Train To Busan
Proves there’s life left in zombies yet
Don’t be put off by the subtitles: Korean horror Train To Busan isn’t just one of the year’s most entertaining horrors, it’s the best zombie movie in ages. Not only that, with social commentary baked into its DNA, it’s the natural successor to George A Romero’s genre-defining undead trilogy.
Set almost entirely on the titular train from Seoul to Busan, the colourful cast of characters includes an absentee father and his young daughter, a high school baseball team, a working class father-to-be and his wife, a pair of elderly sisters, a selfish CEO, and a convulsing woman who, it turns out, has been bitten and is infected with a virus that turns her into a ravenous zombie. With all hell breaking loose on the train – and, we learn, in the surrounding countryside – the ragtag group battles its way through the carriages in order to survive the journey to South Korea’s second city, where they believe salvation lies.
Thrillingly shot, paced and edited, Train To Busan is an absolute blast from departure to arrival. But there’s more meat on the bones than mere zombie carnage. Class structures and the pressure-cooker setting lead to interesting conflicts between the human passengers aboard the train, all of whom are – naturally – desperate to survive. Indeed, Busan’s most hateworthy character is a boo-hiss human baddie.
Director Yeon Sang-ho also wrings a surprising amount of emotion out of the setup – these are characters you genuinely care about, each errant bite, scratch and betrayal landing an almighty gut punch. It may not introduce anything particularly revolutionary to the saturated zombie genre, but this is an express train to fun well worth boarding. Jordan Farley