An older man in a loose tank top and pants, blood leaking from a wound in his neck, shambles into the Seoul Subway Station. He can barely see where he is going and although some people try to help him, they are very repulsed by his stench. He shuffles his way over to a corner of the station where other homeless folks are sprawled out. Many fans of zombie flicks will recognize this as the beginning of many favorites, but very soon it will take some interesting and surprising twists and turns, exploring some very adult themes, even as it scares the heck out of you.

The injured man’s friend (or brother? Maybe just a term of affection?) tries to get the poor guy help, but isn’t very successful. Soon, the man has died, and then come back as a flesh-eating, vicious zombie, biting his way through Seoul and unleashing a zombie horde upon the city.

Caught up in the horror is reluctant prostitute Hye-sun (Sim Eun-kyeong) and her pimpish creep of a boyfriend Ki-woong (Lee Joon) who are having trouble paying their rent, constantly fighting, but (like many Korean dramas) weirdly dependent on each other.  Catching up to them is Suk-kyu (Ryoo Seung-ryong), Hye-sun’s father, who has seen his daughter’s picture on an escort website and come to save her from the life she has fallen into.

Plus, you know, zombies.

Seoul Station is a new animated film by Yeon Sang-ho (The King Of Pigs) and is Chapter 1 in a series of related films Yeon has in store. Chapter 2 will be the live-action Train To Busan, where zombies infest a speeding train as it travels the length of the country.  And, boy howdy, are these zombies scary. They are fast and vicious and hard to outrun.  Their hunger is insatiable, and their eyes are wild and bloodshot, with visible veins pushing against their skin. These zombies, who can climb barricades and chase down prey, are not to be taken lightly.

There are a number of sequences that are really fabulous and intense, one of which is a zombie chase through the subway station that comes early in the film and sets the tone for everything else. The camera moves and slides along with the characters, around corners, down deserted hallways, in a pulse-pounding race that you just know will not end well.

The animation is well-done and realistic, even gritty at times, and the voice acting is natural and emotional; the combination of the two sometimes made me forget I was even watching an animated movie.  The themes this movie explores were amazingly deep and mature: the economy (particularly what people must sometimes do to earn money), the homeless, national pride, government overreach, police action. Lots of heady material for something that is “merely” a horror movie.

But scenes like the one where a group of survivors is stuck between zombies on one side of an alley and police with rifles on the other really made me consider the reality of armed responses to tragedies and disasters. This is a smart, thoughtful horror movie, and I’m really looking forward to seeing more from Yeon Sang-ho. Uncle Mike enthusiastically sez check it out.