Monday, June 29, 2020

Review: Zombie For Sale

Such fun! Zombie For Sale is a 2019 horror comedy from South Korea directed and written by Lee Min-Jae which encompasses all that is crazy about this genre.

Jjong-Bi (Jung Ga-Ram) escapes from an underground experimentation lab and is basically a zombie, shambling about and chasing people (slowly). He encounters the daughter, Min-Gul (Nam-gil Kim), of the Park family who run a garage and make their living overcharging for repairs to cars which hit spikes on a road which they have placed there.

They lock the zombie in one of their sheds, and he's happy eating cabbages with tomato sauce on. But then the father, Man-Deok (Park In-Hwan), gets bitten, but as a result his hair regrows and he gets younger! Thus all the old folk in the town want to get bitten, and do, and they too regain their youth.

However, of course there's a price, and soon they all resort to zombieism and there's a full scale zombie apocalypse happening. Min-Gul and Jjong-Bi are having a sort of relationship though and he's trying to protect her from the ravening hoards ...

Then Jjong-Bi gets bitten himself by the zombies, and turns fully human again - thus is the solution found. Man-Deok, the original one who was bitten, never turned into a zombie - he went on holiday to Hawaii - but returns and has to bite all the zombies to turn them back human again.

It is a crazy film, but it all works and pulls you along with it. The action is fast and furious, and you tend to forget that it's subtitled. As Zombie entries go, I really enjoyed it. The make-up and effects are nicely done, and there's even a cute homage/mention of Train to Busan in there too ...

Recommended to all connoisseurs of brain-munching horror.

ARROW SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
  • High-Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
  • Original uncompressed Stereo and 5.1 DTS-HD MA options
  • Newly-translated English subtitles
  • Brand new audio commentary with filmmakers and critics Sam Ashurst and Dan Martin
  • Q&A with director Lee Min-jae from a 2019 screening at Asian Pop-Up Cinema in Chicago, moderated by film critic and author Darcy Paquet
  • Eat Together, Kill Together: The Family-in-Peril Comedy - brand new video essay by critic and producer Pierce Conran exploring Korea's unique social satires
  • Making-Of Featurette
  • Behind-the-Scenes footage
  • Original Trailer
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Mike Lee-Graham
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Josh Hurtado


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