What to watch this weekend: Zombie horror and Mexican animation hit cinemas

Zombies and cavemen are the unlikely protagonists of this week’s two cinema recommendations. Neither film comes from Hollywood: one is a Korean horror production, while the other is a Mexican animated feature backed by Huevocartoon.

Yeon Sang-ho, the director of “Train to Busan,” returns to the zombie world with a story set inside a building more than 30 floors high in central Seoul. A massive outbreak of an unknown infection forces the building into quarantine within minutes, leaving a group of survivors trying to escape.

These are not ordinary slow-moving undead. The infected initially move on all fours, but as the outbreak progresses they rise onto two legs. They can identify survivors and coordinate attacks in groups, giving the threat an almost human intelligence.

Yeon has said he created the creatures not as products of fantasy, but as expressions of collective intelligence altered by an era of accelerated information exchange. “The question I want people to ask when the film ends is, what makes us human?” he said. The film is his third entry into the zombie universe after “Train to Busan” and “Peninsula.” This time, the virus also involves human intervention and seeks to push humanity into another stage of evolution.

The production built sets representing the spaces of a 33-story building, favoring physical construction over computer-generated imagery. The film also marks the return of actress Jun Ji-hyun. Huevocartoon, meanwhile, leaves behind its familiar talking eggs for the prehistoric world. Brothers Gabriel and Rodolfo Riva Palacio tell the story of Gungo, a young caveman who lacks physical strength and apparently has little intelligence. Exiled because of problems involving his father, the tribe’s king, Gungo must learn to hunt and take on responsibilities within his community.

“

The question I want people to ask when the film ends is, what makes us human?