Netflix film “Badland Hunters”, which was released in last week, is a redundant sequel to acclaimed South Korean film “Concrete Utopia” (2023), which was incidentally one of my best South Korean films of last year. While “Concrete Utopia” is a competent and thought-provoking SF action thriller flick, “Badland Hunters” lacks style and substance compared to its predecessor, and it simply depends on the engaging presence of its lead actor without doing anything else much on the whole.

Right after the prologue part, the movie quickly establishes how things have been hard and difficult for many survivors since a massive earthquake occurred in Seoul around a few years ago as shown in “Concrete Utopia”. Due to the frequent lack of food and fresh water, these two items have become the most valuable assets in their demolished world, and a beefy strong guy named Nam-san (Ma Dong-seok) has been a crucial member of one small community in Seoul for his considerable hunting skills. Along with his younger partner Ji-wan (Lee Jun-young), Nam-san often searches and hunts for any animal meaty enough for them and others, and they surely take a lot of risk when they hunt for a big alligator at one point early in the film (Please don’t ask me how the hell it has inhabited there even though we do not have any wild alligator here in South Korea).

Anyway, everyone likes and respects Nam-san mainly because 1) he sells his meat at fair price to his neighbors and 2) he is the only one who can stand up to a bunch of vicious thugs who have harassed them from time to time. When these thugs, who seem to be auditioning for a South Korean Mad Max film, come again, Nam-san surely show them that he is not the one they should not mess with at any chance, and his neighbors are certainly grateful to him for taking care of their latest trouble.

One of these neighbors is a plucky teenage girl named Eun-ho (Ahn Ji-hye), who has lived with her aging grandmother at their little cozy residence. It does not take much time for us to see that Ji-wan has a crush on Eun-ho, and she also likes him a lot, but then there comes a sudden change. Eun-ho is approached by a bunch of people from the only remaining apartment building in Seoul, and they promise to her that she and her grandmother will live in a much better condition than before. Although he does not like Eun-ho leaving the community, Ji-wan is happy to see her and her grandmother getting such a fortunate opportunity like that, and so is Nam-san.

Of course, Eun-ho gradually senses that there is something not so right about the seemingly generous offer for her and her grandmother. When they are being taken to that precious apartment building along with several other supposedly lucky people, she becomes separated from her grandmother, and she comes to suspect more when she and others eventually arrive at the apartment building, which seems to be not changed that much after what happened in “Concrete Utopia”. Everything looks quite fine and well on the surface, but she and the other young girl in the group are taken to a certain area in the apartment building, and she cannot help but unnerved by the chillingly numb passivity of a bunch of young boys and girls living there.

These young boys and girls are handled by a doctor who turns out to be, yes, your average mad scientist. He has worked on an insane science project mainly motivated by his obsession on his dying daughter, and he is quite determined to succeed by any means necessary while being helped by a group of soldiers willing to do anything in exchange of getting the fruit of the possible success of his diabolical science project first.

After belatedly coming to learn about what will happen to Eun-ho from a rogue soldier who objected to this evil plan from the beginning, Nam-san and Ji-wan quickly go all the way for saving Eun-ho as soon as possible, and the movie naturally serves us a series of gritty physical action scenes as expected. There is an extended action sequence where Nam-san and Ji-wan clash against many thugs, and that is just the prelude to what will be unfolded on the screen once Nam-san and Ji-want finally arrive at the apartment building. Many of their opponents are incidentally pretty much like your typical zombies thanks to that evil doctor’s ongoing science project, and we surely get lots of bloody violence as our heroes busily shoot, punch, and hack on the screen.

Around that narrative point, I felt rather distant to whatever was going on the screen, but I was again impressed by the enduring star quality of Ma Dong-seok, who recently appeared as Dong Lee in Chloé Zhao’s recent Marvel Cinematic Universe film in “Eternals” (2021). Like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jason Statham, he has natural charisma which can always hold our attention even though he has played basically same characters again and again for years, and the movie always works whenever he goes for more action along the story. In contrast, several main other cast members including Lee Jun-young, Roh Jeong-eui, and Ahn Ji-hye are simply demanded to fill their functional supporting roles, and Lee Hee-joon is unfortunately tasked with an unenviable job of overacting from the beginning to the end.

In conclusion, “Badland Hunters” is not that boring mainly thanks to its lead actor’s good efforts, but it is still one or two steps behind “Concrete Utopia” in terms of storytelling and characterization. Because I gave “Concrete Utopia” three stars, it is fair to give “Badland Hunters” two and half stars, but I will not stop you at all if you happen to have nothing else to watch on Netflix.