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Yeon Sang-ho’s “Train to Busan” is the most purely entertaining zombie film in some time, finding echoes of George Romero ’s and Danny Boyle ’s work, but delivering something unique for an era in which kindness to others seems more essential than ever. For decades, movies about the undead have essentially been built on a foundation of fear of our fellow man—your neighbor may look and sound like you, but he wants to eat your brain—but “Train to Busan” takes that a step further by building on the idea that, even in our darkest days, we need to look out for each other, and it is those who climb over the weak to save themselves who will suffer. Social commentary aside, it’s also just a wildly fun action movie, beautifully paced and constructed, with just the right amount of character and horror. In many ways, it’s what “ World War Z ” should have been—a nightmarish vision of the end of the world, and a provocation to ask ourselves what it is that really makes us human in the first place.

Seok-woo ( Gong Yoo ) is a divorced workaholic. He lives with his mother and barely spends any time with his daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an). He’s so distant from her that he buys her a Nintendo Wii for her birthday, ignoring that she has one already, and that he’s the one who bought it for her for Children’s Day. To make up for this rather-awkward moment, he agrees to give Su-an what she really wants—a trip to her mother’s home in Busan, 280 miles away. It’s just an hour train ride from Seoul. What could possibly go wrong? Even the set-up is a thematic beauty, as this is more than just a train ride for Seok-woo and Su-an—it’s a journey into the past as a father tries to mend bridges and fix that which may be dead. It’s a perfect setting for a zombie movie.

Before they even get to their early-morning train ride, Seok-woo and Su-an see a convoy of emergency vehicles headed into Seoul. When they get to the train, Sang-ho beautifully sets up his cast of characters, giving us beats with the conductors, a pair of elderly sisters, a husband and his pregnant wife, an obnoxious businessman (a vision of Seok-woo in a couple decades), and even a baseball team. A woman who’s clearly not well gets on the train just before it departs, and just as something else disturbing but generally unseen is happening in the station above the platform. Before you know it, the woman is taking out the jugular of a conductor, who immediately becomes a similarly mindless killing machine. These are zombies of the “28 Days Later” variety—fast, focused, and violent. They replicate like a virus, turning whole cars of the train into dead-eyed flesh-eaters in a matter of seconds. They are rabid dogs. And you thought your Metra commute was bad.

The claustrophobic tension of “Train to Busan” is amplified after a brilliantly staged sequence in a train station in which our surviving travelers learn that the entire country has gone brain-hungry. They discover that the undead can’t quite figure out door handles and are mostly blind, so tunnels and lines of sight become essential. Sang-ho also keeps up his social commentary, giving us characters who want to do anything to survive, and others who will do what it takes to save others. Early in the film, Seok-woo tells his daughter, “At a time like this, only watch out for yourself,” but he learns that this isn’t the advice we should live by or pass down to our children. Without spoiling anything, the survivors of “Train to Busan” are only so lucky because of the sacrifice of others. And the film is thematically stronger than your average zombie flick in the way it captures how panic can make monsters of us all, and it is our responsibility to overcome that base instinct in times of crisis.

After the near-perfect first hour of “Train to Busan,” the film slows its progress and makes a few stops that feel repetitive, but the journey recovers nicely for a memorable finale. You could call it “Train of the Living Dead” or “'Snowpiercer' with Zombies.” Whatever you call it, if it’s playing in your city and you’ve ever been entertained by a zombie movie, it’s hard to believe you wouldn’t be entertained by this one.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Train to Busan (2016)

118 minutes

Gong Yoo as Seok Woo

Ma Dong-Seok as Sang Hwa

Jung Yoo-mi as Sung Gyeong

Choi Woo-shik as Yeong Gook

Ahn So-hee as Jin Hee

Kim Soo-Ahn as Soo Ahn

Yeon Sang-Ho

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Review: Train to Busan (부산행, 2016) ★★½

South Korea has become a powerhouse in the horror and horror-thriller genre over the last decade and a half. There have been many examples of their superb filmmaking combined with adequately horrific and disturbing story-telling: Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) and I Saw the Devil (2010), Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006), and Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) and Thirst (2009), among others. In all of these films, there is a building of tension, almost at a snail’s pace, intermittently broken up by frightening images or revelations, and it works. These kinds of films keep the audience on the edge of their seats, and never suffer from being overly formulaic or reminiscent of Hollywood’s take on the horror genre. They feel unique to the Korean style of filmmaking and viewership. Unfortunately, Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan does not fit into this mold. It takes an entirely different, altogether less interesting approach.

The premise is intriguing, though not entirely original. A speeding train is a popular setting for horror/action films, due to its being inherently claustrophobic and at the same time allowing for a high-octane thrill ride. Films such as The Midnight Meat Train (2008) and Howl (2015) have used trains as the setting for their carnage with varying degrees of success, and this actually works pretty well in Train to Busan . A zombie epidemic shown from the perspective of train passengers as they barrel through the apocalyptic setting is both scary and exciting.

At the start of the film, we are introduced to Seok-woo, a career oriented fund manager who struggles to balance his work and family life. Seok-woo is not on good terms with his ex-wife, and his daughter, Soo-an, is slowly pulling away from him due to his selfishness and workaholic lifestyle. When Soo-an insists on taking the train to Busan to see her mother, her father is reluctant, but eventually agrees to take her. As they board the train, news breaks across the country of a horrific and fast-spreading virus that is turning the populace into bloodthirsty zombies. Just before the doors close, an infected woman slips past the attendant and stumbles onto the train. The passengers are suddenly trapped with an ever-growing number of infected, and must find a way to reach their destination safely.

Many of the scenes in Train to Busan are reminiscent of Snowpiercer (2013), a far superior film from South Korean director, Bong Joon-ho. Our heroes fight their way down a long string of cable cars, with each new segment of the train presenting a slightly different challenge than the last. Though they are entertaining, these extended fight sequences, interspersed with moments of sugary-sweet sentimentality, serve as the vast majority of the film’s plot. At times, Train to Busan becomes much more of a formulaic action movie than a horror movie, and this is possibly its greatest fault. Rather than having interesting characters, facing a terrifying situation, these are merely tired archetypes of people engaging in over-the-top fight sequences with the undead.

Seok-woo is the workaholic father, who must become less selfish and realize that family is the most important thing in his life, so that he may truly love and appreciate his daughter. Soo-an is the typical action-movie daughter, a doe-eyed, inquisitive little girl with an unfaltering moral compass. Then there is Sang-hwa, who initially comes across as abrasive and vulgar, but we come to realize that he is a kind-hearted working class man, who just wants what is best for his pregnant wife, Seong-kyeong. A few less important archetypes are also scattered about the train: a shy young man who must embrace his masculinity to try to save his girlfriend, a rich CEO whose selfishness borders on pure evil, a homeless man who teaches us that you can’t judge a book by its cover, and so on. The character types are such that, once the general premise is set and everyone is in place, we can predict what each of the main characters will inevitably do.

In addition to the predictability of the plot and characters, the film also beats us over the head with its lame sense of right and wrong. You shouldn’t judge people based on their appearance; money is not the most important thing in the world; spend time with your family while you still have the chance; be willing to make sacrifices for your loved ones; karma will punish those who are selfish; deep-down, the rich and the poor are the same, etc. It borders on being insulting at times, and ruins what could have been a fantastic zombie film.

So, Train to Busan has a great premise that is held back by cookie-cutter characters and an overly sentimental moral compass. These last two elements would be forgivable if not for the sheer length of the film. At 118 minutes long, Train to Busan feels like it will never end. What should have been an hour and a half movie is stretched for an extra thirty minutes for no reason in particular. Much like other formulaic action movies, the characters are faced with new and increasingly implausible hurdles to overcome, with each hurdle extending the story unnecessarily. You will be begging them to wrap it up after the 90-minute mark.

In short, Train to Busan took what could have been an amazing horror film and ran it off the rails with lazy, predictable writing and far too much screen time.

Rating: ★★½ out of 5

If you’d like to watch Train to Busan , it is currently available to rent or purchase via Amazon here .

Matthew Jones

Matthew Jones is a freelance writer who has written for dozens of local and international businesses, in addition to his publications on film and philosophy. To see more of his writing, check out his Medium page or personal website . If you like Philosophy in Film, be sure to contribute on Patreon !

Film Review: ‘Train to Busan’

By Maggie Lee

Chief Asia Film Critic

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Following a motley crew on a bumpy ride from Seoul to Busan to escape a zombie outbreak, writer-director Yeon Sang-ho ‘s action-horror railroad movie “ Train to Busan ” pulses with relentless locomotive momentum. As an allegory of class rebellion and moral polarization, it proves just as biting as Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi dystopia “Snowpiercer,” while delivering even more unpretentious fun. Yeon has displayed recognizably cinematic sensibilities in his last three indie anime features — “King of Pigs,” “Fake” and “Seoul Station” — so it’s not surprising that he transitions easily into live-action, though his scathing, nihilistic vision of humanity is watered down for wider mainstream appeal. Buyers for Asian-friendly genre products should clamber to board “Train.”

Despite the vibrancy of genre cinema in Korea, you can count the country’s zombie films on the fingers of one hand. But whether it’s alleged prototype “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie” rip-off “A Monstrous Corpse” or the more recent “Zombie School” (2014), they’ve all been slapdash and unoriginal.

However, with a MERS epidemic sweeping South Korea in 2015 and soaring discontent with corruption and economic disparity, a zombie apocalypse serves as a potent allegory for the dog-eat-dog world. In “Seoul Station,” Yeon depicted a homeless enclave inside the central train station as the ground zero of a zombie outbreak. “Train to Busan” picks up where that film left off. While the anime’s excoriation of the police and army is softened in the live-action sequel, scenarios of humans and zombies precariously separated by carriages fittingly symbolize the dangerous gap between society’s haves and have-nots.

