to the King's concubine.

After being prevented from visiting his father, the Crown Prince heads South in disguise to contact the physician who last treated the King to get a clearer picture of his father. To his utter dismay, he discovers that the physician's hospital had been ravaged by zombies. The gist of the story is how the Prince and his followers defeat the zombies and find out the happenings at the royal courts.

The Queen had instructed the physician to use the 'resurrection plant' to keep the King alive whilst awaiting her child to be born. Fate had it that the plant harboured a particular worm that attacked the brain to turn the patients into zombies.

An exciting show with a picturesque view of the Korean outdoors shows the Korean movie industry's best. It may be a tad bit too graphic for the faint-hearted as the main characters go on a decapitating spree to keep the undead dead. Unlike other zombie shows, here, they seem to be able to run quite rapidly but cannot manoeuvre over obstacles encountered along their paths. Kudos to the make-up artists and the stunt coordinators.

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But why is this happening?

Bird Box (2018)

Normally, I do not fancy post-apocalyptic disaster movies. I guess I got sucked into it with the constant bombardment of advertisements all over the place and the friendly suggestion by Netflix.

It tells of a lady who is in limbo with an unwanted pregnancy. An epidemic of sorts seems to be affecting many towns the world over. People are committing suicide en masse! During her antenatal checkup, with her sister, she realises that it hit her town too.

That cascades scenes of pandemonium, cars plunging into buildings and other car and people walking straight on into speeding trucks. After the horrid display of gore and blood, the remaining survivors try to make sense of the situation, fight remaining zombies who are hellbent on 'recruiting' 'suiciders' (for no apparent reason), staying alive, delivering babies, sacrificing most of them and finding safe space.

From the outset, the viewer can sense the storyline. Even which characters will be killed and the sequence by which they would go is there in plain sight. Predictably, the main female lead would fight the adversity with two children. Still, at the end of the day, we are left wondering what hit them and how did people realise so easily that it is in the seeing open spaces was where people became infected. And just because parrots squawk violently in the presence of impending doom, how can they be the de-facto gauge of danger? And what actually hit them. What is the supernatural force that makes people become zombies and harm themselves? We are left guessing.

I would continue to keep away from zombies.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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Zombies, made in Korea!

Train to Busan (2016)

Nobody in my circle actually finds pleasure in watching zombie movies. Neither do I. I sneaked this one just for the heck of it. And the verdict is - splendid. Just like any disaster movie, instead of having natural disasters, animal attacks or alien invasion to scare the wits out of the audience, here, the offending agents are the fast spreading zombies induced by other infected brain-dead zombies whose purpose in their zombie life is to bite healthy people!

Putting all that senseless screaming and gore aside, which was tastefully done, by the way, there is a semblance of storytelling, development of character and purpose in narration.

A busy executive modern dad, Seok-Woo, a fund manager is having a crisis to handle in office. Despite his tight schedule, he has no choice but to send his daughter, Su-Ann, to his estranged wife in Busan to spend her birthday. The emotional scene of a child yearning for her father's love is nicely expressed. Then there is the paternal grandfather hoping that the younger generation would give marriage the reverence the previous generation did!

Trouble starts when they board the KTX bullet train from Seoul to Busan. An infected girl gets into the train at the last minute to create mayhem. The focus ends up with Seok-Wu, his daughter, a tough guy doting husband with his pregnant wife, a pair of high school kids, a pair of elderly sisters, a self-centered businessman and the train driver.
The suspense is held until the very end with a twister to finish.

The interesting dialogue in the film is when the tough guy with the pregnant wife character tells Seok-Wu, "You as a father work all your life for your daughter to give her everything but you still be the villain!" or something to that effect! It kind of resonated with me.