😱 Horror/Thriller—🧟‍♂️ Zombies/Infecteds (2016) | 🇰🇷 🩸 🙆🏻

"When she gets older, she'll understand why you worked so hard. Dads get all the shit and no praise. But it's all about sacrifice, right? ... What's with the look? Did I sound cool?"

Train to Busan is an infection-style ‘zombie’ horror/thriller done correctly. After a short setup, a few choice bites create and unleash frenzied zombies crashing through windows and doors in human waves, snapping and biting while running with broken limbs bent in all directions, and even falling from the sky—Train to Busan goes from calm to total chaos in a way few films have managed as thrillingly.

28 Days Later rendered it slightly dull to have slow infecteds, refused to call them zombies, and set a new standard for how these action sequences are shot. But, at least in my view, it fell to a less ‘serious’ Spanish found-footage film, [REC], to master the style of kinetic chaos that is so satisfying and often hard to find.

Here is another great iteration of this model, and it’s one of the most successful I’ve seen. The claustrophobic environment of a train leaving Seoul for Busan turns bite by rapid bite into a death trap. Battling to clear car after car in order to survive has some meaningful resemblance to films like The Raid and The Horde that are sequence after sequence of absolute mayhem.

But the emotional stakes are high here, and this makes a big difference. Embedded in all of this madness is a simple story of a father learning to be present with his daughter. He’s been working to support their life but has struggled always to be there. In this crisis setting, what story could be more basic and clear than a father readjusting his assessment of what matters in his life to be there for his daughter in a crisis? The outbreak is a setting for the film to do this emotional work.

And I have to hand it to Yeon Sang-ho: this story is cleanly written and at times very touching. The film did not put too much sentiment in the way of emotional impact. It is easy to connect to these characters because they are handled well, and the bedlam surrounding it certainly brings enough escapist thrills to avoid feeling—at least, for the most part—heavy-handed.

Some things here don’t work perfectly for me. There is a severe case of plot armor and a trail of conveniently self-sacrificing or morally compromised but noble characters who are made briefly important to the viewer only to be sacrificed to advance a plot. Honestly, this is very normal. But it’s also very ignorable when a story is this entertaining.

Few films bottle chaos this well, and some that do (like “The Sadness”) are unwatchable to mainstream audiences. This manages all the intensity while minimizing eye-rapes and blood orgies. In case you are concerned, in this case minimized means zero.

Train to Busan is watchable, tense, thrilling, and still with feeling—It’s a classic for a reason. Please watch it if you haven’t yet! You’re likely to love it.

Strongly recommended.

Some Lists:

🧟‍♂️ Undead, Rage Viruses, Etc.
🙆🏻 Mind the raining corpses!
🩸 Unintelligible Chaos and Bloodshed
🇰🇷 South Korean Films Ranked
2010s Horror and Thrillers Ranked
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems
🌱 Hidden Horror Candidates
📽️ Viewing Next
🗂️ Index of Lists (needs an update)

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