Zombies on a train

Rating: 9/10 (21 September 2016)

Zombie films have been hitting our screens since the dawn of time. Well, it certainly feels like they have anyway. Popularised by George A Romero's terrific Dead trilogy, zombie films have since been rearing their heads like hordes of the undead themselves. Whilst they can be a lot of fun, more often than not, they can also be clichÃ© ridden and trashy. We have had some quite enjoyable zombie films recently such as, Cockneys Vs Zombies and The Horde but we haven't really had a properly great zombie movie since 2004's Shaun of the Dead. Train to Busan changes that.
I saw Train to Busan on a whim. I'm travelling in Singapore and had a few free days so I thought that I'd check what's on the cinemas here. Train to Busan caught my eye but I had never heard of it, however I saw that it was Korean and that it had zombies in it, so I was sold! To my surprise, I came out of the cinema having just viewed easily the best zombie film in a decade. Korean films have hardly ever let me down and Busan is no exception.
As there's very little coverage of this film on the Internet, I'd better give a rough plot outline. It basically follows a selfish father who is cold and neglectful towards his cute young daughter. For her birthday, she wants to travel to Busan to see her mother so he reluctantly takes her on the train to Busan (creative title) however, a rather inconvenient zombie outbreak occurs as they board the train. The rest of the film is a claustrophobic and thrilling fight for survival as the survivors desperately try everything in their measure to get to Busan on a undead-infested train.
What makes this film so great is the characters. Most horror films (particularly ones with zombies in) sprinkle a load of disposable characters in who all die in a predictable order. We don't often particularly care when they die, in fact we're more likely to relish the gory death shown in all its bloody gory. In contrast, Train to Busan focuses in on a line of memorable characters who we actually care about and want to see survive. They're developed in such a way that when someone cruelly perishes, we feel a great sense of loss and emotion. This is where the film's strength lies. What's also interesting is that they're not all stereotypes either. The protagonist isn't your typical hero, he's a character who is grossly selfish and unlikable at the start, but he subtlety develops into someone you begin to care about and admire.
The film starts off as a good little zombie thriller. There's a sense of realism to the whole situation as we're made to watch the panic unfold on the train in an effective way. There's also a nice comic touch to the whole thing with some witty dialogue so it never takes itself too seriously. It also somehow never gets boring even though the film is essentially two hours set on a train, which is no easy task. There's always tension and a sense of peril. You get the feeling that anything could happen to these characters at any given moment. Once the film reaches the mid-way point though it stops being good and starts becoming great.
Things get going fairly quickly so the characters develop through the action, making the film all the more gripping as it goes on. It's an unpredictable ride with lots of thrilling set- pieces to keep you on edge. The final half hour is essentially non-stop action and it becomes exhausting to watch without ever feeling too ridiculous. What really impressed me though was the emotional charge in the second half. There are a few scenes which had me welling up with tears, which I wasn't expecting. I just got so absorbed in the characters and their intense situation. The use of music and editing is also hugely effective in pulling at your heartstrings.
There's really very little which Train to Busan does wrong. If I were to nitpick, I'd say that I would've liked more gore. Zombie films always give a good excuse to give us an array of fun, gory effects but this film is surprisingly restrained. There's a lot of hand-to-hand combat and nothing else creative. However, this does sort of add to the realism of the situation as you're not going to find many axes or chainsaws on a train. It's still not as bloodless as World War Z.
I can't urge you enough to watch Train to Busan, especially if you're a fan of Korean cinema. It doesn't just offer plenty of nail-biting thrills and impressive special effects, It offers emotion and splendid characters whom you can properly invest in. It's a powerful film which wears its heart on its sleeve and contains more character development in two hours than The Walking Dead has in six seasons. Once the film was over I became overcome with emotion. I felt like I could just break down and cry at what I had just watched. This is so much more than a zombie flick, at its heart it's a devastating drama about family and the importance of human kindness. I loved it.