Today’s quick review: Musudan. When a patrol of South Korean soldiers is killed in the Demilitarized Zone, Captain Jo Jin-ho (Min-Joon Kim) and Lieutenant Sin Yoo-hwa (Ji-Ah Lee) take a squad of soldiers in to investigate. But when they come across mutilated bodies with wounds no human could inflict, they realize the true nature of their mission: to locate and eliminate an escaped biological weapon.
Musudan is a Korean sci-fi survival thriller about a military cover-up on the border between North and South Korea. Captain Jo leads a squad into the jungle in search of an unknown creature, only to learn that the mission could be a death sentence. Musudan gets off to a promising start. It has a workable premise, the trek through the jungle keeps the tension high, and the hints of a ruthless conspiracy are a good hook for later on.
Unfortunately, Musudan does very little with its setup. The movie avoids the trap of revealing its monster too early, but it never figures out a way to make the threat credible. Nearly all of the tension comes from seeing the soldiers get picked off one by one, so by the time the monster shows up, there is little payoff to be had. The movie is also too coy with its conspiracy, never giving the soldiers a real chance to engage with it.
Musudan goes through the motions well enough, but ultimately there is no reason to watch until the end. The biological weapon at its core is neither thrilling nor memorable, some promising characters are never given their due, and the conspiracy, one of the movie’s stronger points, never coalesces into something tangible. Fans of budget sci-fi may get something out of Musudan, but most viewers can do better elsewhere.
Check out Predator for a much more iconic sci-fi movie about a group of soldiers being stalked by an unseen foe. For a budget horror movie with a similar setup, try Armed Response, The Facility, or Doom: Annihilation. For a more entertaining creature hunt in the jungle, try Anaconda.
[4.7 out of 10 on IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5447140/). I give it a 5.5 for competent scaffolding with a flimsy core.