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Workaholic fund manager Seok-wu (Gong Yoo) takes his estranged young daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) on the KTX high-speed train to Busan to visit his ex-wife. The last person to hop on is a teenage girl whose bare thighs are crisscrossed with bulging veins. Yet, passengers and train crew get more alarmed over a homeless man hiding out in the washroom — one of the film’s frequent barbed comments on snobbery in Korean society.

The first 15 minutes tease audiences with glimpses of zombie threat, like a shadow lunging spastically across the platform, or ominous news reports of riots in the capital. Once the infected girl claims the first victim, however, the action surges ahead with exhilarating mayhem, abetted by the claustrophobic layout of train compartments.

The main reason zombies rank less scarily on the ghoulish scale is their slow waddling gait, but the resident evil here is so deliriously energetic and agile it’s like they’re powered by ginseng and soju. Yeon’s background in animation definitely lends their assault a cartoonish ferocity. The creatures’ only weakness is the fact they see poorly in the dark, giving rise to several mini-climaxes when Seok-wu exploits this to outwit them.

Whereas in Hollywood disaster or apocalyptic movies, the chief protagonist tends to take charge and puts him or herself in the line of fire, Seok-wu subverts the cliché by acting on his elitist, self-preserving instincts, telling Su-an off for giving her seat to an old lady, and shutting the door on escaping passengers Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok) and his pregnant wife Sung-kyu (Jung Yu-mi, “Oki’s Movie”). It is up to Su-na, with her child’s innate decency, and the burly but dauntless Sang-hwa to undo the financial go-getting, cutthroat attitude, so he can learn that it is cooperation and altruism that ensures survival in a catastrophe.

Fans of Yeon’s edgier animations may miss his remorselessly evil characters, whose misogyny, sadism and dirt-filthy expletives exert repulsive fascination. In their place, “Train” features something one never expected from Yeon — nice people — such as a pair of high school lovebirds who stay faithful till the end, two deeply affectionate elderly sisters and the selfless tramp. The only major villain comes in the form of a a middle-aged corporate weasel (Kim Eui-sang) who’s calculating cowardice is bland compared with the conmen, religious hypocrites or bullies in Yeon’s past works. But his ability to incite the passengers into callous behavior is instrumental in illustrating how mob mentality works.

Given the sheer velocity of the action, some emotional connection is needed to prevent the film from turning into sheer technical exercise. Thus, Seok-wu’s gradual reform and other humane elements are essential to offset the insentient aggression of the zombies. Their sentimentality are also gleefully tempered by the jumpy, unpredictable script, which constantly teeters between nerve-racking and hilarious, as when Seok-wu hears his mother zombifying over the phone while still bitching about her daughter-in-law.

Shooting in standard 1.85.1 instead of widescreen, the confined mise-en-scene nonetheless affords lenser Lee Hyung-deok plenty of room for nifty camerawork of stunts in unexpected nooks. Washrooms become thrilling battlegrounds and unlikely sanctuaries. An extended sequence in which the driver tries to switch trains is choreographed with the utmost suspense.

However, like most Korean blockbusters, the production cannot resist showing off its visual and special effects clout, resulting in a bombastic stunt toward the end that’s incongruous with the film’s lean, gritty style. Likewise, the screenplay piles on the hysteria and the schmaltz in the last leg, and the hitherto restrained cast have no choice but to dial up performances to a borderline farcical level.

Craft contributions are top-drawer, especially breakneck editing by Yang Jin-mo, who raises suspense to nearly unbearable levels. Music by Jang Young-gyu and sound effects by Choi Tae-young are both sparingly and effectively deployed for genuine shocks rather than false jolts.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Midnight), May 13, 2016. Running time: 118 MIN. (Original Title: "Busan haeng")

Production: (South Korea) A Next Entertainment World release, presentation of a Redpeter Film production. (International sales: Contents Panda, Seoul.) Produced by Lee Dong-ha. Executive producer, Kim Woo-taek. Co-producer, Kim Yeon-ho.
Crew: Directed, written by Yeon Sang-ho. Camera (color, HD), Lee Hyung-deok; editor, Yang Jin-mo; music, Jang Young-gyu; production designer, Lee Mok-won; costume designer, Kwon Yoo-jin, Rim Seung-hee; sound, Choi Tae-young; special make-up, Kwak Tae-yong, Hwang Hyo-kyun; special effects, Demolition; visual effects supervisor, Jung Hwang-su; visual effects, Digital Idea.
With: Gong Yoo, Kim Su-an, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, Kim Eui-sung, Choi Woo-sik, An So-hee. (Korean dialogue)

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Train to Busan (2016) Review

Train to busan (2016) director: yeon sang-ho screenwriter: yeon sang-ho, park joo-suk starring: gong yoo, jung yu-mi, ma dong-seok, choi woo-shik, an so-hee, kim su-an, kim eui-sung, ye soo-jung, park myung-shin, shim eun-kyung, jang hyuk-jin.

Train to Busan is everything a zombie film should be: eerie, emotional and exhilarating. Director Yeon Sang-ho’s compelling debut live-action film is a masterclass in thrill and an undeniable contender for Genre Best that captures the essence of post-apocalyptic horror within the confines of a moving train. It frees itself from the limits of needless worldbuilding and uses ground zero of outbreak day to study its characters as they are flung into circumstances that only grow more dire.

Set in Seoul, South Korea, the story follows fund manager and distant father Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) as he accompanies his daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) on a train ride to Busan, a city 3 hours away, amidst a quickly spreading zombie infection outbreak.

It is clear that Seok-woo is a work-obsessed and self-serving man, accentuated when he brings home a gift for his daughter that she points out he had already bought her once before. After some protest he agrees to take her to visit her mother in Busan to make up for it. But, as their train is about to leave, an “injured” woman jumps on board. Quickly, infection and chaos spread through the cabins with incredible aggressiveness.

Unlike the slow-moving walkers of ‘The Walking Dead’ (2010), Train to Busan’s infected are fast, strong and mindlessly determined to attack their next victims. They also add one of the genre’s scariest additions to zombie lore: the speed at which their infection spreads. The bitten turn in mere minutes, sometimes even seconds, dwindling the number of passengers and general public at an alarming rate.

Among Su-an and Seok-woo are working class man Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok) and his soon to be expecting wife, Sung-gyeong (Jung Yu-mi). Their loving dynamic and willingness to help those around them acts as a foil to Seok-woo’s selfish predisposition and pushes him to become a better man. They are joined by Jin-Hee (Sohee), a cheerleader infatuated with a baseball player, co-passenger Min Yong-guk (Choi Woo-shik), and Yon-Suk (Kim Eui-sung), who is a C.O.O. of a powerful company. The variety in character types come to portray the differences in reactions to chaos.

Train to Busan is as much a story about the corruption and greed of the higher classes as it is about zombies; it provides an observation rather than direct critique of selfishness. While its themes are universal, Train to Busan brings unique attention to South Korea and the prevalence of individualism in not only its citizens but their government. Yeon Sang-ho is no stranger to this type of observation having directed a number of critically acclaimed animated films prior, such as The King of Pigs (2011), The Fake (2013) and Seoul Station (2015), each of which deal with generational poverty, neglect of the homeless, and “what makes a person good or bad?”.

This question of morality hangs over Train to Busan too, which showcases that one’s goodness is based on the choices made. It doesn’t waste time with trying to explain all the ‘why’s’ of the apocalypse or finding a solution to every problem. Instead, it keeps the stakes ridiculously high and characters constantly in a reactionary state.

Yeon Sang-ho’s film has a uniqueness in its understanding of character motivation and humanity. It doesn’t commend anyone directly but instead presents the chain of events that surround an individual’s decision making for better or worse. The ideology that there are only good or bad choices, not people, is ever-present as the bonds between the train passengers evolve, change and/or regress throughout the duration of their journey.

Accompanying its existential elements, Train to Busan’s camerawork from cinematographer Lee Hyung-deok is exceptional, never leaving room to breathe. As was the case in Snowpiercer , another film set on a train and directed by a South Korean ( Bong Joon-ho ), every cramped, contained moment on the train is elevated by breathlessly choreographed action sequences and contrasted by establishing shots of vast landscapes that reinforce the isolation of their struggle. Yeon Sang-ho’s background in animation shines through here, especially in scenes where the infected are shown in numbers. Although terrifying, these sequences are spectacular.

Every character undergoes some sort of transformation, either becoming more selfless and survival-orientated or succumbing to the fear of their own morality and acting out of crude self-interest. The intensity of the survivors’ situation backs them into figurative and literal corners not often seen in Western zombie media ( Resident Evil , World War Z ), which often relies repetitively on big guns and brute cruelty to get out of tough spots. The passengers on the train to Busan work tirelessly to survive, and their successes are hard fought and often come with heavy sacrifice. While devastating, the uneven odds are a refreshing change from the brutal murders of the infected – seeing train cars filled with those who have fallen victim to the infection add a human dimension to them that is often lost. Despite being a lethal threat, these are hundreds of people that are no longer drivers of their own bodies, and Train to Busan lets the heartbreak of that reality sink in.

Following in the character-driven footsteps of 28 Days Later (2002), Train to Busan marks itself as a must-watch for not only zombie enthusiasts, but thrillseekers and horror aficionados alike. Zombie movies have had many iterations, introductions and elaborations, but Yeon Sang-Ho has been able to add a fresh new spirit, creating a jumping off point from which new stories can be told.

Score: 22/24

Written by Kae M.

