TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016 - Korean)

Studio:       Well Go USA
Director:    Sang-ho Yeon
Writer:       Sang-ho Yeon
Producer:  Dong-ha Lee
Stars:     Yoo Gong, Soo-an Kim, Yu-mi Jeong, Dong-seok Ma, Woo-sik Choi, So-hee Ahn, Eui-sung Kim

Review Score:

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Summary:

Uninfected survivors struggle to stay alive aboard a moving train as a zombie outbreak spreads across Korea.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Investment banker and negligent father Seok-woo agrees to take his young daughter Soo-an by KTX train to see her mother in Busan for the girl’s birthday. Other passengers aboard the train include Sang-hwa and his pregnant wife Sung-gyeong, high school baseball player Yong-guk and his cheerleader girlfriend Jin-hee, elderly sisters In-gil and Jong-gil, selfish businessman Yong-suk, and a homeless vagrant.

An infected woman rushes aboard the train just as it departs. After the train is in motion, the woman mutates into a zombie and mauls an attendant. The outbreak quickly spreads throughout the train as passengers are attacked, infected, and turned into ravenous zombies.

Uninfected survivors barricade themselves in one of the train cars. A news broadcast reports of a zombie infection spreading rapidly across Korea. Seok-woo receives a phone call from his mother as she succumbs to infection. With word of a quarantine affecting Daejeon Station, the train’s next stop, Seok-woo calls his contact Kim to arrange a way for he and his daughter to circumvent the military blockade.

The train arrives in Daejoen to a completely empty station. Passengers disembark and unknowingly head toward the quarantine. Soo-an angrily accuses her father of caring only for himself upon discovering his arrangement with Kim.

The passengers are forced to flee back to the train when they discover all of the awaiting military men are now zombies. At Yong-suk’s insistence, the conductor sets the train toward Busan, which is reportedly still a safe zone. As uninfected survivors frantically fight through zombies to board the departing train, everyone becomes separated.

Sung-gyeong, Soo-an, and In-gil become barricaded in a lavatory with the vagrant. Yong-suk, Jin-hee, and Jong-gil seek safety in another car with other survivors. Seok-woo, Sang-hwa, and Yong-guk barely make it back to the train in time, but end up in a third car.

Discovering that the zombies cannot see without light, the three men use stretches of tunnel darkness to battle through several cars of infected to rescue and reunite with the people in the lavatory. However, when the seven of them fight their way to the car where everyone else is, Yong-suk refuses to open the door, irrationally fearing that they might be infected.

Sang-hwa is bit while trying to hold the door behind his group closed. Before succumbing to infection, Sang-hwa asks Seok-woo to take care of his wife, tells Sung-gyeong what to name their baby, and holds off the zombies while Yong-guk breaks into the other car.

Seok-woo and the others make it into the other car, but In-gil lags behind and is killed by zombies. Yong-suk exploits everyone’s fears to convince the other passengers that Seok-woo, Soo-an, Sung-gyeong, Yong-guk, and the vagrant should be separated into another car. Jin-hee chooses to go with them.

Despondent after witnessing her sister’s death, Jong-gil opens the rear car door, allowing zombies inside to kill the mob of survivors. Yong-suk survives the horde’s surge by barricading himself in a washroom with a train steward.

Seok-woo bonds with his daughter when they discuss a song she sang for him at a school recital he did not attend. Mr. Kim calls Seok-woo again and tearfully confesses that their plant was responsible for starting the infection.

An overturned car on the tracks forces the train to stop. The conductor announces that survivors must flee to another train on an adjacent track in order to continue their trip to Busan.

Yong-suk pushes the attendant into a zombie horde so that he can escape the lavatory. The others also flee outside while the conductor gets another engine started, but everyone is scattered when a train on fire barrels toward them and overturns.

Pushing his way through the wreckage, Yong-suk causes Jin-hee to get bit. Jin-hee becomes a zombie and kills Yong-guk.

The conductor sets the new train engine in motion, but exits to assist Yong-suk when Yong-suk falls while fleeing a pursuing zombie horde. The conductor ends up devoured while Yong-suk, who is bit in the process, boards the new train.

The vagrant sacrifices himself to hold off a zombie horde while Seok-woo escapes to the moving train with Soo-an and Sung-gyeong. Having turned into a zombie, Yong-suk bites Seok-woo, but Seok-woo throws Yong-suk from the train.

Realizing he will soon succumb to infection, Seok-woo instructs Sung-gyeong on the engine controls and tearfully says goodbye to his daughter. While Soo-an screams and sobs, Seok-woo transforms as he willfully allows himself to fall off the back of the engine car.

