RIFLE RANGE BOY

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 ...

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...

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 expresse...