I just heard about TRAIN TO BUSAN about 4 hours before writing this review. One of my favorite websites, io9, mentioned a movie that they described as “Zombies on a Train.” Being a horror movie fan, and having a particular warm spot for zombies, this piqued my interest. Living in Hawaii, I assumed it wouldn’t come here. But io9 luckily provided the movie’s website which had a list of all the theatres it was playing at. I looked through and saw that Hawaii did, in fact, have 1 theatre showing the film. I checked movie times and saw one last show of the night was in 45 minutes. The theatre was 40 minutes away, so I grabbed my keys and started driving.
From the trailer I expected to have a great time with the film. Anytime you throw zombies in a movie you have to expect a lot of silliness. But I’m a fan of the silly horror movies as long as they’re fun and not completely insulting my intelligence. And I’ve been let down by a premise such as “Zombies on a Train” before… I’m looking at you Snakes on a Plane… I’m glad to say that TRAIN TO BUSAN delivers exactly what you’d expect: Fun, savage zombie carnage. But what I didn’t expect was to be emotionally drawn into the film.
Yes. You read that correctly. This is something a lot of American horror movies lack. A heart. It’s one reason why most horror films suck. We don’t get attached to the characters so when the horror happens we don’t feel anything. Horror films that focus only on the scares or the gore aren’t as fun because we have no connection and therefore no stakes in anything going on. It’s very similar with action films.
One thing I must clarify is these aren’t slow zombies. No. These are fast zombies that the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake popularized. Not as absurd as WORLD WAR Z zombies. It’s more along the lines of 28 DAYS LATER. The infection spreads quickly and causes some very weird, yet cool reanimations. Some don’t even get a chance to die before turning. But those that do have frightening twitches before almost leaping up on their feet. If the movie hadn’t already pulled me in at this point then it could have easily come off as silly.
I have to come back to this because it’s so important to why this film works so damn well. I cared about these characters. A lot. This is a horror movie, a zombie flick, and it pulled tears out of my eyes. Yes. A silly zombie movie made me shed tears. Not just once, either. It not only has its main character have a fully fleshed out arc, but some of the side characters get their great moments and a few get some nice arcs as well. I didn’t care for all the characters that were around the main 2, but the majority of the core set were great. There is a “villain” (for lack of a better word) who is too cliché and annoying. I hated that one character. I know we’re supposed to, and it is a realistic character given the situation. But I think it could have been handled better. Thematically it works, though. The movie does stress the importance of selflessness and even takes a scene to show how dangerous irrational fear can be in one of my favorite scenes of the movie.
I know I haven’t talked much about the action. Don’t worry, I will. The action is great. The scares are great. But I can’t emphasize enough about how much this movie really benefits from having that strong emotional core. I really wish more movies, especially American horror and action films, would really learn from movies like this and take the time to establish a strong connection as a foundation for the action.
Now with that said, when TRAIN starts chugging along (I had to throw in one of these) it is exciting as hell. Wonderfully staged set pieces ranging from all hell breaking loose at a train station, guys having to fight their way through several train cars full of zombies, a couple times running after a train to get on, and even trying to sneak passed the zombies. It’s all incredibly exciting. The action set pieces are fun while the more tense scenes kept my knuckles in my mouth.
The zombies are frightening. The make up for the zombies is fantastic. The way they all moved was really unnerving. It’s also the first zombie movie I’ve seen (other than SHAUN OF THE DEAD) that actually refers to the zombies as zombies. Think about it. When was the last time you heard a zombie movie use the word “zombie.” Granted, it only uses the word once and it isn’t spoken, but I was glad it still put that in there. But it doesn’t assume you know anything about zombies. Which brings me to another point that American films are becoming very poor at…
Show, don’t tell. You get turned into a zombie by being bitten. Yet not one character ever says this. One of the first zombies we see doesn’t start as one. She’s a regular person with a bit mark on her leg. Now, if you’ve seen a zombie movie before you already know what’s going to happen. But the movie uses this scene to establish this. It puts the bite mark center frame. Then shows the character suffer and die. Then the character gets reanimated and immediately attacks the closest person. Within moments that person dies and shortly after reanimates and attacks the next person. This establishes how the infection spreads and how quickly it takes effect and what the infection does. Other characters see this but there’s never a moment in the film where two characters say to each other “I think it spreads through the bites.” It doesn’t say this BECAUSE IT JUST SHOWED US! And it showed the characters seeing it happen.
Even though BUSAN has some faults. Some of the CG is kind of bad. Never terrible to the point where it took me out of the film, but noticeable. I can’t really comment much on the acting with it being a foreign film, but I did believe all the actors. And sometimes the score was a little off for the scene. But none of that matters too much as BUSAN is just so much fun. TRAIN TO BUSAN is fun zombie carnage for those who just want the excitement with a meatier emotional core who want something more filling. One of my favorite films of the year.
HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION
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