I love zombie movies. My dad showed me Night of the Living Dead when I was like ten, and he went on at length about how he thought Dawn of the Dead was one of the greatest films ever made. I now eat that genre like zombies eat brains.
I also love Korean cinema. When I studied Asian cinema at degree level I went crazy for Bong Joon-ho’s early stuff (Memoirs of Murder, The Host, Mother). I, like everyone else, did not see that twist coming at the end of Oldboy. And was one of the many people that cheered when Parasite won Best Picture. Why then did I miss Train to Busan?
Maybe because things are scarier in another language. You concentrate harder, you’re looking at one part of the screen more, so when something super scary happens you’re more likely to crap yourself. Train to Busan seems like a perfect mesh of things I love – Korean movies and zombies. And as someone that really thought World War Z would have been better if the whole film was that sequence on the plane – as someone who wrote an outline for a zombie film on plane (tagline: 1 Virus, 180 Passengers, 40,00 feet of pure terror).
Given that I can’t leave the house thanks to a pandemic, why not sit down in my confined space and watch a film on that subject – so to speak? What could possible go wrong?
Related: Train to Busan Review
Directed by Yeon Sang-ho, and written by Park Joo-suk, Train to Busan follows a fairly basic set up, as a bunch of people go about their ‘business’ on the train that is going to Busan. The film begins promisingly, by introducing Gong Yoo as Seok-woo a workaholic who lives with his mother and young daughter Su-An.
In a few scenes, Yeon manages to introduce us to the central thrust of the story, as well meaning as Seok-woo might be, he’s comparatively selfish. Putting a small child at the centre of your horror film can be a tricky thing, but Kim Su-an gains your sympathy from the off. Her tender plea to be allowed to spend her birthday with her mother; her indifference at her dad’s excuses and the way she bungles a school show because her father isn’t there.
Once we get to the train, Yeon makes short work of introducing us to the other players. It’s fairly basic archetypes to begin with. A baseball team, and a sexy cheerleader clearly into one of the players. A pregnant woman and her beefy working class husband. Two old biddies out for a ride. An obnoxious business man. A paranoid looking homeless man.
Certain people have derided it as Snowpiercer with zombies, but that’s insulting to the work that goes into most of the characters. As the film builds up tension, and at just shy of two hours, it’s a long jaunt for a horror film. The visual composition from Lee Hyung-deok appears to flag a jump scare or a moment of importance here and there, but instead actually just toys with our expectations.
Related: Oldboy Review
What appear to be thumbnail sketches, for the most part, build into more nuanced performances with characters beneath. Sohee, a pop star in her native Korea, gives convincing screams as cheerleader Jin-hee. Ma Dong-seok takes his burly everyman role and turns him into a working class action hero, who’s rough exterior gives way to genuine humanity.
A brief stop off at a train station provides some of the most tense viewing in a horror film of recent times. The choice to have pant-soiling fast zombies might be something people balk at – as the father of modern zombie lore, Romero, disapproved of them – but the sight of several zombies hurling themselves through glass is so physically terrifying that there’s no way to deny the power of it. It becomes clear this is the film World War Z wished it was.
As with all great zombie movies, there needs to be a little subtext, and there are hints at great ones. The TV shows a press conference where we are told everything is safe and that rumours of a virus are played off as just that – rumours. It’s hard not to watch and laugh at scenes like that while people still claim we’re in the middle of a simple flu. There’s also a thick stream of corporate hatred in the film. The only character not really fleshed out is the selfish businessman who descends into hysteria and fear as the deaths start mounting up.
It’s also interesting to note the pharmaceutical critiques the film takes aim at. But, what keeps the film steady on the tracks is that central story between a father and daughter, it keeps the story chugging along when yet another obstacle veers proceedings into OTT action.
Related: Horror from Japan and South Korea
But there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s an action horror, and if you can’t throw a pile of zombies at a wall and watch blood spurt out their ears then why bother making a zombie action horror? Clearly Yeon agrees, and while some of the chases in the film are buttock-clenchingly tense, there’s also enough tension from less frenetic scenes. Like people crawling in the dark across overhead storage, with the sound of groaning metal building up.
In many ways, the film makes for an interesting companion piece to Cargo, the Australian zombie film that similarly dealt with a father-daughter relationship and had it’s own deep rooted political comments. By the end of Train to Busan I didn’t feel I’d wasted my time. In fact if anything, I want to jump back and rewatch it.
From the opening prologue to that moving finale, Train to Busan proves that a film like this doesn’t have to be braindead, but instead can have a thinking brain, beating heart and a soul too. If they’re doing a sequel, I’ll book my ticket to ride right now.
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