Recommended for you: Top 10 Zombie Movies

You can support Kae M. on Twitter – @ultraman1312

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Train to Busan

While a zombie virus breaks out in South Korea, passengers struggle to survive on the train from Seoul to Busan.
Sok-woo, a father with not much time for his daughter, Soo-ahn, are boarding the KTX, a fast train that shall bring them from Seoul to Busan. But during their journey, the apocalypse begins, and most of the earth's population become flesh craving zombies. While the KTX is shooting towards Busan, the passenger's fight for their families and lives against the zombies - and each other. — Anonymus
Life-or-death survival in train bound to Busan. A divorced man, Seok-woo is always caught up at work, leaving him no time to spare with his daughter Su-an. He offers to take her on the train to see her mother in Busan. As the train departs, an abnormal virus spreads from a girl who is infected, and people start to transform to zombies. Will Seok-woo and Su-an make it out alive? TRAIN TO BUSAN is director YEON Sang-ho's debut feature film, who is loved by Cannes with his edgy animation. — Well Go USA Entertainment
TRAIN TO BUSAN is a harrowing zombie horror-thriller that follows a group of terrified passengers fighting their way through a countrywide viral outbreak while trapped on a suspicion-filled, blood-drenched bullet train ride to Busan, a southern resort city that has managed to hold off the zombie hordes... or so everyone hopes. — Official Synopsis
Reluctantly, the divorced father and workaholic hedge-fund manager, Seok-woo, boards the hyper-fast KTX bullet-train from Seoul to Busan accompanied by his estranged young daughter, Su-an, to visit her mother. However, against the backdrop of an unprecedented threat in the shape of a virulent zombie outbreak, a grotesque undead stowaway will soon enmesh both passengers and train crew in a frenzied battle for survival, as one compartment after another succumbs under the sheer volume of the freshly infected flesh-eaters. Suddenly, amid this unrelenting miniature hell on earth, hope seems to lie in the train's final destination; nevertheless, can the few remaining survivors fight to stay alive to the bitter end? — Nick Riganas
A truck approaches a toll booth as it's being sanitized, with several workers cleaning the area in hazmat suits. The truck driver passes through the toll booth and accuses them of slowing him down, but the workers assure him that nothing is wrong, and that the area is just being sanitized as there was a small leak at a nearby nuclear plant. As he passes the toll booth, he is distracted by his ringing phone and accidentally runs over a doe. After inspecting the scene, he gets back in his truck and drives off. However, the doe staggers to its feet despite the crash and turns to reveal that it is infected. Meanwhile, in Seoul, Seok-Woo is a busy fund manager who barely has time for his daughter Su-an, let alone his divorce. After a stressful day at work and accidentally buying Su-an the same birthday present he did last year, Su-an reveals that she wants to visit her mother in Busan. Seok-woo is initially reluctant due to work, but his mother convinces him otherwise by showing him a video of Su-an singing Aloha 'Oe at a school recital (she stops singing in the middle of the song), which he couldn't attend due to work. Out of guilt, Seok-woo books the next KTX train bound for Busan the next morning. Early in the morning, Seok-woo drives Su-an to the station, only to nearly crash into an oncoming horde of ambulances and police cars. As Seok-woo ponders what could be going on, Su-an reaches out the car window and catches an ember in her hand, prompting Seok-woo to notice the burning building in the distance. He remarks that there's something bad going on, but drives to the station regardless. They board the train, which is also occupied by the tough working-class husband Sang-hwa and his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong, a high school baseball team, rich but selfish CEO Yon-suk, and a pair of elderly sisters, In-gil and Jong-gil, and a homeless man who seems to be aware of the zombie situation. As the train prepares to leave, a spasming young woman boards the train with an enormous bite wound on her leg. Outside the train, station manager then signals the KTX to leave, only to notice a group of people on top of the stairs of the station, screaming at something unseen. Su-an watches through the window as the manager is quickly ambushed by a rabid human, which only she witnesses. Frightened, Su-an gets up to go to the bathroom. In the lower numbered cars, a train attendant comes across the infected woman, and she attempts to resuscitate her, only for the woman to complete her transformation. The zombie then latches onto the attendant's neck, who runs into the baseball team's car in a panic. The two then fall to the floor, now both zombies. The two proceed to attack most of the baseball team and creates a horde of zombies in the process -- only four students escape: baseball player Yong-guk, his crush Jin-hee, and two unnamed boys. The zombies race towards the upper compartments and infect everyone in their path, Su-an unwittingly walks towards the lower ones, looking for a bathroom. Seok-woo awakens and notices that Su-an is missing from her seat. He then receives a call from a coworker, who informs him that "violent riots" have erupted around Korea. Soon enough, a group of panicked passengers from the lower compartments rush through past his seat, screaming and running. Now realizing that Su-an may be in danger, Seok-woo runs in the opposite direction and sees Su-an standing right in front of an oncoming horde of zombies. He grabs her, and they are chased by the horde, but Seok-woo successfully reaches his compartment and attempts to barricade it, nearly locking Sang-hwa and Seong-kyeong out in the process. The survivors struggle to barricade the door, then realize that the zombies do not know how to open it, and merely charge at the sight of humans. Seong-kyung uses water and newspapers to cover the windows, which remedies the situation by causing the zombies to think they are not there. The conductor reassures the survivors over the intercom that the train will not go to Busan, but stop at Daegu station, as he has been informed that the military has been dispatched there. Yon-suk calls his company friends and asks about the situation at Daegu, which Seok-woo overhears and deduces from it that all arriving passengers at Daegu will be forcibly quarantined. He makes a private call to a coworker and convinces him to pick him and Su-an up separately so they won't be quarantined. The train then arrives at the abandoned Daegu station, and Seok-woo takes Su-an towards the east exit where they will be picked up, while the others go towards the main exit. The homeless man follows Seok-woo, having overheard his phone call. The three go down the hallway where they see a soldier in the distance. Relieved, Seok-woo tells Su-an to stay where she is, and he rushes towards the soldier for help, only to see that he is injured. The soldier begs them to help him before a horde of infected soldiers round the corner, trampling and consuming him. The rest of the survivors head out the main exit. Towards the bottom of the escalator, the survivors see a large group of uniformed men and realize the soldiers are all infected, and the deployment has failed. Several of the passengers are eaten and infected as they scramble back up the escalator and back into the station. Seok-woo, still inside the station concourse and facing zombies, tells Su-an to run. She does so and bumps into Seong-kyeong and Sang-hwa, who are rushing back to the train with the others. Seong-kyeong takes Su-an and runs to the platform, while Sang-hwa fights off the horde with Seok-woo, Yong-guk, and the two other baseball players. Once they manage to lock the exit door, they run to the train. Yong-guk's two friends are attacked and infected when they reach the platform. Meanwhile, Jin-hee, Yon-suk, and a few others have successfully boarded the train. Seong-kyeong and Su-an are also boarding when a glass bridge above the train shatters and sends zombies raining onto the platform. One of the zombies falls between In-gil and Jong-gil, separating them. Jong-gil is forcibly dragged aboard Jin-hee's compartment, and she watches In-gil, Seong-kyeong, and Su-an run in the opposite direction. Seong-kyeong, Su-an, In-gil, and the homeless man barricade themselves inside a bathroom in one of the lower infected compartments, while Yong-guk, Seok-woo, and Sang-hwa successfully get onto a safe compartment. Sang-hwa calls his wife and realizes she is trapped in the bathroom with a few others. Unwilling to leave them to die, the three of them begin fighting through the lower compartments to rescue them. In the process, they discover the zombies are blind in the dark and only react to sound. They use this to their advantage and manage to rescue them, and they all run together towards the first compartment, where Yon-suk, Jin-hee, Jong-gil, and the manager are. Yong-guk texts Jin-hee that they have rescued the survivors and are headed towards her compartment. When she happily tells the others, they react with hostility and decide to lock the door to their compartment to prevent the group from entering. With the door locked, Yong-guk attempts to break it open, while Seok-woo and Sung-hwa struggle to keep the zombies from entering on the other side. Realizing that there isn't enough time, Sung-hwa tells Seok-woo to take care of his wife and leave him behind to distract the zombies. Seok-woo tearfully apologizes and lets go of the door, dragging Su-an and Seong-kyeong towards the barricaded door. Before he is consumed, Sung-hwa manages to tell his wife the name he chose for their unborn son. The locked door is broken down and the survivors pile into the compartment safely (there is a second door inside the compartment, which they close), although In-gil is not fast enough and she is eaten. Realizing that Sung-hwa and In-gil could have survived as well if the group hadn't barricaded the door, Seok-woo angrily punches Yon-suk and demands to know why he did such a thing. Unwilling to answer, Yon-suk lies to the others and insists that Seok-woo and his allies are infected. Instilling fear inside the initial group that barricaded the door, they force Seok-woo and the group that just entered the compartment (now joined by Jin-hee) into the hallway between their compartment and the conductor's car. Once they are forced out, Yon-suk and the others use their neckties and shirts to tie down the knob and prevent them from coming back in. Jong-gil, still shocked and silent from seeing her sister die needlessly, notices In-gil's face in the crowd of zombies in the door window. She tells her infected sister that she lived a long and fulfilling life, and realizes that the compartment group's actions have led to her sister's death. Out of anger and defeat, Jong-gil opens the door, allowing the zombies to flood the safe compartment. The survivors inside the hallway can only watch as the group is eaten inside the compartment -- they see shadows of the passengers desperately clawing at the door they just barricaded in a cruel twist of events. The conductor receives a radio notification that Busan has succeeded in holding off the zombie infection. However, as they approach a station before Busan, the train is cut off by debris on the track. The conductor informs the remaining survivors on the train over the speaker that he will find another train on an unblocked track to drive to Busan and that they should follow him, but wishes them luck, as they will have to exit the train and survive crossing the zombie-filled tracks. He exits his cockpit, and finds an empty path, successfully discovering a cargo train. He starts it up and begins going down the track towards Busan, searching for survivors on the tracks. Seok-woo and the others exit the train, and unbeknownst to them, Yon-suk has survived the horde of zombies in the compartment (by hiding in the bathroom). He also hears the conductor's announcement and fights his way out of the compartment, but several zombies continue chasing him as he gets off. Meanwhile, Seok-woo's group is making their way to the cargo train. Suddenly, a burning freight car rushes towards them, and Jin-Hee and Yong-guk are separated from the group when the runaway freight rams into the cars of a nearby train, which falls and blocks their path. They go into one of the next train cars to cross over to the other side through the door, not noticing that Yon-suk, who is being chased by a zombie, is following them. Yon-suk enters the car and throws Jin-hee behind him, sacrificing her to the zombie. Yong-guk fights the zombie off and collapses to the ground, cradling the spasming Jin-hee in his arms. Yon-suk ignores them and manages to pry the door open and runs towards the cargo train. As Jin-hee chokes and begins to turn, Yong-guk begins to cry, asking why fate had to be like this. He apologizes to Jin-hee for not telling her how he felt about her, as she fully turns and consumes his face and throat. Yon-suk runs towards the cargo train, but twists his ankle on the tracks, and one of the zombies following him manages to bite his ankle. The conductor rushes off the car to help, but Yon-suk betrays him and throws him aside to the zombies like he did with Jin-hee. He ignores the conductor's screams for help as he boards the train alone. Meanwhile, the homeless man, Su-an, Seok-woo, and Seong-kyeong are on the other side of the wreckage, trapped under a train full of zombies. The windows of the train threaten to collapse at any moment. Seok-woo finds an opening under the train and begins to climb under it, but a part of the train collapses and seals the hole before the other three can make it through. The impact also shatters a window, and a small group of zombies tumble out and crawl towards the three. However, the homeless man sacrifices himself to the zombies at the last minute, allowing enough time for Seok-woo to pull the debris away, and for Seong-kyeong and Su-an to escape. They run towards the cargo train and get on the outdoor platform of it. Seok-woo approaches the cockpit but backs away when he sees Yon-suk in the conductor's seat, milky-eyed and infected. He initially shuts the door, but Yon-suk opens it in spite of being a zombie -- the infection has not reached his brain. Yon-suk approaches Seok-woo and begs him to take him home to Busan, speaking like a little boy and reciting his address and the name of his mother. Seok-woo tells him he is infected, and Yon-suk is momentarily shocked, and he weeps, but within seconds, he is fully turned. Seok-woo begins to struggle with the zombified Yon-suk and nearly falls off the ledge of the car. Su-an screams on the other side of the car platform, which attracts Yon-suk and he attempts to attack Seong-kyeong and Su-an. However, Seok-woo intervenes, and his hand is severely bitten. He manages to throw Yon-suk off the car but notices his injury. Aware that he will turn very soon, he seats Su-an and Seong-kyeong in the cockpit and tells them how to use the brakes once they get to Busan station. He then tries to leave the car, but Su-an begs him to stay and reveals that on the day of her recital, she did not finish singing Aloha 'Oe because she didn't see Seok-woo in the audience -- she had been saving the song for her father. The two have a tearful farewell, and Seok-woo holds Su-an's small hands in his for a moment, before throwing them aside and locking himself out of the cockpit. Su-an begins to scream and cry for him to come back. As the infection spreads, Seok-woo sobs as he walks towards the end of the train car, clutching his bloody hand. Su-an continues to cry for him inside the cockpit, as Seong-kyeong tries to hold her back. He slowly approaches the back of the train car, fighting the infection, and begins thinking of when Su-an was an infant. Recalling his happiest memories of cradling her and holding her small fingers and toes (as he did in the cockpit before), the infection takes hold, his eyes going white and veins going dark. However, in spite of being fully zombified, Seok-woo continues thinking of Su-an and he smiles happily towards the sky before falling off the car and onto the tracks (it is left ambiguous as to whether this was due to his body spasming, or him jumping off the car in an act of suicide to keep Su-an and Seong-kyeong safe). The train car finally arrives at the tunnel leading to Busan station. However, the track is blocked off with debris. The two exit the car and begin walking down the tunnel, not aware that they are being watched on the other side by the Busan military. One of the snipers reports their approach to his superior and is told to shoot them down, as they cannot tell in the dark whether they are infected or not. Just as the sniper is about to pull the trigger, Su-an begins to mournfully sing Aloha 'Oe to rally the exhausted Seong-kyeong to walk to the end of the tunnel. Hearing her song, the soldiers realize they are not infected and rush to their aid.

