By Kane Edmonds
With some of the most convincing and deeply disturbing zombies of recent memory, South Korea’s Train to Busan is an instant classic, boasting high stakes, high intensity and high speeds.
4 STARS , DIRECTOR: YEON SANG-HO DOP: LEE HYUNG-DEOK RUNTIME: 118 MINUTES. RELEASE DATE: JULY, 2016
With some of the most convincing and deeply disturbing zombies of recent memory, South Korea’s Train
It was only a matter of time before South Korea showed the rest of the world how to properly do zombie films and this is it: Train to Busan. In the time since its release it’s become something of a cult hit, amassing mostly positive reviews online and even filmmaker Edgar Wright claiming on Twitter that it was the best movie he’d seen in forever. For this, we have director Yeon Sang-ho to thank, who had mostly worked on animated films previously.
Our story begins in Seoul as we follow fund manager Seok-woo and his daughter, Su-an. As is true with most fathers in film with big corporate jobs, Seok-woo spends an awful lot of time at work and ,consequently, has a rocky relationship with his daughter, ultimately leading to her wanting to spend her birthday with her mother in Busan, and understandably so. As promised in the title, the pair make their way to Seoul station to board the train to Busan. This is when things begin to get dicey, as the doors are closing for the train to depart, an apparently infected woman slips in, she then turns into a zombie, infects the attendant and then infects a whole bunch of other passengers who turn quickly. The passengers separate themselves from the infected by closing the doors in between carriages, as they figure out that the zombies cannot open doors and only attack when they can see you. This forms the basis of our story; the remaining humans have to sneak and fight their way through zombie occupied carriages and endure the remainder of the train journey until they get to Busan, which they believe to be an established quarantine zone.
Some of the best components of the film stem from its story and the characters within it, with a notable focus on interpersonal relationships and growth that’s pretty much unheard of in this sub-genre. With the exception of the stop at Daejeon Station, where the passengers had been lead to believe it’s under military control but it turned out the military had failed and they instead had turned into military zombies (which leads to a phenomenal scene) and so they had to retreat back to the train, the events mostly take place within a narrow physical containment. This gives room to the possibility of a suffocated story that is bound by its limitations, but Train to Busan by no means falls victim to this, instead, it is the limitations of the environment that is the spine of the excitement in this film; take the lack of useful weaponry or the close proximities and inescapable threat of zombies. And then we have the character growth of our protagonist; Seok-woo is introduced as an emotionally vacant, work obsessed father obsessed with self -preservation (he willingly shuts the door on a pregnant lady and her husband in order to save his and his daughters skin) but as the events unfold, and as a reaction to them, we see notable changes in Seok-woo, somewhat dropping his previously selfish attitude and operating in a more compassionate way. This film could also be defined by its striking imagery. From the makeup to the noises to their decrepit movements and pretzeled limbs, the zombies are by far some of the best incarnations seen on screen and are sure to impress any zombie fan and disturb casual movie goers. There’s also the unsettling-yet-unforgettable visuals of zombies running so fast and so tenaciously they regularly pile atop one another forming ramps and bridges and an extreme case, a cluster of zombies all clinging to each other forming a tail on the back of the train.
It has to be said though that this is one of the many similarities borrowed from World War Z; and whilst I know that these types of movies are in the business of borrowing from one another, that are a few undeniably obvious features the two share that I felt it tainted the originality and thus had not so much a negative effect but definitely leaves a noticeable mark on the experience as a whole. I’m also unsure about the CGI, on one hand it really works, especially when you bear in mind it’s a low budget movie ($9,000,000!), I still can’t figure out if the train was actually moving during sequences or if it’s green screen. But there are moments when the CGI is so very weak it borders on humorous and has the unfortunate effect of reminding you that you’re watching a piece of fiction. But maybe we can learn to love the dodgy CGI like we have for so many other classics and take them as part and parcel of the Train to Busan experience.
Whilst we’re here I have a few more things to moan about; minor plot holes such as the pregnant lady only being pregnant when it suited the narrative and similarly Su-an being a defenseless child when it worked well in the story. Not to mention melodramatic cliches running rife in pivotal moments of the story.
A zombie flick that brings new meaning to the term ‘cheap thrills’, Train to Busan is about as exciting as it gets, setting up a fast-paced story that becomes dangerously quicker each passing minute.
‘Train to Busan’ is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime and VUDU
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