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Ranking Yeon Sang-ho Films

Yeon Sang-ho is a terrific South Korean genre director who is particularly renowned for his trilogy of zombie movies, but he also made one superhero film and a couple of animated features. He has a uniquely grounded, dark approach to storytelling that may become overwhelming, but he deals with important social themes, making his movies more sophisticated. This is my ranking of his entire filmography so far.

6. Peninsula

Peninsula is this very tiresome sequel to Train to Busan that doesn’t really work. It has its memorable action set pieces and it is a solid diversion for the most part, but the characterization is beyond slight, the storyline is bland and the movie’s tonal inconsistency is its main issue. It doesn’t know what it wants to be, thus rendering the whole viewing experience incoherent.

5. The King of Pigs

Yeon Sang-ho’s The King of Pigs is an animated crime drama that is very difficult to watch due to its excessive, at times even repulsive violence. The animation is excellent and fittingly not overly stylized. The movie’s framing device and flashbacks also worked. I wish it were less violent, but as a debut feature, it mostly worked out for the director.

4. The Fake

Released two years after the above entry, The Fake deals with an important issue of organized religion’s financial exploitation, but it needed a more level-headed and less one-sided approach to telling its story. This movie overall was a bit better than his debut, though I am clearly in the minority in that opinion. The nihilism was overwhelming, but you cannot really criticize the director too much as his passion on this subject is undeniable.

3. Psychokinesis

Psychokinesis is one of the rare Korean superhero movies and the director’s only foray into a genre that isn’t action or drama. For the most part, this experiment worked. The characters are solid, the story is pretty good and some sequences are quite memorable. The action sequences were particularly terrific and kinetic. My issue with it is that it has overwhelming crime elements and whenever it focused on that genre, I lost my interest.

2. Seoul Station

Seoul Station was released in 2016 and it acts as an immediate prequel to Train to Busan. While it’s not as great as that movie, it’s still a pretty visceral, heartbreaking zombie movie. The first half is less interesting, but the second one is much more memorable, especially the powerful ending that was really brutal. The film is also thematically rich and more sophisticated, though the mixing of those elements with the action scenes could have been better handled.

1. Train to Busan

I am not a fan of zombie films. I find most of them annoying and uninspired. But Train to Busan is something altogether different. There are so many reasons why this movie elevates this genre to much greater heights. One is its impressive character development as I cared for each and every main character here. Another reason is is superbly written script with some added thematic and emotional resonance too. Couple those with stupendously executed, kinetic and fun action sequences and you’ve got what is undoubtedly the greatest zombie movie of all time and the best thing that Yeon Sang-ho has made so far.