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Kim Su-an, Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, Sohee, and Choi Woo-sik in Train to Busan (2016)

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Train to Busan review – Korean zombies-on-a-train movie is a terrific ride

Yeon Sang-ho’s live-action debut delivers on its delicious premise, as a father and his daughter have to survive carriages of the enraged undead

A n unimpeachable mega-hit in its native Korea, Yeon Sang-ho’s horror-thriller floats a delicious premise – zombies on a train – delivered on several times over. Its pleasures are as much logistical as visceral: after a biotech leak, our hero – callow financier Seok, shepherding a young daughter towards an estranged wife – is confronted by the old Southern Rail trains problem of how to navigate entire carriages of violently enraged shufflers (one hint: luggage racks). Making his live-action debut, Yeon – who animated 2011’s memorably grim The King of Pigs – stages thumping close-quarters action, but also manages numerous deft, affecting manoeuvres with characters drawn from a cross-section of Korean society. We’re bound for an extraordinary rail-yard finale that involves seemingly half the country’s population and a living-versus-undead dust-up atop a runaway loco, but Yeon keeps us guessing until the nervy closing seconds. It’s a delayed arrival, but here, finally, is the summer blockbuster for which we’ve all been waiting.

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Review: All Aboard ‘Train to Busan’ for Zombie and Class Warfare

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

July 21, 2016

Elite passengers on a South Korean bullet train face a twitching, hissing threat from the cheap seats in “ Train to Busan ,” a public-transportation horror movie with a side helping of class warfare.

The setup is lean and clean. A flattened deer, mowed down in a quarantine zone in Seoul where some kind of chemical spill has occurred (echoes of Bong Joon-ho’s 2007 enviro-horror film, “The Host” ), springs back to life. Then, in just a few swiftly efficient scenes, we meet a harried hedge-fund manager and his small, sad daughter (Gong Yoo and an amazing Kim Su-ahn), see them settled on the titular locomotive and watch in dismay as a vividly unwell last-minute passenger lurches onboard. And we’re off!

Sprinting right out of the gate, the director, Yeon Sang-ho, dives gleefully into a sandbox of spilled brains and smug entitlement. (“In the old days, they’d be re-educated,” one biddy remarks upon spying an undesirable fellow traveler.) As zombies chomp and multiply, an assortment of regular folks face them down while furthering an extended critique of corporate callousness. The politics are sweet, but it’s the creatures that divert. Eyes like Ping-Pong balls and spines like rubber — I’d wager more than a few chiropractors were required on the set — they attack in seizures of spastic energy. They’re like break-dancing corpses.

Often chaotic but never disorienting, the movie’s spirited set pieces — like a wriggling ribbon of undead clinging doggedly to the last compartment — owe much to Lee Hyung-deok’s wonderfully agile cinematography. Dipping and levitating, his camera injects air into tunnels and washrooms and luggage compartments, giving the action a hurtling vigor. Even more impressive is the train itself: marveling at its freakishly strong doors and dedicated staff, you might find yourself mourning the state of our own rail services more than the fate of the characters.

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Review: Train to Busan

The zombie genre was an inevitable perfect fit for South Korea’s Yeon Sang-ho. Flesh-eating films have long had a current of social commentary running through them, from George Romero to The Walking Dead , the post-apocalypse is a mirror to our own world. Yeon’s animated debut The King of Pigs tackled bullying and systemic poverty, while his follow-up The Fake took a swing at organised religion. TRAIN TO BUSAN (부산행) takes a much broader approach, pitching classes against each other as they are attacked by cannibalistic crazies within the confines of public transport.

Like many of these things, it begins quietly, albeit with a zombie deer on the fringes of a contamination zone. Against the backdrop of some strange happenings in Seoul, fund manager Seok-Woo (Gong Woo) is too wrapped up in his own career to spend time with his daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an), but agrees to accompany her on a birthday train trip to visit his estranged wife in Busan. However, when a single infected passenger sneaks aboard the high-speed KTX, all hell breaks loose as the healthy travellers board themselves up, fighting off the hungry hoards until they reach their final destination.

There’s a 28 Days Later level of intensity to TRAIN TO BUSAN , partly thanks to the terrifyingly rapid speed at which the fallen humans convert to zombies. Throughout the film, moments of silence are punctuated by focused tension, whether it is a speeding fire truck or an oncoming horde of the undead. This carries over to the biggest set piece of the film, the primary bit of train travel, and a series of brutal attacks as a small group attempts to make its way through the carriages to relative safety. Park Joo-suk’s script spends a little too much time languishing in the second act, where repetition takes over from the initial scares, but they all serve to demonstrate the ugly side of humanity that rears its head in times of crisis.

As such, TRAIN TO BUSAN ticks off the mandatory characters in the canon: there’s young love, a high-school baseball team, elderly sisters, the muscle, and the outraged businessman. There’s even a pregnant woman on board, although Yeon wisely chooses to avoid placing any pets in peril. While these character ornaments would be purely perfunctory in most zombie flicks, and they are here to some extent, Yeon is making a very sweeping statement about the structure of the classes in South Korean society. The over-the-top corporate COO, who quite literally throws fellow survivors under a train for his own preservation, is an easy allegory for the super rich being able to manipulate the masses around him into blindly following.

