MAY 6: Train to Busan

But first, an announcement: As you may notice, it’s not May 6^th. Oops. Trying to watch a daily movie and also finish my finals turned out to not be the most feasible plan. But fortunately, finals are done, and not only do I now have all the time in the world to watch horror movies, I was literally asked to do so by my professor in preparation for my internship. So I’ll watch and write up two movies today to get caught up with my themed days, and then just keep watching through the first week of June (and maybe after, since there is plenty more to watch and what else am I going to do with my time). It’ll just be Spring into Horror, I guess.

On with the post!

            Horror fan confession incoming – zombie movies have never been my bag. I like my horror movies to have a tight, claustrophobic focus; zoom out too far into the postapocalyptic and it feels more like an action flick. And the cowboy prepper individualism that a lot of zombie movies promote, well, no thank you. That’s the kind of thinking that makes people bulk-buy toilet paper. So I’m happy to announce that I’ve finally found a zombie movie for me. Even as the scope widens to reveal the scale of national destruction, well, Train to Busan is still set on a frickin train. And as part of a wave of socially conscious Korean cinema, Train to Busan is a skillful critique of a certain kind of zombie movie’s intense individualism. I’m on board.

            I was excited to watch a movie set on a train, a location I’m very familiar with. Subways, TGVs, Amtraks, Metro Norths, I’ve ridden them all. I love the frantic rush of boarding, the coziness of getting settled in your seat and waiting for the train to take off, the rush of anticipation as the view from the window changes, the voyeuristic curiosity about your fellow passengers. My best train story is when I found myself surrounded by a group of thirty or so old people on their way to see “Peter and the Starcatchers” in New York; they spent the whole ride loudly passing out Baileys, screwdrivers, and doughnuts. It was 10 am. Fortunately, I’ve never been on a train with a zombie, because that would be bad news.

            Train to Busan follows Seok-woo, a fund manager and recent divorcee who’s good at his demanding job but not so good at prioritizing his adorable daughter, Su-an. Su-an is intent on going to see her mom in Busan for her birthday and she’ll take the train alone if she has to. After missing her recital and fucking up her birthday gift, Seok-woo agrees to go with her. Ominous signs abound. Seok-woo learns of a chemical leak at work. A skyscraper burns and ash falls from the sky as the pair head to the train station, where they narrowly miss a strange commotion. A frantic young woman boards the train; battling infection in vain, she soon becomes a zombie, and one zombie becomes two becomes a handful becomes a snarling hoard in no time.

Seok-woo initially wants to prioritize his own well-being and his daughter’s over all else, but soon learns from his empathetic daughter and the selfless acts of others around him to look out for his new allies and the most vulnerable among them, including a heavily pregnant woman, an elderly lady, and a homeless man. Meanwhile, a business big-wig, Yon-suk, is intent on surviving the ordeal even if it means getting other people killed. Yon-suk has a knack for picking the wrong enemy, be it a terrified homeless man hiding in the bathroom or Seok-woo’s ragtag band of survivors. The film gets a lot of political oomph in juxtaposing Seok-woo’s redemption with Yon-suk’s villainy, and it’s a satisfying deconstruction of the zombie movie’s usual politics. The film also has a great emotional foundation. Child actress Kim Su-an does an amazing job as Seok-woo’s little daughter, wide-eyed and earnest in her desire to be good. The bond between Seok-woo and Su-an goes from tenuous to powerful, and by the end I cried like an absolute wuss.

She! Is! So! Small!

So we’ve got politics, heartbreak, compelling characters – but is it scary? These zombies really worked for me. In the film’s prologue, we catch sight of a zombie deer, a great little tease of what’s to come. These zombies are twitchy and spasmic, dumb but oh so fast. Director Yeon Sang-ho has a knack for pacing; his zombies go from 0 to 100 in no time flat. The character design is simple – no decaying corpses here, just blank eyes and a veiny complexion. Their snarls and twitches are unnerving and effective. In several scenes, piles of zombies burst through glass panes and squirm like heaps of rats, but an individual zombie is just as grotesque. The tension is masterful. I watched part of this movie in the same room with my girlfriend and paused halfway through to make coffee. “How’s the movie?” she asked. “Stressful!” “Yeah, I could tell from how loudly you’re breathing.”

Yikes!

Heart-pounding, heart-wrenching, and politically-pointed – is there anything this movie doesn’t have? Nah. Honestly, I could nit-pick but what would be the point. This movie does everything I like in a horror movie; it took me on a smart and unpredictable roller-coaster ride, made me cry, made me jump, and fixed everything I don’t like about an overdone subgenre. And it’s on Netflix! Check it out – it’ll make you appreciate that at least our pandemic doesn’t bite.

Vibecheck: Like a bullet train, Yeon Sang-ho’s style is polished, brisk, and no-nonsense. Zippy.

Scare Factor: Yes

Pairs Well With: This movie’s been compared, positively and negatively, with Snowpiercer, which I haven’t seen, but it’s on the same political wavelength with the Bong Joon-ho stuff I am familiar with, and Parasite is on Hulu, so…

But how gay is it?: Seok-woo has a great friends-to-enemies bromance with a fellow passenger but otherwise this film is pretty relentlessly heterosexual, with a lot of emphasis on male heroics.

Girlfriend’s Corner: Sara began to describe a scene in this movie (it was about a bad thing happening to the child) and I made an anxious noise and left the room and then I cried anyway. It’s good I didn’t watch this one! (Editor’s Note: I did no such thing. I started to describe how tiny the little girl’s hands were and girlfriend yelled at me to stop.) (Counter-editor’s Note: I assumed a bad thing was about to happen to the child! Why would you be describing how cute she was if she wasn’t about to be in Peril?)