TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

hearthstoneivan Unofficial animated follow-up to "Train To Busan", Seoul Station focuses more on its characters (that could be an idea more fleshed-out) and their emotions. This time around we have only а few survivors to follow around as Korea crumbles. The animation is a matter of taste, as sometimes objects look semi-3d and I get how that might look unnatural to some people. The aesthetic of Seoul is a great playground for haunting scenarios. Illogical decisions are occasionally made, but this has become kind of a trademark for zombie movies. A great twist caught me by surprise in the and the last 10 minutes were breathtaking. Recommended if you liked Train To Busan or just need a decent horror anime movie.

rdoyle29 An animated prequel to "Train to Busan" from the same writer/director, it follows multiple characters through the beginning of a zombie outbreak in Seoul. It's decent, but it's not the film that "Train to Busan" is. Where that film has a solid, driving plot, this film meanders quite a bit, relying very heavily on characters making repeated dumb decisions. Most of the main characters in this are homeless people, which is the source of some well-meaning, but extremely crude political themes. It really recovers it's momentum in the last act with some interesting twists.

ctowyi If I am not wrong, Yeon Sang-Ho's Seoul Station was made earlier than Train to Busan, but it was not released because the studios feared it will be a disaster because animated feature films don't do well in Korea. But of course the massive success of Train to Busan changed all that. Seoul Station is neither a prequel or sequel to TtB, but it uses the same father-daughter plot device to great effect. How the zombies apocalypse began is never told and the story zooms in on certain groups of people who are trying to survive in the zombie pandemic and the government locking down hard on the people. ST (my local newspaper) gave it 4.5 and said it is the better of the recent two Korean zombie flicks. IMHO it is not. It doesn't push the envelope of the genre to anywhere new. In all fairness to it, neither did TtB. But what TtB managed to do awesomely right was it suddenly made the genre fun all over again. The energy was infectious and relentless as the motley crew was stuck in a fast train going to God knows what. I just love the amazing ideas the rag-tag team comes up with to move from one zombie-infested train car to the next. Seoul Station, on the other hand, just isn't that fun. The tone is much serious and ominous. Unlike having some good-looking actors we can ogle at in TtB, we get the disenfranchised of Korean society. By that I mean the homeless and the other people at the lowest rung of the social ladder. Yeon is obviously commenting on the Korean society and the narrative is not even subtle. He also explicitly implicates the government in its elitist way of running the country. I like the bare animation style - the characters are drawn in hard lines and Yeon is adamant in portraying the unlikable characters in unlikable ways. There is no sugar- coating here. But the unlikable qualities give way to more interesting characters. I found myself getting sucked into the story as different pockets of people try to handle or escape their dire situations. Our attention is focused on the father and daughter who are trying to make their different ways towards each other in a city crawling with zombies. I thought the story is just moving towards the inevitable and was totally gobsmacked by a twist I didn't see coming. Even the irony of climatic setting hit me in the guts. Seoul Station is a good companion piece to Train to Busan, but on its own it feels somewhat smaller in scale and less urgent.

lyx-1 Train to Busan is a hit now, and deservedly so. Although it is a zombie flick, it reaches deeper into the societal issues of corporate greed and class stratification, albeit in a way that is predictable and at times clichéd. Not so with Seoul Station - this animation delivers not only highly poignant commentary about class, poverty, social malaise, the ending is a whammy of a climax that is unexpected yet wraps up the narrative arc neatly without succumbing to familiar tactics.Unlike Train to Busan, it is Seoul itself (and its denizens) that is at the epicenter of the drama. Likewise, the characters are well fleshed out according to their role and societal stature. As a horror thriller, the zombies are up close, omnipresent and quite effective. The characters kept up a good pace, and are resourceful in adapting to the dangers they face with intelligent and believable methods.Like The King of Pigs and The Fake, Seoul Station belongs as much to the poignant social narrative as the zombie horror genre. It is a must-watch, and in my opinion, a superior film to Train to Busan.