On other levels, Yeon’s film is technically inventive and stylish. Wide city shots effectively convey the epic and ubiquitous nature of the epidemic, and give a sense of grandeur to the otherwise confined plotting. The clever use of light, as the survivors take advantage of the darkness of the tunnels to evade the monsters, is one of cool additions to the canon. As the film reaches one of many dramatic climaxes, there’s almost too much happening in the final third. Indeed, once the action leaves the train proper, Yeon lurches from one disaster to the next as it builds towards an emotionally overwrought denouement.

While Hollywood is no doubt battling for the remake rights, TRAIN TO BUSAN can stand alone as a tense dissection of the South Korean class system and a ripping zombie film premise. Keen fans wanting to see more can keep it in the family with the animated film Seoul Station , Yeon’s prequel to the events of this film. While this may not change the way you think about zombie films forever, and it certainly feels cleaner than the gore fest we see in mainstream Western outings, it’s a energetic action thriller that can proudly sit beside its contemporaries.

About The Author

Richard Gray

Editor of TheReelBits . You can see Richard's unfiltered train of thought on Twitter @DVDBits . His complete film diary is on Letterboxd . Richard's book, Moving Target: The History and Evolution of Green Arrow is out now from Sequart .

Train to Busan

Review by brian eggert december 13, 2016.

Zombies become relevant, even vital again in Train to Busan ( Busan haeng ), a tense horror story that unfolds with breakneck pacing and unexpected emotional substance. South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho makes a leap from animation to his first live-action feature, delivering a decidedly commercial project compared to his earlier releases. Yeon’s The King of Pigs (2011) and The Fake (2013) took probing and acerbic looks at bullying, poverty, and religion, while his other 2016 work, Seoul Station , dealt with a zombie outbreak in less straightforward terms—all of them animated. The director makes a graceful transition to live-action with this debut, as Train to Busan proves far more accessible and purely entertaining, while also containing the social commentaries and grim view of humanity for which the director is known. A mixture of perfectly calibrated scares, unlikely laughter, rage over social injustice, and even a few tears combine into a wholly satisfying experience.

Delivering his country’s biggest box-office performer of the year with more than $90 million in receipts in S. Korea alone, Yeon’s international hit has already sold its English-language remake rights to France’s Gaumont—despite not having a sizeable U.S. theatrical release. Imagining a successful remake is difficult, beyond the usual unlikelihood of a worthwhile rehash (see Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy for evidence), since Train to Busan ’s considerable subtext reflects a number of issues specific to Yeon’s home country. After the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) swept through S. Korea in 2015, stories of nationwide terror and plague hysteria consumed the headlines. Add to this an already prevalent national discussion about a division between social and economic classes, and suddenly a foundation emerges for a zombie allegory of better-than-average intelligence.

Juggling his ex-wife and cushy career as a fund manager in Seoul, workaholic Seok-wu (Gong Yoo) neglects his young daughter Soo-an (Kim Su-an, excellent). Only after botching her birthday gift and breaking her heart does he agree to deliver Soo-an to her mother in Busan, over two-hundred miles away. But their journey is just over an hour on S. Korea’s KTX high-speed train, which they board amid vague news reports of rioting and contagion throughout the country. Audiences have already seen glimpses of the zombie outbreak by now, including some uncertain allusions to a research facility leak as the cause. But in true zombie horror tradition, the source doesn’t matter much once fast-moving flesh-eaters start biting and adding to their rampant horde. The zombies themselves are scary and reminiscent of those in World War Z (2013), screeching and piling over each other in a rabid attempt to blindly attack anything that moves.

And so, our sense of dread is very real when a near-dead bite victim boards the same train as Seok-wu and Soo-an. Once the train’s attendants lock the exits, there’s no escape; the zombie chaos spreads. Seok-wu’s self-interest hangs over his every action and, at one point, he tells his daughter, “At a time like this, only watch out for yourself.” Fortunately, other passengers prove less cynical and build Train to Busan ’s rather affecting theme about the importance of helping others in times of crisis. Among the most enjoyable characters are the blue-collar Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok) and his pregnant wife Sung-kyung (Jung Yu-mi), who remain unafraid to scorn Seok-wu for his petty behavior and, at first, act as surrogates to Soo-an. If the parents-to-be represent how Seok-wu should aspire to behave, then the entitled executive Yong-suk (Kim Eui-sung) represents the lowest point of humanity. A detestable character on par with Paul Reiser’s turn in Aliens (1986), Yong-suk cruelly uses his influence to ensure his own survival.

Yeon makes the most of the claustrophobic zombies-on-a-train concept, blending human drama with effective, genuine shocks in cramped spaces. But there’s plenty of action off-train too, using elaborate and impressive set pieces to explore the concept to its fullest. Occasionally the special FX threaten to call too much attention to themselves, but even amid a wowing derailment and swarms of zombies, screenwriter Park Joo-suk never forgets about the characters. Ma plays an affable and chummy tough guy reminiscent of Russell Crowe, and Gong’s father role affords a satisfying redemption arc. Kim’s rather awful corporate bastard may aggravate you, but he’s the sort of villain whose eventual comeuppance proves oh-so-satisfying. However, the best character must be Soo-an, whose tearful rendition of “Aloha ʻOe” won’t leave a dry eye in the house.

Train to Busan defies the notion that all has been said and done when it comes to zombies. It begins with an unrelenting setup, and the second half only becomes more complex, frightening, and emotionally involved as it goes—a strange rarity for zombie films today. After all, when AMC’s The Walking Dead pushes new boundaries with each new episode, zombie stories on film could hardly expect to compete, much less equal classics like George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1979), or even the newer 28 Days Later (2004) by Danny Boyle or Shaun of the Dead (2004) by Edgar Wright. But Yeon finds a way of delivering well-established genre elements within an exciting and resonating framework. He turns predictable tropes into an urgent rollercoaster for genre enthusiasts, and a curious but rewarding ride for fans of blockbuster-sized entertainment.

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‘Train to Busan’ is a Case Study in Meaningful Character Death

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video that explores a scene from Train to Busan.

If you haven’t seen Train to Busan , now is the time to close this window and open your home video provider of choice. This is one of the best zombie films of the 21st century, a rare blend of action and horror that delivers on thrills and chills in equal measure. It also answers the question “what if a bad dad became a better person while zombies invaded a train?”

It rules. Watch it.

I’m being insistent because we’re going to talk about character death. Which means spoilers abound from here on out. Death, and more specifically the death of characters we care about, is a constant in zombie movies. Loss is the implied threat and emotional backbone of the genre. Ragtag survivors, be they loved ones or newly allied strangers, are not all going to make it out alive.

Which brings us to Train to Busan, a zombie movie with character deaths that are emotional, satisfying, and, more to the point, meaningful. These aren’t deaths for death’s sake. After all, killing a character doesn’t mean anything if we don’t care about them. Train to Busan knows this and presents us with people, good and evil, who resonate and feel real, from soft, strong martyrs to selfish survivalists.

As the video essay below explains, if characters don’t feel alive, to begin with, then their deaths will be of little consequence. Looking at Train to Busan as a narrative cause study, the essay focuses on the character arcs and deaths of three main characters, ultimately arguing that the latter informs the former, underscoring morals, beliefs, and whether they’ve weathered or succumbed to the pressures of catastrophe.

Watch “ Train to Busan : How to Kill a Character “:

Who made this?

This video was created by Accented Cinema , a Canadian-based YouTube video essay series with a focus on foreign cinema. You can subscribe to Accented on Cinema for bi-weekly uploads here . You can follow them on Twitter here .

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Review: train to busan (south korea, 2016).

World War Z meets Snowpiercer in this Korean zombie blockbuster.

By Anthony Kao , 19 Sep 16 05:48 GMT

Imagine World War Z and Snowpiercer mashed together. That roughly describes Train to Busan , the highest grossing South Korean film of 2016. With almost $100 million in box office earnings and over ten million domestic viewers, the movie is not only an entertaining blockbuster, but also a remarkable live-action debut for a director who previously was known exclusively for dark, socially critical animated features.

Train to Busan stars Gong Yoo (best known for his breakout role in the drama The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince ) as a hedge fund manager named Seok-woo who decides to take his young daughter Soo-an (played by the ten-year old Kim Soo-an) from Seoul to the southern city of Busan to see his ex-wife. As they depart on the KTX (South Korea’s high-speed rail line), Seoul erupts into a zombie apocalypse and their train becomes a speeding safe haven. However, that doesn’t last for long. A single zombie makes it onto the train and starts infecting passengers. This forces Seok-woo, Soo-an, and other survivors to quarantine themselves in uninfected cars and fight for survival.

As expected from a zombie apocalypse movie, there’s a gratuitous amount of violence and many shots of rolling zombie hordes a la World War Z or 28 Days Later . The film maintains a high degree of suspense throughout. It also creates both likeable and absolutely despicable characters for audiences to root for, cry about, or hate. With such an altogether entertaining makeup, it’s not surprising that Train to Busan sold so many tickets.

Interestingly, this represents a significant change for Yeon Sang-ho, the film’s director. Before this, Yeon had only made short films and animated features, none of which were box office flops. His two features King of Pigs and The Fake (which we reviewed last year) , are blisteringly dark and deal with mature, controversial themes like the hollowness of religion, domestic abuse, bullying, and class divides — hardly the stuff that attracts mass audiences.

However, signs of Yeon’s guiding hand are evident in Train to Busan if you look deeper. Like another well-known Korean train movie, Snowpiercer (directed by Bong Joon-ho), Train to Busan incorporates elements of class warfare and uses the claustrophobic setting of a speeding train to amplify the darker angels of human nature.

