MOVIE REVIEW – South Korea has been on a roll in the past few years, with such hits as I Saw The Devil, The Good The Bad The Weird, and The Man from Nowhere. Now a South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho after many animated features, decides to take a crack at the zombie genre.

While the zombie-genre had mostly success in the US and a few European attempts such as the REC series, we never really saw any epic efforts from Asia. This trend has now changed with Train to Busan, the first live action high budget movie from Yeon Sang-ho, and was an instant success in South Korea. Hollywood has already bought the rights for a remake (although how that will work is a mystery to me), and the movie has become a hit also in foreign territories. So what is exactly Train to Busan, and what made it so successful? Well, read our review here to find out!

One Way Ticket to Hell

The story begins at the outskirts of Seol with a truck driver, going through a checkpoint, and later down the road hits a deer. The deer then suddenly stands up as nothing happened, except its eyes are now dead white. This opening establishing scene is well done, and it sets the tone for a creepy,  and gory movie. It is not a zombie movie per say; it feels like a combination of 28 Days Later and World War Z(but good).

Before all the gore and killing occurs, we need to meet our poor souls that will be inevitably killed by the horde of undead. Luckily unlike most zombie movies, throughout this movie, the characters are sympathetic and do not do retarded cliché actions (at least through 90% of the film). Our protagonist is Seok-Woo (Yoo Gong) a fund manager who is a workaholic, and absentee father, whose daughter wants to go to Busan for her birthday to see her mother. After the initial gift giving fails, and the father buys the same gift from last year, he finally decides to take her to her mother. They board a KXT train from Seol inbound to Busan.

From this point on the movie becomes a wild ride of trying to survive. The secondary characters are also great – we have Sang Hwa (Dong-seok Ma) who can brawl with zombies in the most awesome way, Su-An (Soo-an Kim), the daughter of the protagonist who is not annoying when compared to most child roles in Horror/disaster movies. Finally, we actually have an antagonist of the sort in the form of Yong-suk (Eui-sung Kim), an old man who I was rooting for to die for being the scummiest person in the movie. The two-hour movie had me in its grips, regarding storytelling, and characterization.

Most of the characters besides Yong-suk made pretty realistic decisions to survive, and none of the characters felt cringe worthy. They tried to survive as best as possible and to use the layout of the train, and the learned weaknesses of the infected to their advantage. It was a smart movie up until the last 20 minutes where everything goes off the rails, and while it is not horrible. It does put a perfect storytelling, and character motivations to only a “Good” status. Still, it is one of those zombie movies where I actually enjoyed the characters and wanted to see their fate. Instead of just rooting for all of them to die.

Lights! Camera! Bloodshed!

The zombies… er I mean infected are very reminiscent of World War Z’s zombies. They run fast, attack when they see humans, and even “zerg” rush the shit out of survivors. However, it was interesting to note that the violence, and gore while was prominent in the movie, was rather restrained compared to movies such as Dawn of The Dead, or The Walking Dead. There were not a lot of torn faces, or even organs showing from the “infected”.

In fact, when the survivors do get attacked and killed we do not see much other than a few blood sprays, or screams. They mostly cover this up with lots of infected attacking the humans, but it is interesting to note that Train to Busan never goes into disgusting gore levels of violence. For me, this was okay, but for those who are expecting limbs, and organs flying around, and faces being bitten off will be disappointed in this zombie movie (there are people who love those kinds of movies).

The camera work is exceptional, though, and the CGI is nearly spotless. The explosions look off at times, but the zombies and their huge pile-ups look better than World War Z’s effort. It is impressive the way the horde looks, and when they pile up on each other after one of them slips.

The use of a train is great for a zombie movie, and it luckily does not end up being a corny idea like Snakes on a Plane. The director can show the viewer just how claustrophobic, and small the train waggons are in Train to Busan.

Ride for your lives!

Train to Busan is one of my favourite movies of 2016, and of the zombie genre. It manages to do what a lot of zombie movies in the past have failed to do so. Be entertaining, but also have a deeper meaning to it. There is a bit of a class warfare represented in the movie, and the struggles of a father who while rich has no time for the family. Feels a bit cliché, but presented in a respectable manner.

All in all Train to Busan is a fun movie, with toned down violence, and a great cast of characters, but with a bit of iffy CGI at times for the explosions. The zombies look great, but they never go full rotting corpse like in the Walking Dead.

-Dante-