Train to Busan (2016)
“I’ll take you to mum no matter what.” – Seok Woo.
Train to Busan (2016)
Directed by: Sang-ho Yeon
Written by: Joo-Suk Park, Sang-ho Yeon
Starring: Gong Yoo, Yu-mi Jung, Ma Dong-seok, Su-an Kim, Woo-sik Choi
All aboard!
There’s nothing better than a good zombie movie, and Sang-ho Yeon’s South Korean production Train to Busan definitely fits the bill. A mixture of action, dark comedy, and social commentary, the film carves out its own niche in the genre. I wouldn’t say it’s the best zombie movie ever made – not even close to be fair – but it’s an entertaining flick with a simple and fun premise.
The film begins with divorced, workaholic fund-manager father Seo Seok-woo (Yoo) returning home to see his daughter Soo-an (Kim), whom he neglects with his busy work schedule. When she wants to spend her birthday with her mother in Busan, Seo is overcome with guilt and gives in to his daughter’s request. They board the train to Busan. However, a chemical leak at a nearby biotech plant has caused the start of a zombie apocalypse, and when an infected member of the public boards the train, Seo, Soo-an and the other passengers must fight for survival.
Firstly, amazing title for a movie. It’s simple, and tells you everything you need to know – the movie will take place on a train…to Busan. Seamless. And funnily enough this setting is one of the best parts about the movie. A lot of zombie movies are set in a location where the heroes get trapped – in a house, in a barn, in a laboratory, on a boat – but I’ve never seen one on a train, so this was fun. A confined, moving vehicle with a lot of potential victims/new zombies – sign me up! The setting leads to an action-packed first thirty minutes, with the best part of any zombie movie - the initial zombie outbreak from patient zero - happening extremely rapidly on the train. It’s an incredibly fun sequence, with the mayhem of the bloodthirsty rampage amplified in the densely packed confines of the train. The writers make this even more fun when it is revealed that one of the carriages on the train is occupied with a baseball team, equipping the characters with their weapon of choice – a baseball bat – for the rest of film.
Outside of the madness of the initial zombie invasion, the film also has a lot more character development than other zombie films. At the heart of it, the film focuses on the relationship between a father and his daughter, with the carnage on the train acting as a backdrop to their cute little sub-story. You get to see Seo evolve from neglectful father into protective, loving parent throughout the film, and the little actress playing Soo-an is adorable in her role. The movie features a core ‘survival gang’ of colourful characters that you spend your time with – expectant mother Seong-kyeong (Jung) and her tough-guy partner Sang-hwa (Dong-seok), aspiring baseball star Yong-guk (Choi – who you’ll recognise from Parasite) and his girlfriend Jin-hee (Sohee), as well as the evil Yon-suk (Eu-sung Kim). All of these characters are given enough dialogue to become meaningful members of the film, rather than just ‘random extras who will be eaten by a zombie’. This opens the door for gratifying deaths, sad deaths, and also heroic deaths. Characters aren’t killed for the sake of it, with Yeon instead building up the background and emotional attachment to someone – whether good or bad – before pulling the rug on them for maximum emotional impact.
The movie loses a few points for being a little bit too long, with the final thirty minutes seemingly tacked onto the end of the film just so that Yeon could blow the special effects budget. It’s really hard to keep your audience engaged during a zombie movie, as the disastrous premise of “oh no, zombies are chasing another character” is only entertaining for so long, and becomes repetitive unless you are doing something unique for each scene. Yeon didn’t quite achieve this with the finale, and I got a bit of ‘zombie fatigue’ as the film wound to a close. Thirty minutes shorter and it would have been perfect.
I know this is stupid for a zombie movie, but I also have some nitpicks with some pretty vital plot points. [Note: some spoilers in the following mini-rant. Skip to the end if you are yet to watch the film.]
The most glaring issue is the decision to make the heavily pregnant Seong-kyeong the final survivor of the movie. Yes, an expectant mother is likely to have a high likelihood of survival in a horror movie – much like the evacuation on the Titanic, (pregnant) women and small children are often escorted to safety first. Why? It’s because they’re vulnerable, helpless, defenceless, and so must be protected by others within the film. The logic and ethics of this checks out. However, in this film Seong-kyeong isn’t really that helpless. She manages to run at full speed for multiple kilometres throughout the film. She climbs through windows and jumps off elevated surfaces. I’ve never been pregnant, so excuse the ignorance if there are heavily pregnant women cutting laps out there, but I doubt that sprinting with that speed over that distance is physically possible, no matter how much adrenaline you get while outrunning a zombie horde. I’m sorry, but in real life she would’ve been picked off halfway through the movie.
The other issue – the stupidity of most of the train passengers. There are so many scenes where a passenger watches a zombie enter their train carriage, watches them attack a fellow passenger, and they still don’t move. I don’t know about you, but if I’m on a train and someone comes into my carriage and bites someone’s face off, I’m probably going to move out of the way. Even if they’re not a zombie, don’t hang around and see if they’ll bite your face off too! This is a universal zombie movie critique by the way – people take so long to come to terms that the thing attacking everyone is a zombie (“Zombies aren’t real!”, “Everyone stop saying the word zombie!”), that by the time they accept that it’s happening half the country is trying to eat each other.
In summary, if you’re a fan of zombie movies I would highly recommend that you watch Train to Busan. The cast is great, the story is entertaining and the action is a good homage to classic and modern zombie movies alike. Make sure you stay locked in for the thrilling first ninety minutes, but I’d forgive you if find yourself scrolling on your phone towards the end, as the plot literally and figuratively comes off the track.
Rating: 7/10
Remake rumours:
The rights to the movie for an English-language remake were purchased in 2016, and production and distribution partners were announced in early 2021. The appointment of legitimate companies to this project implies that it will likely be made shortly. A bit of a shame as the South Korean original is so well made, but I’m sure this has legs to make stacks of cash with Western audiences.