The Korean government is largely absent or, if present, unhelpful — the only time a government representative comes on TV, he tells people that the situation is under control when it clearly isn’t. Amidst the chaos, a ruthless businessman takes command of one of the train cars and orders the crew around to the whims of his self-interest. The hordes of zombies are juxtaposed against symbols of Korea’s material wealth — the shiny KTX train cars, immaculately designed train stations. It’s an ironic image: despite their outward trappings of civilization and modernity, the people are still monsters.

People being monsters — you could say that’s the unifying theme of Yeon Sang-ho’s work. With recent events in Korea, perhaps people are now more receptive to what he has to offer. When you have the nation’s Prime Minister calling 99% of the population “dogs and pigs” , an overloaded ferry sinking due to corporate greed , and public distrust of the government’s ability to handle viral outbreaks , maybe a zombie apocalypse starts to have some appeal.

If you enjoyed Train to Busan , consider watching:

Seoul Station : Yeon Sang-ho actually made this animated prequel to Train to Busan and also released it this summer. For all of Train to Busan’s success, this prequel has gotten surprisingly little publicity.
The Fake : Yeon’s second full feature, a biting and thoughtful satire of organized religion.
Doomsday Book : Train to Busan is actually NOT the first South Korean movie to feature a zombie apocalypse — Doomsday Book is.
Snowpiercer : A Korean-produced English-language movie (starring Chris Evans) that depicts a class struggle aboard a train speeding through an icy post-apocalyptic Earth. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also made Memories of Murder and The Host (the latter, which is essentially a South Korean Godzilla, is also worth watching).

Train to Busan (Korean: 부산행)– Dialog in Korean. Directed by Yeon Sang-ho. First released 20 July 2016. Running time 1hr 58min. Starring Gong Yoo, Kim Soo-an, Jung Yu-mi, and Ma Dong-seok.

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Train to Busan: Action-Horror and Class Critique

A ragged-looking man cowers in a train-car’s bathroom. All that can be seen of him are his trembling hands––his face shrouded by his long hair and downturned gaze. The man mumbles: “All dead… Everyone…” The cabin attendant stands at the bathroom door, along with Soo-an (Kim Soo-Ahn), a young girl traveling to visit her mother, and Yon-suk (Eui Sung-kim), who had requested the attendant to check for someone “odd” on board. The attendant asks the disheveled man for his ticket, and warns him that he will be escorted off at the next station. To this cautionary advice, the man turns his gaze towards the attendant, eyes full of fear. “Everyone’s dead!” he mutters, only a little louder, repeating himself at the beckoning of the attendant, this time with a strange smile. Soo-a stares down at the man, turning around to the older man behind her who advises her: “If you don’t study, you’ll end up like him.” She replies with no hesitation: “Mom said whoever says that is a bad person.” Train to Busan (dir. Yeon Sang-ho, 2016) presents South Korea at the onset of a zombie apocalypse, and does so with refreshing ingenuity. But what makes Sang-ho’s vision of a world in outbreak so compelling is its particular focus on class, making for an exciting action movie and a nuanced exploration of social ills. This aforementioned scene encapsulates the film’s ethos, which questions the dynamics of morality and social status: the elderly versus the youth or the rich versus the working class. What makes a zombie apocalypse so terrifying? In Train to Busan, it’s not just the un-dead but the living––a rupture of normalcy brings out the worst in humans, making us victims of our own narcissism.

Train to Busan tells the story of Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), a fund-manager, and his daughter Soo-an. Occupied by his job, Seok-woo is emotionally absent in Soo-an’s life. After missing Soo-an’s singing recital, he gives her a Wii for her birthday. He makes a careless mistake: she already owns the exact model, gifted to her for Children’s Day. Seok-woo’s brand of consumerist love, and capitalist individualism is quickly tested once he and Soo-an board the high-speed train from Seoul to Busan.

The two are faced with a zombie outbreak that is fast and uncontrollable. Unlike the slow-infection time in some other popular depictions––say AMC’s The Walking Dead ––once these zombies bite, death is near. The infected come back to life contorting in inhuman angles, horror made visceral through the audible snaps of shattering bone. Evolving from human to carnivorous monster in a matter of seconds, the undead are frightening. They are a physical manifestation of contagion, to which fear is rooted in the unknown.

Early on in the train’s outbreak, Seok-woo instructs his daughter: “At a time like this, you only look out for yourself.” Soo-an affirms her humanistic morals later, criticizing her father: “You only care about yourself. That’s why mommy left.” Soo-an is right, and she exists in the film as the audience’s moral grounding, a figure of youth uncorrupted by society’s capitalistic values. The comparisons between zombie and corporate businessmen are with purpose; Seok-woo is described by passenger Sang-hwa (Dong-Seok Ma) as a “bloodsucker.” Corporate corruption causes the outbreak––Seok-woo himself is complicit, having sold shares at the company from whose chemical leaks produced the fatal virus.

Train to Busan doesn’t offer entirely satisfying deaths; that is, morality doesn’t always triumph. There are those whose kind-hearted nature remain intact amidst the chaos, or those who undergo moralistic revision, like Seok-woo, who recognizes the faults of his greed. And there are those who are wholly infected by their narcissism, like COO of Stallion Express Yon-suk. Yon-suk manipulates others at the expense of people’s lives, all for his own well-being. Though he is arguably the most terrifying embodiment of capitalist hegemony and human selfishness, his dishonesty takes him far. His character arc proves the most disheartening of lessons, painting a picture of South Korea’s social ills along the way.

Yeon Sang-ho’s zombie apocalypse is not entirely without hope. Tragedy brings out not just the worst, but the best in people. Seok-woo’s character arc is the main thrust of the story, and it is one of moral redemption. Beginning the film as a selfish, emotionally detached father, he transforms into a self-sacrificing hero, saving others and realizing how important Soo-an is to him. In the face of the current pandemic, Train to Busan offers innumerable parallels to today’s anxieties. It can however, also offer us hope––humans are also capable of selflessness.

* Train to Busan is available to stream on Viki or on Amazon Prime. It is also available to stream for free with ads on Tubi.

Sources/Further Readings

Catsoulis, Jeanette. “Review: All Aboard ‘Train to Busan’ for Zombie and Class Warfare.” The New York Times , 21 July 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/movies/train-to-busan-review.html . Accessed 5 November 2020.

Kermode, Mark. “Train to Busan review – a nonstop zombie thrill ride.” The Guardian , 30 October 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/30/train-to-busan-review-nonstop-thrill-ride-zombies . Accessed 5 November 2020.

‘Train to Busan’ review — A surprisingly unique and entertaining zombie flick

Train to busan is a heart-pounding, armrest-gripping, teeth clenching zombie flick that breathes new life into the genre..

Just when the zombie genre seemed on its way out, then along rolls in Train to Busan . This South Korean production breathes a new life into the genre without straying too far out of its confines. The rules set in place in this world are a little updated from the usual and refreshingly there are no guns. Not only does that raise the stakes, it makes for action like no other zombie movie I’ve seen. It is one of the best, if not the best, zombie movie since 28 Days Later. Taking place in Seoul, South Korea, Train to Busan follows Seok-Woo ( Gong Yoo ), a fund manager, and father to Soo-an ( Kim Su-an ). In typical horror movie fashion, he’s a terrible father. So terrible that he gives his daughter a birthday present she already has while she begs to see her mother in Busan the next day to celebrate. Looking to appease his daughter, early the next morning he takes her on a KTX bullet train to Busan. Little do they know a chemical spill nearby has caused a wave of infected people. Little do they know, an infected person made it on the train. This swift and quick setup is not only refreshing but integral to setting the pace of the story. As the lower class cars fall to the zombie outbreak, the forward class cabins fight to keep the undead out and escape.

Train to Busan is such an interesting study on the application of a genre. All the facets of a zombie horror movie are there – the absentee dad, the plot-point child, a pregnant woman, a more than capable fighter. However, the way that the movie applies these characters and throws them into the story is quite interesting. The first 45 minutes of the movie can’t help but draw comparisons to 2013’s Snowpiercer. Both movies take place on a train, involve commentary on class warfare, and involve fighting to get to the front of the train. Except, Train to Busan replaces rebels with zombies. However, both have a similar forward momentum that feels fast, efficient, and damn right thrilling.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the movie is its update of the traditional rules of zombie movies. While they are sensitive to sound, they are also more affected by their vision. At one point, a character puts newspaper over a window and the zombies instantly stop their pursuit. It’s a fun rule that’s put to great use a few times. It’s also very refreshing to have zombie movie where there aren’t any guns. At one point, a group of characters makes an all out dash for another car, the all-out assault on the zombies in their way is not only impressive but incredibly entertaining. The creature design is also really marvelous and terrifying. It perfectly compliments the violence of the transformation into a zombie, which we get to witness a few times. What the movie does pull directly from other movies — World War Z to be specific—is the flood of zombies. However, here it’s done on a smaller scale, which makes it look more realistic and all the more terrifying.

While yes, Train to Busan does eventually give into genre cliches – slow reaction times, horror movie logic—the first half of the movie is strong enough to plow through them. Even though some characters feel familiar, you come to actually care about the right people. By the end of the movie, you become so attached that the tension is almost unbearable. But that’s what we’re looking for, right? The amount of energy that director Yeon Sang-ho is able to infuse into Train to Busan is a welcome change from the stop and go nature of recent entries in the genre. Some wonky translations and frustrating decisions aside, the movie invigorates a genre on the way out. Sure, it completely owes a lot of itself to movies that came before it— World War Z, 28 Days Later— but it does enough on its own to warrant respect all on its own. Needless to say, I am all onboard with Train to Busan.

★★★★ out of five

Train to Busan is available to rent and buy on Amazon!

Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 12 Years A Slave Movie Review — A Beautiful, Unflinching Film
Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 2014 Oscar Nominations: Snubs and Surprises
Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 2014 Oscar Predictions: Best Picture (Updated 2/16)
Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 2014 Oscar Predictions: Best Director (Is Alfonso Cuarón a Lock to Win?)

