Train of horror

Rating: 8/10 (28 October 2016)

This is my review of Train to Busan (spoiler free)
**** (4/5)
AFTER SEVERAL YEARS of the boring, brooding and sort of manipulative over pretentious plotting on The Walking Dead over the last couple of seasons adding some lazy new characters and even lazier walkers, in addition to that the lazy, inept copycats with a lot of action but not enough story or character depth the zombie sub-genre has felt a little bit tired and somewhat overused at points; it needed a breath of fresh air to come back to life thankfully one man writer/director live-action debutant Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan brings the fresh air that the sub-genre sorely needed and does it in style. The story is simple and very straightforward as the film opens with Seok woo (Gong Yoo) a man with a workaholic lifestyle as a hedge fund manager and is always absent from his precocious young daughter Soo-an (Kim Soo-an), the two then take a train from their home in Seoul to Busan, at the bottom end of the country but as a suspicious passenger boards the train and what started out as a general commute turns into a train of horrors, as most of the passengers turn into a mass horde of ravenous flesh-eating crazies and the survivors have to survive the vicious attack and outrun the infected to survive.
It may sound like a general zombie film with a very familiar premise but the good story and clever plot adds a lot of tension, a masquerade of zombies and high-octane action that refuses to take a break but when it does the film adds in a lot of drama and character depth to points where it's needed. For its length at a total of 118 minutes it is a bit longer than most traditional films of this genre but the pacing of the story is astonishing as for the first 45 minutes it teases the audience with a lot of memorable zombies, action and some terrific heartfelt and harrowing drama that's unpretentious fun. Instead of meeting traditional standards of other zombie subgenres and killing off some new characters as soon as they are introduced as shown in Cell earlier this year this goes with introducing new and important character that are instantly lovable. Two of these characters we meet very early on, a man Song Hwa (Ma Dong-seok) who doesn't take to Seok as soon as he meets him because he thinks that he is just a rich business man who doesn't care for anybody but himself, and his young pregnant wife Sung Gyeong (Jeong Yu-mi), who falls in love with Seok's daughter straightaway. These two characters are instantly lovable and add a lot of drama to the story where it's needed.
Though for some parts Song has to put up with Seok and even has to fight through some of the horde in a scene when they are both heading towards a car to find Seok's daughter they have to fight through some of the zombies, however they find out that they can't see in the dark – it's a very enjoyable concept to story that is both action packed and inventive genius as there has other no other film with that kind of intuitive genius. At one point in the second act the train has a stop at Daejeon station and it all seems fine to that passengers and looks like it hasn't been infected but the passengers get attacked by the fast infected, but how fast are they? Imagine Usain Bolt on steroids; that fast. However the survivors don't have guns to defend themselves from the infected which is another enjoyable additional genius to the story as there are far too many zombie sub-genre films that rely on guns for defense, this should be a lesson for Hollywood to take in that guns aren't always a good thing. Although the film isn't flawless not by a long way as the infected are strung together by heavy amounts of CG rubber no, it's not a sequel to World War Z, there is also an elderly man who tries to block Seok and some other survivors out of the rest of the train tries saying that they are infected he's more loud than good and there are zombies that don't die from falling out of a window.
The third act is the most dramatic as it offers some heavily impacting heartfelt drama that is guaranteed to make even the most cynical person roll in flood of tears as the train reaches its final descent towards its destination there are some heartbreaking deaths with some of the more lovable characters that leads to an ending which could see a sequel being made that has already been announced. Aside from familiar premise with World War Z and 28 Days Later and the length of the story this is a brilliant, ingenious, and terrifying zombie film that adds a lot of tension with lovable in-depth characters giving brilliant performances, director Yeon Sang-ho's no nonsense story never ceases to deliver and it proves to be just as biting as Bong Joon-ho's dystopian sc-fi thriller Snowpiercer this original story is a breath of fresh air that is better than other Hollywood films of this sub-genre, so we can all breathe again. In short, the zombie sub-genre is back to its best and in terrific style as this could easily one of the best zombie films ever.
VERDICT: A purely terrifying, original and no nonsense roller-coaster ride filled with fast paced high-octane action, memorable zombies and harrowing emotion that refuses to stop as it delivers a lot of bite; easily one of the best ever zombie films.
8/10 Brilliant.