For Zombie Week, I wanted to watch something I hadn’t seen before, and I figured this would be quite the challenge. However, Netflix is currently streaming Korean zombie hit Train to Busan, and I am so glad that I found this gem of a movie.
Train to Busan follows a Korean business man trying to transport his daughter by train to Busan to visit her mother (his estranged wife). While they are on the train, the zombie outbreak occurs rather suddenly, and he must team up with several of his passengers to defend his daughter and survive the cross-country ride.
Train to Busan’s strongest aspects are the human characteristics it does so well with. Rather quickly, you feel very invested in this little family you are introduced to, and you quickly take interest in the side characters as well due to the writers giving them just enough screen time and personality to make them relatable. Zombie movies are usually about survival, but rarely do they make the audience root so passionately for the characters to succeed as I was rooting for Gong Yoo and his adorable daughter to make it through this terrible ordeal.
Speaking of the ordeal, the zombies are fantastic in this movie. The practical effects give them a deeply disturbing appearance, and the movie introduces unique zombie characteristics such as blindness in the absence of sunlight and what is the most fast-acting zombie infection I have ever witnessed on screen. The zombies really make you feel the urgency and tension of the situation, and an ever-growing mass of the undead ensures that you are on the edge of your seat for the whole movie. Definitely watch Train to Busan while you still can!
Zombie Rating: Again, terrific zombie design with some unique characteristics, and uniqueness is hard to come by in this series. Still, they’re mostly pretty slow, stupid, and lack basic motor skills that a lot of other zombie canons have, so I’m only giving Train to Busan zombies 4 gnashing zombie teeth out of 5.
Time for some laughs! If you want watch a long with me and take a little break from all the tension and spookiness, tonight I’m watching Shaun of the Dead, one of my favorite horror-comedy movies!