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Train to Busan

Review by Mike Tsenti

Directed by

Sang-ho Yeon

Soo-an Kim Yoo Gong Yu-mi Jeong

Anticipation.

Broke box office records in South Korea.

Zombies on a train is as fun as it sounds.

In Retrospect.

Funny, scary and with its heart in the right place.

The Korean smash hit in which a battle against zombie hoards takes place on a commuter train.

N arcissistic divorced father Seok Woo (Yoo Gong) is taking his daughter, Soo-an, (a brilliant Kim Su-An) to see her mother as a birthday surprise. They’re catching the train from Seoul to Busan, unaware of a zombie outbreak that has started to rip through Korea. That is until a hungry passenger jumps on board. Once the first victim has her flesh chewed on, the film hits full pelt with very few chances to catch a breath till the finale.

What makes the zombies in Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan different to the usual flesh munchers is that they don’t seem interested in tearing their victims to gory shreds. They take a little nibble and then are off on to the next person, turning everyone they bite into one of their own in seconds. This makes the speed in which the outbreak sweeps across Korea all the more believable and all the more horrifying. The zombies also only react to sound or if a person is in their line of sight involve for some creative manoeuvre, most effectively when the train passes through tunnels. Contorting their bodies, baring their teeth and sprinting through the carriages looking for their next chew toy, Yeon has created his own chilling version of the living dead.

The real core of the movie, though, lies in its well developed characters. When a bored Soo-an decides to explore the train, she comes into contact with other characters who help the story to progress. The encounters are comedic and this helps make the characters more engaging. But as the zombie attacks take place, the survivors start to reveal their true colours, showing those who only help others and those who only help themselves. Through paranoia, herd mentality and selfishness, the true villains of the film emerge.

The film does fall short at some points. Confusingly, at the beginning, when the first infected person is revealed to us, the change takes place over a long period of time. Later, when a poor stewardess meets her demise, she turns almost instantly. It doesn’t make much sense other than Yeon trying to build tension before the action kicks in. And a moment involving some news about the outbreak just feels like it’s in there to direct some blame, but it is unnecessary at the point when it’s revealed.

Train to Busan has an underlying commentary about class divisions. It shows how the elitist characters, Seok Woo and Young Suk (the type of man willing to do anything to survive), act like they have a right to decide who lives and dies to protect themselves, the former changing his ways as the film progresses. The other characters are just normal people from lower or middle class backgrounds, who see the effectiveness of working together in the face of crisis, willing to sacrifice themselves to help their loved ones as well as the strangers they’ve just met.

Published 27 Oct 2016

Tags: South Korean Cinema

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Train to busan, common sense media reviewers.

South Korean zombie action film is intense, bloody, violent.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Teamwork, courage, compassion, and communication a

Seok-woo is a busy fund manager who is separated f

Intense scenes of zombie horror throughout. The ac

Some flirting between teens.

Infrequent language includes "arse," "s--t," "bull

Visible brands include Burger King, Audi, and Nint

Positive Messages

Teamwork, courage, compassion, and communication are all shown to help in desperate situations.

Positive Role Models

Seok-woo is a busy fund manager who is separated from his wife and has been missing key events in his daughter's life. He accompanies his daughter, Su-an, on a train journey to see her mom for Su-an's birthday. When the train is overrun with zombies, he teams up with other characters who risk their lives to save others and have smart solutions to problems. Su-an is thoughtful and kind. The train conductor is diligent, dedicated, thoughtful, and resourceful. One character causes the deaths of others to save himself.

Violence & Scariness

Intense scenes of zombie horror throughout. The action is frantic and often features blood and gore. A burning train crashes and people fall from a helicopter. Buildings explode. Zombies are attacked with baseball bats. Hordes of zombies rampage through cities and attack people.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent language includes "arse," "s--t," "bulls--t," "pissing," "a--hole," "bitch," and "hell." "Jesus" is used as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Visible brands include Burger King, Audi, and Nintendo. A kid is given a Nintendo Wii and a DS, and a DS poster also features.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Train to Busan is an excellent South Korean zombie horror -- with English subtitles -- that features frantic, bloody violence, and intense scenes in enclosed spaces. Despite the intensity it is more of a fun action movie than a chilling horror. Zombies kill many people and they in turn instantly become zombies. The movie features scenes of civil unrest, a train crash, and people falling from helicopters. Most characters are courageous and resourceful. Teamwork, courage, compassion, and communication help train passengers under siege from zombies to get out of desperate situations. A father, Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), takes care of his daughter, Su-an (Su-an Kim), and forms a group with survivors to help others escape. One character lets others die to save himself. Infrequent strong language includes "bulls--t," "bitch," and "arse." A few brands feature in the movie, including Burger King, Audi, and Nintendo. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (7)
Kids say (13)

Based on 7 parent reviews

A tense train ride!

I love how good the zombies looked and also it was really sad and made me cry also was really cool

What's the Story?

In TRAIN TO BUSAN, a father and daughter's journey is disrupted when a zombie outbreak occurs on their train and they are forced to fight back.

Is It Any Good?

The zombie genre is so well worn, anything fresh to sink your teeth into is always darkly delicious. As such, writer-director Sang-ho Yeon's smashing together of the disaster movie genre with modern running zombies -- and all the frantic, breathless action they bring with them -- makes Train to Busan a treat for fans of both genres. Here a diverse group of people are brought together to fend off zombies on a very narrow train. This includes Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) and his young daughter, Su-an (a brilliant Su-an Kim). Throwing a kid in the mix adds heft to the drama, as does pregnant character, Seong-kyeong ( Yu-mi Jung ). When key events kick off midway, the realization that you've grown to care for the main gang serves to up the emotional investment as the action continues to escalate.

Setting it apart from most horror movies, nearly all the action in Train to Busan takes place in daylight, adding an eerie, mundane quality. The sleepy train carriages are easily recognizable until the blood baths occur. Masterful touches such as having a baseball team onboard to add a believable reason for the survivors to have access to weapons is simply a delight. More an action thrill ride than a chilling horror, this is a refreshing and exhilarating movie that packs a few emotional punches alongside its blood-soaked action.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Train to Busan 's violence . Did the blood and gore seem over the top? Was it shocking or thrilling? Why? Does exposure to violent media desensitize kids to violence?

How did this movie compare to other zombie films? Was it more or less intense? What's the appeal of zombie movies in general?

Discuss the father-daughter relationship between Seok-woo and Su-an. How did it change throughout the course of the movie?

Movie Details

In theaters : July 22, 2016
On DVD or streaming : December 6, 2016
Cast : Gong Yoo , Su-an Kim , Jung Yu-mi
Director : Sang-ho Yeon
Inclusion Information : Asian actors
Studio : Well Go USA Entertainment
Genre : Horror
Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires , Trains
Character Strengths : Communication , Compassion , Courage , Teamwork
Run time : 118 minutes
MPAA rating : NR
Last updated : February 25, 2024

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2016 Korean blockbuster Train to Busan is a fast-paced story about an outbreak of a disease that immediately turns people into zombies. A girl bitten by a zombie catches a train to Busan and her transformation into a zombie infects others on the train in a chain reaction. Soon the train has the infected carriages and the carriages with healthy people. Owing to a series of unfortunate circumstances, the ineptness of authorities, and egotism, all the people on the train turn into zombies and only a pregnant woman and a little girl manage to escape from the horrific train and get to safety. Train to Busan was shot after a ferry disaster in 2014 and an outbreak of respiratory disease in 2015 when the government remained passive and not helpful in terms of the whole country. Furthermore, the zombie is a societal response to the pressures and hardships of modern life. Coming from cities zombies react to work overload, consumerism, and a loss of friendly communication between people. Therefore, zombies in Train to Busan represent the blind fate that cannot discern between people and affects everyone around and simultaneously reflects the pressure people feel daily due to excessive consumerism and hard work whereas those in power stay idle and take care only of themselves in the face of danger.

There are several ways of how the zombie can be interpreted. First of all, the zombie comes from the city and it can indicate the hardships of urban life. People feel lonely and isolated and, as compensation, engage in work, thus becoming more robot-like than human. Electronic gadgets become an essential part of human life and serve as a primary means of receiving news and information. When people stare at their screens, they look like zombies with vacant eyes and rigid poses. Next, people compensate the emptiness they feel with excessive consuming, which makes them like zombies because they forsake natural human pleasures such as being outdoors and communicating with close ones. Finally, people work more in order to make money which they can later spend on consuming goods and products. Incessant work also turns humans into zombies who do not care about their relatives. Referring to the people in the city, the bum in the film says, “Everybody is dead,” which can be applied both to the zombies and the zombie-like people who work too much, buy too much, and spend too much time online.

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Another feature of the zombie in the film is that they cannot see and they react to sounds and movements rather than visual stimulation. In this case, the zombie can represent fate which is blind and does not see its victims. They walk around with their pale-blue unseeing eyes and freeze in darkness when people cover the window glass or spray smoke around. If the zombie signifies something negative, their blindness suggests the unspecific character of the negativity. When the tragedy happens, there is no criterion revealing who will fall victim. Remembering the national tragedy of 2014 when a ferry carrying three hundred people sank, no one could predict that it would happen to these people. Apart from the greediness of the ferry owners and egotism of the ferry crew, there were no reasons for so many people to die. The protagonist in the film, Seok-Woo, says, “They attack because they see us” and the pregnant woman sprays the window glass with water and sticks newspapers to the glass hiding other people from the clawing zombies behind the glass partition. It can be construed that people begin to understand that they should keep a low profile and do anything to stay unnoticed. Otherwise, the fate will see them and do some misfortune.

