Badland Hunters is a new Korean Netflix action/sci-fi flick that promises one thing and delivers another. It’s all pulpy post-apocalyptic shlock though… and reasonably good time, I suppose.

The film is set in a South Korea (or possibly world) ravaged by a mega quake. The survivors struggle for food and water, waiting for a government response that isn’t coming. A group from an undamaged apartment complex shows up promising safety… but (obviously) not all is as it seems.

I’ll just go with the title being a hand-wavey bad translation since it implies something more Mad Maxy than what the film is. Arguably, a landscape of destroyed buildings could be “badlands” and I suppose some of the people are hunters. But this movie spends very little time in the “badlands” and a lot more on a dystopian society run by a (mad) scientist and his guards.

Too much time is focused on one of the characters as she slowly realizes this apartment complex is up to no good. Which is something the movie basically tells us in the first scene. Far too much of the film is about pealing back a non-mystery.

There are action scenes that are reasonably exciting… and many of them take place in the badlands. If the movie had been a lot shorter and/or more focused on the pulpy action instead of the obvious mad science, it’d have been much better for it.

Alas, this is a decent but flawed film that doesn’t call for a rewatch of any kind. Maybe a sequel… but, as is, it’s a lot of wasted time for not enough surprise, thrills, or action.

Score: 74