Review: Train to Busan

Train to Busan (15)

South Korea 2016 118 mins Subtitles Dir: Sang-ho Yeon Cast: Yoo Gong, Soo-an Kim, Yu-mi Jeong, Ma Dong-seok

Given the enduring popularity of The Walking Dead and the lumbering deceased in general, it’s something of a surprise that this terrific South Korean zombie flick isn’t getting a wider cinema release. Train to Busan may be hard to find but is well worth seeking out to feast on its ample brains, as this is a horror film that blends understated social/political satire with fabulous, furiously paced zombie action and makes hugely imaginative use of its confined setting. Think of it as a smart companion piece to director Sang-ho Yeon’s fellow countryman Joon-ho Bong’s The Host and Snowpiercer (also set on a train, but disgracefully sent straight to DVD in the UK).

You don’t need to know about Yeon’s animated prequel Seoul Station to understand the brisk set-up. Fund manager Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) is that great movie bad guy staple: the neglectful, workaholic dad. He reluctantly agrees to take his young daughter Su-an (Soo-an Kim) to visit her mum in Busan as a birthday treat. They board a high-speed train at Seoul station just as a zombie outbreak begins to sweep the nation. Also on the train is a microcosm of South Korean society: a school baseball team with their cheerleader, chippy working class bloke Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok) and his heavily pregnant wife Seong Kyeong (Yu-mi Jeong), a pair of old biddy sisters, and an impatient CEO. As the train is about to depart, an infected young woman stumbles aboard. But the guards are more concerned about a smelly homeless guy who’s upsetting passengers by hiding in a toilet and muttering: “They’re all dead!”

As the high-speed train races towards its destination, TV screens in every carriage soon begin to carry news reports of what are initially claimed to be riots across the country. (“People nowadays will riot over anything,” tuts one of the old dears to her sibling. “In the old days they’d be re-educated.”) Before long, the infection is burning through the train, transforming victims almost instantly into vicious, snarling, cloudy-eyed zombies who move like a raging tide between carriages, crawling along luggage racks and clambering over one another in their eagerness to devour fresh meat.

Yeon’s nippy, relentless zombies are a real treat, with their grotesquely broken limbs often jutting at odd angles. He delivers some splendid set-pieces, which I shan’t spoil here, as he exploits the claustrophobic environment – and even manages to get his surviving passengers off the train and on again pretty damn smartish. They also find time to engage in barbed class warfare while battling the legions of the undead. When Sang-hwa remarks that Seok-woo leeches off others for a living, Seong Kyeong admonishes him for saying such things in front of Su-an. “It’s OK,” replies the little girl, sadly. “That’s what everyone thinks.”

This isn’t the kind of film that relies heavily on acting skills, but Soo-an Kim outshines much of the adult cast as the decent, good-natured little girl who’s appalled at her father’s selfishness (“That’s why mum left!”). Inevitably, this means we have to endure some plot contrivance and terrible old ‘learning to be a better dad’ guff along the way, but at least the CEO is present to take the Evil Bastard baton and run with it. And although the zombie rampage has some rather obvious World War Z-style digital augmentation in places, it’s also visceral and nasty enough to sate the bloodlust of all but the most jaded horror enthusiast.