THE 2016 Korean zombie action film Train to Busan was such a thrill-ride that I should have known the sequel would disappoint a little.

While Peninsula is still fun, the difference between the two films is literally night and day.

Peninsula’s key action sequences play out almost wholly at night, perhaps to soften, or disguise, the lesser impact of the hordes of computer-generated zombies.

Train to Busan, on the other hand, occurs in the full light of day as an infection spreading throughout the city finds its way onto a speeding train, forcing passengers to work together in a constantly moving battle for survival.

In the original film, the action, threats and outcomes are clear at all times; in the sequel, it’s sometimes hard to discern all three and there is too much of a video game style to the visuals.

Hopes were high when the film started with the evacuation of survivors from the mainland to a ship. Awesome; we’ve had speeding infected on a train, on a plane in World War Z and now on a boat!

This was what I wanted to see, more of the same.

But the film-makers wanted to broaden their horizons, opening up the story to a new locale with more characters and possibilities to do things a little differently.

Unfortunately, in the process, I think they lost some of the edge and enjoyment of the original.

It’s four years into the zombie outbreak that has ravaged the entire country. Survivors are still being occasionally found and transported to a holding vessel off the coast run by the military. The infection suddenly erupts on the ship and our central character, former marine Jung-seok, is faced with a life-and-death decision involving his family.

A guilt-ridden Jung-seok, with his brother-in-law Chul-min and two other Koreans, are forced into returning to the quarantined peninsula to retrieve an abandoned truck containing bags of cash totalling US$20 million.

They are ambushed and taken prisoner by a rogue militia but Jung-seok escapes and teams up with two tough-as-nails sisters to save their friends, evade the zombies and return to safety.

Peninsula is still a rollercoaster of a film, but the threat diminishes the easier it becomes to mow down legions of zombies with speeding vehicles.