Train to Busan Review: Exhilarating, Full Blooded Zombie Movie

Director: Sang-ho Yeon

Starring: Yoo Gong, Soo-an Kim, Yu-mi Jeong, Dong-seok Ma, Woo-sik Choi, Sohee, Eui-sung Kim, Gwi-hwa Choi, Jang Hyuk-Jin, Seok-yong Jeong

Rating: 15

Running Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

Release Date: 28th October, 2016

A monster hit at the International box-office, grossing $99 million worldwide, TRAIN TO BUSAN is a South Korean zombie movie that you probably won’t have ever heard of. It follows a father (Yoo Gong) as he travels to Busan by train with his young daughter (Soo-an Kim) so she can visit her mother.

Of course, the apocalypse gets in the way and the train is overrun with white-eyed, teeth gnashing zombies. It’s therefore up to this absentee father to step up to the plate and think about somebody other than himself.

As a massive fan of zombie movies, I feel I’ve been treated lately. What with this and last weeks THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS, 2016 has been a good year for surprise zombie carnage.

Of the two, however, I love TRAIN TO BUSAN more. It’s fast-paced and exhilarating. Like the bullet train the passengers are trapped on, these undead are quick and slick and more reminiscent of the swarming zombies of World War Z as they fall over one another in a bid to pass on the infection.

Yet, where the aforementioned lost tension in its quieter moments, TRAIN TO BUSAN uses the downtime to gather itself for another full on sprint. And the action is spectacular and relentless. 

From full-blooded, bone-crunching races through tight carriages to tense, hold your breath scenes in darkened stations. There’s a lot going on and a lot to keep track of but what you get out of it is a shot in the arm of pure, breathless adrenaline.

I’m also pleased to report that the film also has a surprising amount of heart and depth spread across its two-hour run time.

As with most disaster movies, you have an assortment of different people. From the pregnant women to the asshole who leaves everyone to die, TRAIN TO BUSAN has a few cliches here and there but it matters not when you genuinely start to care about these characters. 

This is in part due to the excellent performances, which feel more grounded in reality than most films of this sort. The direction from Sang-ho Yeon is confident and the swell of the score from Jang Young-gyu really helps to get the emotions racing.

You care and you cry, you laugh and you cheer. It does some very standard things for a zombie drama but it does them with such brio and grace that it feels fresh and new.

I’ve seen bad zombie films set on different forms of transportation from planes to boats and Train to Busan eclipses them all. It does some incredibly new and original things with its setting and it’s these moments that keep things going until the end.

What I love most about a zombie story is the initial outbreak as things slowly goes from bad to worse. So it always stands to reason that any zombie film will need to have a cracking 2nd and 3rd act to keep me gripped throughout.

Despite having an overlong ending and a few moments that do dangle the films credibility over the edge, I felt that TRAIN TO BUSAN pretty much kept me enthralled throughout.

It was an emotionally engaging, beautifully shot, frantically cut, exciting, joyous piece of cinema and if you get the chance to see, and I know that may be hard for most people, I urge you to see it on the biggest screen you can.

Verdict

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