My Review of "Train to Busan"

Train to Busan is a movie that's talked about a lot in terms of zombie movies. It came out back in 2016 and man does it elevate the zombie movie genre. It talks about a lot of societal problems that we have today but it is mainly a focus on the characters of the movie. I am definitely a sucker for movies where you gradually see characters change from one extreme to another and this is one of them. The charm of all of the characters outweigh the black and white predictability of this movie.

This movie starts off with a little a little taste of the environment in Korea. Things are starting to get locked down and people are complaining. The inconvenience of these lockdowns are kind of annoying some people trying to get their work done. Does this sound familiar pandemic world of today? Well we see a glimpse of why areas are starting to lock down when a deer gets hit by a car but is able to get back up very creepily.

We then get introduced to Seok-woo. He's a fund manager and seems kind of ruthless in terms of making money. Fortunately for him, it seems that he's doing pretty well for himself and his daughter. The downside is that he's too invested in his job that he neglects his daughter and it's ruined his marriage.

His ex wife reminds him that he forgot his daughter's birthday. He tries to make up for it by buying her an expensive gift but he doesn't realize he gave her the same gift not too long ago. She's obviously distraught and wants to go see her mother in Busan.

Seok-woo starts to realize that yes he's neglected his daughter for way too long and needs to make right by taking his daughter to Busan to see her mother. Rather than taking her the next week like he always never does he actually agrees to take her to Busan himself.

On the train there's a number of interesting characters that board. Unfortunately for all of them there's a zombie pandemic starting to reach them. There's this one infected girl that is running for her life after being bitten and manages to board the train. After suffering some agonizing pain she finally succumbs to the virus and becomes a zombie. She then goes on a rampage and bites one of the attendants of the train. In turn these two start infecting a number of people on the train.

This is basically how the huge pandemic on the train to Busan begins. We quickly see how people react to the situation. There's a ton of people that are going to pause like a deer in headlights because they're not used to seeing such craziness. You'd think that some of it would start desensitizing them though.

I do believe a lot of the reactions made by the characters in this movie are quite realistic though. Everyone is in shock and don't know what to do and they all panic. This movie kind of splits the group into two different types of people. People that care for others and those that care for themselves. You can see the selfish people doing really erratic things to protect themselves. The thing is you can still relate to the selfish people because you can see their point of view in things especially since we live in a pandemic today.

Those that are caring for others have a different approach and these are kind of more of the crazier scenes. They get involved with zombies more often because they're trying to help others out. There's friendships that are formed with these newfound bonds and that's where us as the viewers get vested interest in these characters.

The characters are really what makes this movie so amazing. They really did a good job in making us care for all the characters and hate the bad guys. In a lot of ways we can see these characters in ourselves and in real life situations. Society is filled with these people so we understand them and identify with them.

Some of the scenes made me think of how narrow minded some of the characters really were. If the selfish riders thought more logically, obviously they can't because it's a crazy situation, they could have benefited from the caring riders. The caring riders had to deal with the zombies when they went from car to car on the train. They learned all the ins and outs of the zombie rules.

The zombie rules for this movie kind of flip everything. There are certain things about these zombies that don't really match the same rules you would find in other zombie movies. They played around with these rules to help the characters get away from otherwise unescapable situations. There are a few clever new rules that they implemented that I wish they could have played around with a little more.

Overall, this is somewhat of a predictable movie. You kind of know what's going to happen before it actually happens. Still the characters and the social statements that this movie makes more than makes up for the entertainment you'll have with this movie. It's got tons of emotions that you never thought you'd get from a zombie movie. I have to give this movie an 8.5 out of 10. It is definitely one of the best zombie movies out there.