Modern travel these days is cutthroat.
Train to Busan (2016) is a high quality zombie movie that uses its premise to illuminate, I suspect, some shortcomings of South Korean society. Seok-woo, father to Su-an, estranged husband, financier in South Korean society, and a man strongly in the grip of the importance of being successful, has been badgered into delivering his daughter to her mother for her birthday, a task requiring a train trip to Busan and back, a trip that takes him away from his precious offices, subordinates, and … successes. Those successes that, despite their ease, have failed to make him a great husband or even a legendary father. And, yet, who can abandon them?
So, against his better judgment, they hop on the express to Busan, and behind them Seoul bursts into a bloody shambles. Seok-woo, though, is not worried until his mother calls, and then it dawns on him, in the final gurgle of her voice, that perhaps those reports of rioting are of importance.
These are not your father’s shambling zombies, either. These are those new-fangled sprinting kind, the sort who redouble their pace when needed, who fight harder if need be, and … you get the point.
Getting from one end of a rolling train to the other is a problem when these zombies are aboard.
But don’t count the uninfected out. Seok-woo, along with a few others, are bright, motivated survivors, who notice today’s monsters are a little blind in the dark. Their maneuvers, in the brightest of days, are little short of inspired. It’s as if they’re hitting home runs.
But corporate villainy lurks in the empty eyes of the zombies, doesn’t it? Seok-woo isn’t the only wannabe corporate magnate. And what awaits them in nearly fabled Busan, not to mention those intervening towns? Is Su-an’s mother ready and waiting? And how do I mean that, anyways?
Train to Busan is a thoroughly modern retelling of the unsettling zombie story, rejiggered to be the tool of the South Korean social critic. The heads-in-buckets maneuver of some zombie movies is not present, for which I give heartfelt thanks, but the utter ferocity of this version is heartbreaking in its own special way.
I won’t give a general recommendation to see this, but if you’re a fan of the zombie, this should be front and center on your bucket list. You won’t be disappointeded.
