Train to Busan

I just got back from my friendly local retro cool, bar-theater-future brewpub-burlesque house, as usual I was not disappointed. Tonight I saw the Korean zombie movie “Train to Busan”. Train debuted last year at cannes I think, and had international release this summer, it has done pretty well with the largest American box-office of any Korean film so far.

Train is about as standard a zombie movie I have seen in a while. With the glut of zombie movies and shows I have gotten used to the Zombies plus X description. 28 days later is Zombies but they are fast, walking dead is zombies plus endless narrative, World war Z is zombies plus cgi swarms, pride and prejudice and zombies literally has the Zombie plus X in the title. You could say that Train to Busan is Zombies plus Koreans, or maybe Zombies on a train, but in reality it is just a well made zombie flick with no real gimmick.

Our main character is a fund manager, recently divorced who doesn't spend enough time with his daughter. It's her birthday and all she wants to do is go to the city of Busan to visit her mother. Father daughter end up on the train, and we are introduced to a number of other side characters. We get two elderly sisters, a homeless man, a high school baseball team, the girl in love with one of the baseball players, and the real stars of the movie, A young couple, the woman pregnant and the husband a burly boisterous guy. All of these characters feel well developed, most impressively nearly all the character development is accomplished through good direction and just physical acting rather than dialogue.

After the obligatory hints that the world is falling apart, and the single infected girl stumbling onto the train at departure, our train gets rolling, and so does the movie. Everything plays out exactly as you imagine it would, people start to get bitten, fast rage zombies go crazy on the train, our heroes are forced together, the humans are the real monsters, etc etc. This movie follows the formula to such an extent that it almost feels like homage, but where most tribute movies get caught up in making references train just accepts the tropes and executes them. I don't know anything about the korean zombie movie scene, but it feels like maybe the film makers understand zombie movies and have set about doing the best job they can to introduce the baseline to a new audience. All the actors are great, the direction keeps things interesting, the story is creative enough dealing with the troubles of fighting a zombie in the tight confines of a train.

This movie doesn't feel like an indy zombie movie, it plays out like a big budget movie in terms of story and plot. The central story isn't about murdering zombies, it is about a father trying to keep his daughter alive. I put it in the category of movies that created for a larger market. The gore is subdued, the movie never goes off the rails or into the absurd. It's is a movie for walking dead fans, not for dead alive fans. This movie has a clear morality as a central theme. In Train to Busan the central moral dilemma is should you act in your self interest, or should you risk to help others. Our selfish fund manager has to learn from his selfless daughter the importance of helping others.

One thing that struck me while watching the movie was that aside from the cast being all Korean, this movie could have set anywhere. You could film this script line for line shot for shot in almost any country. Compare this to a movie like Old Boy where a similar wholesale script and storyboard transplant resulted in a sub par movie. Train to Busan feels very culturally generic.

If you want to see a perfectly executed zombie movie, I recommend Train to Busan. If you want to see a more interesting Korean movie about fighting your way to the front of a train, I recommend 2013's Snowpeircer.