Summer's zombie fare banks on family feels
Summer movie season calls for crowd-pleasers, and 'My Daughter is a Zombie' pitches something unexpectedly offbeat — a zombie comedy that swaps gore for giggles, turning the undead apocalypse into a heartwarming family romp.
On Monday, director Pil Gam-seong and cast introduced the film at a press conference at Seoul's CGV Yongsan, offering a first look at their family-friendly spin on the zombie genre.
Based on a web comic that ran from 2018 to 2020, the film follows Jung-hwan (Cho Jung-seok), a zoo animal trainer whose teenage daughter Su-ah (Choi Yu-ri) becomes infected during a zombie outbreak. To avoid losing her to the authorities, Jung-hwan flees to his rural hometown, where his K-pop-loving mother Bam-soon (Lee Jung-eun) reigns as the village matriarch.
With his longtime friend Dong-bae (Yoon Kyung-ho) in tow, Jung-hwan attempts the impossible: training his zombie daughter like one of his big cats. Things take a turn when his childhood crush Yeon-hwa (Cho Yeo-jeong) returns as the new schoolteacher, determined to take on the undead.
The cast brings decades of shared history. Cho Jung-seok and Cho Yeo-jeong first met in 2005 performing in the musical "Grease," while Cho Jung-seok and Lee previously teamed up for the 2015 TV drama "Oh My Ghost." Lee and Cho Yeo-jeong, of course, appeared together in Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-winning "Parasite."
For Cho Jung-seok, the film marks another bid to dominate the summer box office. His disaster comedy "Exit" drew 9.4 million admissions in 2019, while last year's "Pilot" — in which he played an out-of-work pilot who masquerades as a woman to get hired — pulled in 4.7 million viewers despite a sluggish post-COVID-19 pandemic theater market.
"Opening in the summer again — honestly, I think I might have some kind of luck with this timing," Jo said. "I'm incredibly grateful. I hope this one goes well too."
The trailer shown at the event revealed a film caught between horror and heart. Su-ah's zombie makeup is genuinely unsettling — sickly veins pulse beneath her skin, her pupils clouded and vacant. She moves like a feral animal, unable to understand human speech. Yet the characters treat this situation with surprising levity, drawing feel-good comedy from the otherwise grotesque premise.
That mix of tones — equal parts macabre and endearing, comedy and genuine emotion — is central to the film's approach.
'We had to move seamlessly between comedy, pathos, and action, sometimes all in the same scene,' said director Pil. 'It was tricky, but I think we pulled it off.'
Cho Jung-seok agreed: 'When I read the script, it was so funny and moving at the same time that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I knew I had to take it on.'
Despite its lighthearted surface, the production took its craft seriously. The team enlisted zombie choreographers from "Kingdom" and "Peninsula" to create a movement style that conveyed a range of tones.
'We asked them to come up with something that felt scary but also lovable, almost like a pet,' said Pil. 'We even borrowed movements from real animals.'
Sixteen-year-old Choi endured hours of special effects makeup each day on set, a transformation that even her co-stars found remarkable.
'I would fall asleep during the process, but when I looked in the mirror afterward, I barely recognized myself,' Choi said. 'It was honestly a shock.'
That same attention to detail extended to the set design. The crew built a full-scale house on the coastal town of Namhae, South Gyeongsang Province, transforming an empty bracken field into the family's storybook hideout.
'When we arrived, the house looked like something out of a fairy tale,' Yoon recalled. 'Just being there, you couldn't help but slip into character. The emotions came naturally.'
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