In the case of large catastrophes, people want to rely on the government who has power and resources and is able to arrange some help. However, the film reveals that the authorities are not trustworthy. On the surface, the government attempts to keep people calm and unpanicked. Showing the footage of the zombie attack on the city, the TV presenter calmly advises, “We must stay calm and trust government” and then renders the government’s announcement, “We believe that your safety is not in jeopardy.” People cannot believe it because they see zombies running wild behind the window and people getting rabid immediately after being bitten. As a result, people cannot trust the authorities and they understand that there is no one to help them. They need to organize their survival on their own and it intensifies their mean and uncivil qualities.

The way the passengers react to the zombie threat reveals that they have lost or have never had their compassion and empathy. Everyone is self-caring and only a little girl feels that people should help one another. Some women also have compassionate attitudes whereas some men reveal their egotistic sides. Individual egotism is often determined by one’s position. Those who are used to power are more arrogant and self-caring than more common people. The protagonist Seok-Woo advises his daughter to stop being polite and “at a time like this only watch out for yourself.” Furthermore, a rich businessman Yon-suk is shown constantly pushing the conductor and the engine driver to save themselves and not to wait for others. Basically, because of egoism and the lack of unity so many people die in the film. Yon-suk insists on blocking the carriage and not letting in a group of escaped passengers, fearing that they may be bitten and may infect all of them. However, his selfish behavior results in the death of the pregnant woman’s husband who had helped everyone and fought zombies.

The fact that the action takes place in South Korea adds to the plot and reveals what fears and anxieties are currently rampant in the country. Having experienced several tragedies in a row, citizens cannot trust the government and people in power. Even when they expect some help, they do not receive it. At the beginning of the film, a train attendant sees a zombie-bitten girl writhing on the floor and transforming into a zombie. She cries helplessly into the walkie-talkie: “Director [of the train], where are you? I don’t believe it.” However, she gets no assistance and is unable to deal with the zombie. Similarly, inept are other official institutions. The control center responds to the passengers’ request by stating that “this is the order from the control center” and they cannot provide them any help. Meanwhile, the TV presenter cheerfully chirps, “Thanks to our government’s rapid response, various outbreaks are being contained.”

As a result, Train to Busan is not a film about heroism and mutual help. Rather, zombies reveal that people forgot how to unite and assist one another. The zombie can be understood as either the mutilating pressure that transforms people into deadly creatures or a blind stroke of fortune that hits humans without discerning among them. An experience of tragic incidents in South Korea makes it a suitable place for an outbreak of the zombie disease because the country has already witnessed the selfishness and ineptness of the government when it disoriented population and did not help its people.

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COMMENTS

Train to Busan movie review & film summary (2016)
Yeon Sang-ho's "Train to Busan" is the most purely entertaining zombie film in some time, finding echoes of George Romero's and Danny Boyle's work, but delivering something unique for an era in which kindness to others seems more essential than ever. For decades, movies about the undead have essentially been built on a foundation of fear of our fellow man—your neighbor may look and ...
Train to Busan (2016) Movie Summary and Film Synopsis
'Train to Busan' Movie Summary. The summary below contains spoilers. The film begins with an emergency team spraying down a delivery van as it leaves a chemical leak near a biotech plant in South Korea. The van pulls away and the driver becomes distracted and strikes a deer, presumedly killing it. The driver looks back at the deer, but then ...
Review: Train to Busan (부산행, 2016) ★★½
Soo-an is the quintessential action-movie daughter, providing the film with much of its heavy-handed morality (Train to Busan, 2016). So, Train to Busan has a great premise that is held back by cookie-cutter characters and an overly sentimental moral compass. These last two elements would be forgivable if not for the sheer length of the film ...
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Film Review: 'Train to Busan'. Following a motley crew on a bumpy ride from Seoul to Busan to escape a zombie outbreak, writer-director Yeon Sang-ho 's action-horror railroad movie " Train ...
Train to Busan (2016) Review
Train to Busan is everything a zombie film should be: eerie, emotional and exhilarating. Director Yeon Sang-ho's compelling debut live-action film is a masterclass in thrill and an undeniable contender for Genre Best that captures the essence of post-apocalyptic horror within the confines of a moving train. It frees itself from the limits of ...
Train to Busan (2016)
Sok-woo, a father with not much time for his daughter, Soo-ahn, are boarding the KTX, a fast train that shall bring them from Seoul to Busan. But during their journey, the apocalypse begins, and most of the earth's population become flesh craving zombies. While the KTX is shooting towards Busan, the passenger's fight for their families and ...
Train to Busan
Train to Busan (Korean: 부산행; RR: Busanhaeng; lit. To Busan) is a 2016 South Korean action horror film directed by Yeon Sang-ho and starring Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, Kim Su-an, Choi Woo-shik, Ahn So-hee and Kim Eui-sung. The film mostly takes place on a KTX from Seoul to Busan as a zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out in the country and threatens the safety of the passengers.
Train to Busan review
A n unimpeachable mega-hit in its native Korea, Yeon Sang-ho's horror-thriller floats a delicious premise - zombies on a train - delivered on several times over. Its pleasures are as much ...
Review: Train to Busan
Review: Train to Busan. Train to Busan 's scare tactics are among the most distinctive that the zombie canon has ever seen. by Ed Gonzalez. July 17, 2016. Writer-director Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan, which largely takes place aboard a high-seed KTX train traveling from Seoul to Busan in the midst of a zombie outreak, is so nakedly ...
Review: All Aboard 'Train to Busan' for Zombie and Class Warfare
Directed by Sang-ho Yeon. Action, Horror, Thriller. 1h 58m. By Jeannette Catsoulis. July 21, 2016. Elite passengers on a South Korean bullet train face a twitching, hissing threat from the cheap ...
Review: Train to Busan
Review: Train to Busan. A novel take on a familiar genre, in this tense South Korean zombie movie that combines claustrophobia and siderodromophobia with the fear of being eaten. The zombie genre was an inevitable perfect fit for South Korea's Yeon Sang-ho. Flesh-eating films have long had a current of social commentary running through them ...
Train to Busan (2016)
Though Train to Busan contains a few stops along the way, including a wildly scary interlude at an infested station, its inherent forward thrust cannot help but cause the viewer to writhe in their seat. Yeon makes the most of the claustrophobic zombies-on-a-train concept, blending human drama with effective, genuine shocks in cramped spaces.
'Train to Busan' is a Case Study in Meaningful Character Death
Looking at Train to Busan as a narrative cause study, the essay focuses on the character arcs and deaths of three main characters, ultimately arguing that the latter informs the former ...
Review: Train to Busan (South Korea, 2016)
Imagine World War Z and Snowpiercer mashed together. That roughly describes Train to Busan, the highest grossing South Korean film of 2016. With almost $100 million in box office earnings and over ten million domestic viewers, the movie is not only an entertaining blockbuster, but also a remarkable live-action debut for a director who previously was known exclusively for dark, socially ...
Review Essay
Review Essay: Train to Busan Train to Busan, or Busanhaeng, is a movie about the zombie apocalypse in South Korea, directed by Yeon Sang-ho and starring actors Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi and Ma Dong-seok. Released in 2016, this movie not only gains huge success in Korea and other Asian countries but also makes its mark on the movie industry.
Train To Busan
Train To Busan was one of the biggest box office successes in South Korea's history, over 10 million people saw it. Key to it's success is the film's balance of high-grade, unadulterated action, and its sensitive, layered character work that personalises the unfolding drama through they eyes of a 10-year old girl who vies for the love of her father.
Train to Busan: Action-Horror and Class Critique
Train to Busan tells the story of Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), a fund-manager, and his daughter Soo-an. Occupied by his job, Seok-woo is emotionally absent in Soo-an's life. After missing Soo-an's singing recital, he gives her a Wii for her birthday. He makes a careless mistake: she already owns the exact model, gifted to her for Children's Day.
'Train to Busan' review
Train to Busan is a heart-pounding, armrest-gripping, teeth clenching zombie flick that breathes new life into the genre. Just when the zombie genre seemed on its way out, then along rolls in Train to Busan. This South Korean production breathes a new life into the genre without straying too far out of its confines.The rules set in place in this world are a little updated from the usual and ...
Train to Busan (2016)
All in all, Train to Busan is arguably the best zombie apocalypse movie of all-time, at least, until the date of this review. The subgenre finds in Yeon Sang-ho 's mind-blowing flick the masterpiece it deserves. From the exceptionally subtle build-up to the emotionally devastating final act, passing through the most vivid, suspenseful, tense ...
Train to Busan review: A South Korean zombie horror with bite
The Korean smash hit in which a battle against zombie hoards takes place on a commuter train. N arcissistic divorced father Seok Woo (Yoo Gong) is taking his daughter, Soo-an, (a brilliant Kim Su-An) to see her mother as a birthday surprise. They're catching the train from Seoul to Busan, unaware of a zombie outbreak that has started to rip ...
'Train to Busan': EW review
Published on August 24, 2016 05:09PM EDT. Photo: Well Go USA Entertainment. With its restrained, un-shlocky title, this South Korean movie could, say, detail the strained relationship between a ...
Train to Busan Movie Review
Parents need to know that Train to Busan is an excellent South Korean zombie horror -- with English subtitles -- that features frantic, bloody violence, and intense scenes in enclosed spaces. Despite the intensity it is more of a fun action movie than a chilling horror. Zombies kill many people and they in….
Zombie in "Train to Busan" Essay Sample
A girl bitten by a zombie catches a train to Busan and her transformation into a zombie infects others on the train in a chain reaction. Soon the train has the infected carriages and the carriages with healthy people. Owing to a series of unfortunate circumstances, the ineptness of authorities, and egotism, all the people on the train turn into ...

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Review: Train to Busan (부산행, 2016) ★★½

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Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Midnight), May 13, 2016. Running time: 118 MIN. (Original Title: "Busan haeng")

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