Train to Busan
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Year: 2016
Rating: 8.0
Country:
Korea
It is not often that you come
out of a zombie film and much of the audience is in tears, but they were
at today’s screening of Train to Busan. That is because Korean filmmakers
long ago mastered the art of playing emotion for all it is worth in every
genre – see The Host as an example of horror doing this or their TV shows
that are a rage all over Asia – they know how to dig deep into your heart
and wrench it for everything it is worth. Sort of like the zombies in this
film.
This is a terrific film that is suspenseful
until literally the last ounce is drained out of it. It is as much a father/daughter
bonding film as it is a horror film. It starts off as just another day in
Seoul where a father has given in to his young daughter’s demands to visit
the divorced mother in Busan. Hints slowly come into vision around the edges
that something is going very wrong in Korea but they blithely board the train.
An infection has caused a massive outbreak of zombieism and one got on the
train.
From that point on the film becomes an onslaught
of terror, gore and just pure desperation in attempting to survive. It is
sort of like John Ford’s Stagecoach except the Indians are both inside and
outside the train zipping through the Korean countryside and it is a much
bigger stage. You get a representation of all slices of the Korean population
– class, age, status – as well as the usual sampling of cowards, unexpected
heroes, a little girl, her distant fund manager father, a pregnant woman
about to deliver, a couple old ladies, a high school girl in love and a baseball
team loaded down with baseball bats. All of this is I think making points
about Korean society but we mainly are focused on the rampaging zombies.
The zombies are fairly typical of that sort – not too bright or clever –
move awkwardly but quickly enough especially on a train where there is nowhere
to go – but mainly there are so so many of them and they are voracious.
