Train to Busan (2016) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 30

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Take the last train to Busan and I’ll eat you at the station.

Train to Busan is an intense zombie film that grabs audiences and takes them along for a ride. It focuses on several characters and the interactions that either help or hurt the other passengers as a father tries to keep his little girl alive.

Before Viewing

The trailer for this film seems straightforward. A man and his young daughter are on a train to Busan, when a zombie apocalypse occurs. The creatures are not the slow moving kind either. A huge infected group of soldiers storm the train station, and some of the creatures infect others on the train. One bulky man tapes up his hands and starts pounding on the undead horde in a train car. There appears to be nowhere left to go except to take the Train to Busan.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), a father, arrives home late from work with a gift for his young daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an). It is the same video game system he had bought her previously. Her real birthday wish is to take a train to Busan to visit her mother, who is separated from her father. Seeing a video of Su-an unable to finish her recital song of “Aloha ‘Oe,” Seok-woo feels bad and agrees to accompany her the next day on her birthday. They board the KTX101 train to Busan, along with a limping woman with scratches on her leg. Shortly after the train departs, the injured woman turns into a zombie, bites an attendant, and the infection quickly spreads through the cars.

Seok-woo grabs Su-an and runs with other passengers, into a car that is not infected, yet. As the train travels through the next station, passengers bang on the windows trying to get on while zombies violently attack them. News reports on the TV and via websites indicate that the whole country is in riot. But, the newscaster says, please remain calm. Two older women, In-gil (Ye Soo-jung) and Jong-gil (Myung-sin Park) are in the vestibule with Su-an, who offers her seat to In-gil. Seok-woo chastises his daughter saying that she needs to only be thinking about herself. An older businessman, Yon-suk (Kim Eui-sung), is upset at the inconvenience all of this is causing.

The train makes a stop at Daejeon Station where Seok-woo gets word from an inside source that he needs to go to the East Square where the military will help him. A homeless man (Choi Gwi-hwa) who hid in the train bathroom sees Seok-woo and Su-an going a different way and follows. They find the military turned into zombies and race back to the train along with a man and his pregnant wife, Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok) and Seong-kyeong (Jung Yu-mi), and a player from a youth baseball team, Yong-guk (Choi Woo-sik), and his cheerleader girlfriend, Jin-hee (Ahn So-hee).

Seok-woo is separated from Su-an, who ends up with In-gil, Seong-kyeong, and the homeless man stuck in a car with zombies. Sang-hwa, Yong-guk, and Seok-woo are further up the train and fight their way through three cars full of zombies to reach the others. Having a full group, they head back one car further where Yon-suk, and the people who support him, have taken Jin-hee hostage to prevent other outsiders from entering their car. Sang-hwa breaks into the car to reunite everyone but becomes infected and stays behind. His last words are to give his pregnant wife the name of their unborn child. Yon-suk convinces the porter and the others to force Seok-woo and the other newcomers into a back vestibule.

In-gil doesn’t make it into the car and is turned. Her sister, who is lying low in Yon-suk’s car sees what is happening and lets the zombies in to destroy these despicable people. Unfortunately, Yon-suk manages to hide in a bathroom and survive. At the East Daegu Station, the conductor stops the train due to a track blockage. He announces over the intercom that any survivors should meet on the next track to the left. While transferring trains Yong-guk is killed when Yon-suk tosses a zombie on Jin-hee and she turns. The homeless man sacrifices himself so that Seok-woo, Su-an, and Seong-kyeong can board the engine bound for Busan.

The conductor is killed when the businessman throws him to the zombies. When Seok-woo gets to the engine cab, he finds an infected Yon-suk. When Seok-woo notes that the businessman is infected, Yon-suk begins to cry before turning fully, biting Seok-woo on the hand. Locking Su-an in the cab with Seong-kyeong, Seok-woo jumps off the back of the train as he turns. The train slows by a tunnel outside Busan which is blocked. Seong-kyeong and Su-an begin to walk through the tunnel past dead zombies. A military sniper on the other side believes the two may be infected and is about to shoot when they hear Su-an singing “Aloha ‘Oe” as she emerges from the tunnel.

“At a time like this, only watch out for yourself.” – Seok-woo

Zombie films can get a bit stale after a while, but not Train to Busan. It’s not your father’s shambling zombie film, as there is more urgency with these creatures. It was the second of three films written by Park Joo-suk, and his first horror film. He also wrote the 2023 film Project Silence, about an accident on a foggy bridge and some mysterious beast. Yeon Sang-ho directed the film, which was his first live-action feature film. A month after the release of Train to Busan he directed an animated film called Seoul Station, which acts as a prequel to this film. He also directed Peninsula in 2020, which is a sequel to this film, and in 2023 his sci-fi film Jung_E was released on Netflix. What sets Train to Busan apart from other zombie films like Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, or Shaun of the Dead, is the fast-paced zombies and rapid onset of the infection.

