One morning at the Doongwoori Building in Seoul, Chains Bio CEO Dr. Kang Woo-cheol (Kim Jeong-tae) gave an exciting presentation about his company's latest work about collective intelligence. After his talk, Kang was confronted by a disgruntled former employee Dr. Suh Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan). During their heated argument, Suh unexpectedly stuck a syringe into Kang's neck and injected a substance which quickly turned Kang into a zombie.
From there, a zombie epidemic quickly broke out inside the Doongwoori Building which housed a very busy shopping mall. Among those caught in a store were scientists Prof. Kwon Se-Jeong (Gianna Jun) and her ex-husband Prof. Han Kyu-seong (Ko Soo), security guard Choi Hyun-Seok (Ji Chang-wook) and his wheelchair-bound sister Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), and Officer Lee (Lee Joong-ok), a policeman who responded to Suh's bioterrorism threat.
The best-regarded South Korean zombie movie is "Train to Busan" (2016). Directed by Yeon Sang-ho, and written by Park Joo-suk, this had a touching father-daughter story in the heart of the zombie chaos on a train. Four years later, Yeon wrote and directed "Peninsula" (2020), billed as the sequel to "Train to Busan," this time about a soldier tasked to retrieve a truck of money in zombie-infested South Korea. This was a disappointing follow-up for sure.
This year, Yeon is back again, writing and directing yet another zombie film. This new movie features a new type of "tech-based" zombies. These zombies were described in jargon to be exchanging information by way of organic semi-conductors in slime. The way the zombies were acting in synchrony as if being conducted remotely was an interesting concept, and their eerie choreography was well-executed, especially that mesmerizing "ant mill" scene.
It was great to see Gianna Jin, iconic star of "My Sassy Girl" (2001), back on the big screen again after a 10-year hiatus. Koo Kyo-hwan, star of box-office romance hit "Once We Were Us" (2025), made for an intimidating antagonist. Ji Chang-wook showed off both fighting skills as he plowed through the zombie horde with a kitchen knife, as well as his dramatic chops in his scenes with Kim Shin-rok playing his disabled I.T. sister.
There were thought-provoking dilemmas presented to create more conflict -- are the zombies patients or as monsters? is the immune perpetrator the villain or the vaccine? That "imperfect communication is the main source of tragedy" makes for a profound basis for drama. While uniting all the minds in the world sounds like an altruistic goal, putting them under the vision and control of one deranged person is obviously not a good idea. 7/10
