Train To Busan || Best Film To Watch In A Pandemic

Train To Busan Movie Review

While everyone is watching outbreak movies I think I have pretty much watched every good zombie movie out there. Train To Busan, upon its release in 2016 was praised worldwide and hailed as a zombie masterpiece at the time. I never got the chance to watch it but this lockdown is giving so much time to us that I'm finally catching up. 

Train To Busan is a Korean film, directed by Yeon Sang-Ho and stars Gong Yoo, Kim Soo-Ahn, Ma Dong- Seok Sang-Hwa and others. I am not familiar with this director nor the actors even their names are not pronounceable to me. I rarely watch Korean movies, like one or two per year but they are always on par with or even better than what Hollywood produces. 

Train to Busan is basically a horror sci-fi movie set in South Korea where the nation falls as the viral outbreak and the zombies take over. In this review, I'll try to sum up why it is hailed as the best zombie film and why it needs to be watched amidst the pandemic.

What I Liked?

• The Plot & The Direction

In a BioTech R&D facility, some kind of accident happens which leads to leakage of a biohazardous substance that spreads through the air and shortly covers whole South Korea.  Su-an's father, Seok-woo is a workaholic and because of his business over family attitude, his wife has divorced him and left Su-an in his custody. Su-an wants to meet her mother for her birthday celebration so both of them board the train to Busan. After introducing a few other characters on the train things start to go down as zombies are also introduced in the first fifteen minutes of the film. Now everyone must work together to fight off the zombies and save their lives. 

The plot may not sound interesting on paper, to me it didn't, but its execution is exceptional. There is not a single dull moment in this film. It has excellent pacing throughout its runtime. The plot works very well. The way the characters are introduced helps you to make the viewer actually care about them. No one is just a throwaway character in the main cast. 

I have watched many zombie movies and they all focus on zombies instead of characters and when they actually focus on their characters they become boring (The Walking Dead). Train To Busan easily manages to balance itself. Its zombies are a constant threat as well as the emotional trauma that the characters are going through. The protagonist's character development is great.  The zombies used here resemble a few characteristics of Worl War Z and I Am Legend zombies so you can understand how crazy these nibbas are in the film.

The movie perfectly presents a world in a pandemic. The Governments are falling, no one has a clue whats going on, people are turning on each other and there is a constant fear of 'them'. We can see all of this happening around us right now so the movie feels home.

There were some ideas used in this movie that were very new, interesting and terrific to watch. As I said before no dull moments in the movie.

• The Camerawork

There are a few creative action and disaster sequences which are ten times more intense because of the way they were shot. Most part of the film is shot in the train and gives a claustrophobic feel. This film reminded me of Snowpiercer a lot.  

There is a specific spoiler shot which was truly beautiful. Just beautiful.

Koreans and Japanese filmmakers have a knack for portraying the grandness of apocalypse in frames. eg. the Gojira or kaiju films. 

They nicely capture the frailty of human beings in front of natural disasters. This may be because of their experiences in World War II.

The director has constantly used scenes with hordes of zombies breaking through the glass. These were some of the most terrifying zombie hordes I have ever seen.

The camerawork is phenomenal throughout the film. 

• The Acting

Everyone has given an excellent performance. I cannot talk about the dialogues as I watched with subs. But the serious moments felt serious because of the actors' performances.

What I Did Not Like?

There is nothing to complain about in this movie.

Final Verdict

I had very few expectations with the movie and it turned out to be something fresh, entertaining and emotionally rich experience. I will suggest you watch Train To Busan if you have an interest in zombie or end of the world kind of movies. I can't say it is the best zombie film of all time but it is definitely THE best zombie film of the decade. 

A trailer for Train To Busan's sequel was dropped a day ago. The film is titled Peninsula and will develop more on the aftermath of the original.

Train To Busan is available on Netflix.