Blocked tracks force the train to stop just short of Busan. Sung-gyeong and Soo-an make their way through a tunnel on foot. A military sniper prepares to shoot them under orders, but realizes they are uninfected survivors when he hears Soo-an singing the song she rehearsed for her father.

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Review:

Sample a handful of reviews for “Train to Busan” and you might think it a legal requirement for critics to describe the movie as “Snowpiercer” meets fast-zombie-film-of-choice.  That latter blank has been filled with everything from “28 Days Later” to “World War Z” (review here) to Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead.”  It’s only natural for “Snowpiercer” to spring to mind when it comes to train-set action from a Korean filmmaker and one of those other three movies for sprinting zombies.  None of those “it’s like” analogies are incorrect.  Just to be different, I’ll summarize “Train to Busan” by saying it’s like “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory” meets “Left 4 Dead.”

VERY MINOR SPOILERS

“It’s like” analogies are also appropriate because “Train to Busan” borrows beats from practically every undead epic you can think of, particularly those on George A. Romero’s résumé.  A mid-movie confrontation between two men over a door is a mirror of Ben and Harry’s faceoff from “Night of the Living Dead.”  What one elderly woman does out of despondence is straight up ripped from Miguel’s last action in “Day of the Dead.”

END SPOILERS

But “Train to Busan” blends the best bits of these influences so well and with such an intriguing coat of fresh paint that even when you notice the cribs, you don’t care.  The experience is so loaded with emotion and exhilaration that what matters most is how memorably thrilling “Train to Busan” is as a top-notch zombie action adventure.

Seok-woo is your typical distracted divorced dad, caught up in the constant buy/sell bluster of investment banking and thinking only about himself.  He doesn’t even notice when he buys the same gift as last time for his neglected daughter Soo-an, whose only wish for her father is that he might finally keep a promise to show up for a school recital.

Seok-woo will have an opportunity for redemption, by proving how much he cares for his daughter, when a birthday trip to visit mom in Busan derails unexpectedly.  Boarding a KTX train with an eclectic assortment of passengers including an even more arrogant businessman, a middle class husband and his pregnant wife, a high school baseball team, and a disheveled derelict, father and daughter are on an express track toward terrible terror.

At the same time the train takes off, an outbreak starts spreading swiftly across Korea.  Those infected turn almost instantly into cataract-eyed creatures snapping jaws at any human with a pulse.  One woman with the bug is on this train.  Panic ensues when the infection suddenly spreads like wildfire, separating survivors from savages while blurring the line between the two.  Seok-woo will have to change his selfish ways if he and Soo-an are to make it to Busan alive.  Though the confines of the train cars with their cannibalistic contents are far from the only threat they will face.

The premise may as well stand with its full weight on your nose for all of the subtlety put into clichéd characterizations.  All of these people have been seen before under other names in other movies, though the Devil’s Advocate could argue that at least “Train to Busan” has personal subplots for each person’s arc.  Ultimately, the value these personalities bring is relatable empathy easily overshadowing unoriginality.

The horror in “Train to Busan” is hauntingly human.  Stunned expressions watch helplessly as windows pass by charred carnage outside.  Panicked phone calls from loved ones force these men and women to fight fear on fronts that don’t involve literal monsters.  And underwriting the emotion in these events are nearly nonstop sequences of out-of-this-world contortionist choreography.

Setups for suspense are stereotypical for a thriller.  This doesn’t mean your teeth won’t touch your nails, but two hours is a long time to spend with countless close calls and narrow nick of time escapes based on outstretched hands inching toward a goal.  Writer/director Sang-ho Yeon keeps action energetic, though whenever the human drama settles down, “Train to Busan” can be a Point A to Point B run of repetition.  Subtracting one or two setpieces to minimize the Murphy’s Law of how every conceivable train and zombie-related nightmare can and does befall the survivors might put more plausibility into the pandemonium.

Yet when eyes widen and jaws drop faster than the brain can get bored or come to a full stop with a “wait a minute,” “Train to Busan” blows away the bar for undead action entertainment.  With a surprisingly sad tearjerker of a climax, Soo-an Kim’s last few scenes as Seok-woo’s young daughter are absolute crushers, the movie emerges as a satisfying stunner that hits hard in the heart, not just in the head.

NOTE: While both films function independently of each other despite one being billed as a prequel, fans of “Train to Busan” are encouraged to also see “Seoul Station” (review here), director Sang-ho Yeon’s animated companion film.  They don’t share any characters in common, though they are set against the same apocalyptic backdrop and feature similar themes.

Review Score:  80

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