From their initial appearance early in the film, audiences can tell that the zombies are entirely different from the majority of reanimated undead films. It’s easy to make comparisons to the athletic zombies from Brad Pitt’s 2013 film World War Z, but comparisons have also been drawn to horror video games 7 Days to Die, and Silent Hill. Standard zombie fare has the creatures wandering aimlessly, slightly dim, and stupid. These zombies are portrayed as alert and quick. They are able to run and fight with all the strength (if not more) of the humans they used to be. This changes the perception of danger for the audience and the characters. No longer can the characters easily avoid the undead. They must run and fight with all their strength to avoid being bitten. These zombies also perceive the humans quite well in daylight. If the creatures can see you, they want to eat you–and will do almost anything to get at you. Late in the film, a tipped railway car full of zombies pressing against the windows are all clawing for the heroes. Eventually, they break the glass and stream out like bugs toward their prey. Several characters note this perception and use alternate methods to avoid being seen. Seong-kyeong places newspaper over the glass window to avoid having the zombies continually batter on the door, while Seok-woo realizes that the monsters can’t see in the darkened tunnel, nor can they smell the humans, as he uses the dark to navigate around the zombies.

But like other zombie films, Train to Busan spends much of its runtime dealing with the social constructs of society, as they break down due to the apocalyptic nature of the infection. Since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, social commentary has been a prevalent narrative device for the genre. It’s unfeasible to have 90 minutes of zombie attacks, so the time in between attacks must be filled with characters struggling with other characters and their different worldviews. Usually, the characters are all looking to survive, but the hero character is the one who tries to do it with the least collateral damage. There are also usually people who are too naive to survive and antagonists that threaten the hero’s (and the others) survival. Train to Busan really shines in this area with its character arcs. The primary story is about the father, Seok-woo, but the film also takes an interesting approach by creating parallel character development for his daughter Su-an, and the businessman, Yon-suk.

The character that undergoes the most change (outside of the people that turn into zombies) is Seok-woo. He is a fund manager and a workaholic, focusing much of his life on himself and on his work that he barely has time for Su-an (who is taken care of by Seok-woo’s mother during the day) and no time for his ex-wife (which is why they are exes). When Sang-hwa asks Su-an what her father does and she says he’s a fund manager, he replies with, “So he’s a bloodsucker.” It’s a joke, but Su-an says it’s ok because that’s what everyone says about him. She knows here father and what to expect from him Seok-woo’s initial advice to Su-an during the outbreak is that she needs to only think of herself and her safety, just as he has always done. But when he realizes it’s up to him to protect his daughter, his entire outlook changes. He becomes someone who decides to help others instead of closing doors in their faces. Su-an actually represents the end of his journey, with Yon-suk representing the beginning.

Both Su-an and Yon-suk represent the extremes on a spectrum of selfishness. Su-an’s character is utterly selfless, but not in a naive way. She seems wiser than her years. Everything that she does ensures the survival of her and her father. In a pay-it-forward sort of moment, Su-an gives up her seat for In-gil, the older woman. Seok-woo chastises her for this, but that doesn’t change her outlook on goodness in the face of even the worst birthday ever! Su-an’s selflessness affects In-gil, who–knowing she will not make it into the next car–chooses to close the door and sacrifice herself. This leads to Jong-gil letting her zombie sister (and more zombies) into the car to punish the people who banished Su-an and her group from safety. On the flip side, Yon-suk is a despicably selfish individual. Everything he does kills someone and brings his own demise closer. He grouses about stopping to save others. He refuses to allow survivors into the safety of his car, lest they are infected. He sacrifices the porter and Jin-hee to allow for his escape, but he can’t outrun the infection forever. Not with all the negative karma he puts into the world. I thought Mrs. Carmody from The Mist was an evil character, but this guy is so much worse. Every time audiences think him dead, he keeps turning up like a bad penny, until Seok-woo throws him off the train engine–completing his journey from corporate bloodsucker to protective father.

Every main character gets a chance to shine, with Sang-hwa having a great sequence where he tapes up his hands and punches his way through a car of zombies. His sacrifice also helps lead Seok-woo onto the path of goodness, showing audiences that even fathers can die. It’s truly heartbreaking to see pregnant Seong-kyeong have to go on without him. She continues to forge ahead at each obstacle, knowing that her baby’s life is at stake. With as dark as the film got, I was certain that Seong-kyeong would meet an untimely death in the final moments of the film. And not by the snipers. Given the speed that had been shown for the infection to take over, I was sure that with all the running, crawling, and climbing that she did, her baby was going to die. As she and Su-an disembarked the train and started walking through the tunnel, she was holding her belly as if something was wrong, and it seemed like they were going to turn the fetus into a zombie, which would consume her from the inside out. Honestly, I’m glad that didn’t happen, as I don’t think I could have stood the shock. Train to Busan is a tight and intense film that grabs audiences and holds their attention. It has a lot to say about how people deal with strangers for both good and ill.

Assorted Musings

• Ma Dong-Seok, also known as Don Lee, is an amateur armwrestler and appeared in the Marvel superhero film Eternals as Gilgamesh.
• The animated prequel for the film, Seoul Station, focuses on characters at the outbreak of the zombie virus, while a sequel, Peninsula, is a heist film following a former soldier who travels with a team to retrieve a truck full of money from the zombie-infected wastelands of South Korea.
• The outbreak of the zombie virus started at a company called YS Biotech, which was the centerpiece of Seok-woo’s fund plan. So in some small way, he is responsible for his own demise.