Train to Busan

Nar­cis­sis­tic divorced father Seok Woo (Yoo Gong) is tak­ing his daugh­ter, Soo-an, (a bril­liant Kim Su-An) to see her moth­er as a birth­day sur­prise. They’re catch­ing the train from Seoul to Busan, unaware of a zom­bie out­break that has start­ed to rip through Korea. That is until a hun­gry pas­sen­ger jumps on board. Once the first vic­tim has her flesh chewed on, the film hits full pelt with very few chances to catch a breath till the finale.

What makes the zom­bies in Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan dif­fer­ent to the usu­al flesh munch­ers is that they don’t seem inter­est­ed in tear­ing their vic­tims to gory shreds. They take a lit­tle nib­ble and then are off on to the next per­son, turn­ing every­one they bite into one of their own in sec­onds. This makes the speed in which the out­break sweeps across Korea all the more believ­able and all the more hor­ri­fy­ing. The zom­bies also only react to sound or if a per­son is in their line of sight involve for some cre­ative manœu­vre, most effec­tive­ly when the train pass­es through tun­nels. Con­tort­ing their bod­ies, bar­ing their teeth and sprint­ing through the car­riages look­ing for their next chew toy, Yeon has cre­at­ed his own chill­ing ver­sion of the liv­ing dead.

The real core of the movie, though, lies in its well devel­oped char­ac­ters. When a bored Soo-an decides to explore the train, she comes into con­tact with oth­er char­ac­ters who help the sto­ry to progress. The encoun­ters are comedic and this helps make the char­ac­ters more engag­ing. But as the zom­bie attacks take place, the sur­vivors start to reveal their true colours, show­ing those who only help oth­ers and those who only help them­selves. Through para­noia, herd men­tal­i­ty and self­ish­ness, the true vil­lains of the film emerge.

The film does fall short at some points. Con­fus­ing­ly, at the begin­ning, when the first infect­ed per­son is revealed to us, the change takes place over a long peri­od of time. Lat­er, when a poor stew­ardess meets her demise, she turns almost instant­ly. It doesn’t make much sense oth­er than Yeon try­ing to build ten­sion before the action kicks in. And a moment involv­ing some news about the out­break just feels like it’s in there to direct some blame, but it is unnec­es­sary at the point when it’s revealed.

Train to Busan has an under­ly­ing com­men­tary about class divi­sions. It shows how the elit­ist char­ac­ters, Seok Woo and Young Suk (the type of man will­ing to do any­thing to sur­vive), act like they have a right to decide who lives and dies to pro­tect them­selves, the for­mer chang­ing his ways as the film pro­gress­es. The oth­er char­ac­ters are just nor­mal peo­ple from low­er or mid­dle class back­grounds, who see the effec­tive­ness of work­ing togeth­er in the face of cri­sis, will­ing to sac­ri­fice them­selves to help their loved ones as well as the strangers they’ve just met.