(CCR Original Content) Train To Busan Review [Spoiler Free Review & Spoiler Review below picture] (7/10)
Train to Busan is a 2016 South Korean zombie apocalypse/action thriller movie directed by Yeon Sang-ho and written by Park Joo-suk. The movie was produced by Next Entertainment World and RedPeter Film and producer Lee Dong-ha and distributed by Next Entertainment World. The film stars South Korean actors Gong Yoo, Ma Dong-seok, Su-an Kim, Jung Yu-mi, Choi-Woo shik and Sohee.
Divorced fund manager, Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), and absentee father is a workaholic. For his daughter Su-an's (Su-an Kim) birthday, he reluctantly agrees to take her to see her mother in Busan by bullet train. A convulsing woman with a bite on her leg boards the train unseen as it departs. She turns into a zombie and attacks a train attendant who also turns and the virus quickly spreads throughout the train as they attack the other passengers. During the journey it's learned that the outbreak is spreading throughout the country which makes survival even harder as they must fight the selfishness of their fellow passengers as one compartment after another succumbs to the every growing number of zombies.
This movie was great. I really enjoyed the director's take on a zombie apocalypse as it's happening and having it unfold with the backdrop of the train as the main setting was unique and different from almost any other zombie film I've seen. The score/soundtrack was very moving and added depth to this movie in a way that is often lacking in zombie movies as well. The acting was really good for this being a foreign film and it helped for me to get more immersed in the movie since I had to be reading subtitles during the movie which sometimes takes me out of the experience. I was a little disappointed in some scenes to me it seemed like when a zombie attacked someone they didn't really attack them to eat them and just bite them (kind of like in World War Z). I mean there were a couple of times where they swarmed over the person and it didn't always show what happened and you can assume they were eaten but it didn't really show it. The characters were good and I liked the dynamic that was going on between them on the train and how the character development unfolded and characters changed or made hard decisions. I have to say that this is one of the better zombie movies I've seen and I give it a 7/10.
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Spoiler Review Section:
This movie was great and the unique concept of having the survivors on a train was different from any zombie I've ever seen. Seok-woo is a divorced business man who never has time for his daughter, whose only wish for her birthday is to see her mother. After reluctantly agreeing to take her by train a zombie apocalypse occurs and they have to survive on the train. The scenes on the train were pretty amazing and really intense. Having to fight zombies in close quarters at times with no weapons made them incredibly tense, especially the ones where they had to sneak past them in the dark. As I said before a big thing that bothered me was that in certain scenes it appeared as if the zombies didn't actually attack the people to eat them but just bite them spreading the virus like World War Z. This was a serious let down for me in World War Z and the only reason I didn't make a bigger deal about it in this one is because there were scenes where a zombie was scene eating someone one that's already on the ground and also where they swarm someone who was already bitten, more than likely eating them. See to me the two greatest reasons why zombie are scary and so popular is because they combine two big fears that people have on a primal way. 1 is the fear of death and the dead, people don't want to die of course, but people are also afraid of dead things, dead people, animals etc.. And then 2 being eaten alive. That I think is something nobody would even wish on their worst enemy, so that's why zombies are such a scary movie monster. But when you change them to being infected instead of reanimated corpses and instead of eating the living they are trying to spread a disease by biting people and not eating them, it takes away from the horror part of it. I really liked the scene where the man with the pregnant wife, Seok-woo and the young baseball player gear up to make their way to the back cars to save their family members. I also liked the special effects used, everything except that deer in the beginning of the movie, which wasn't that terrible in the big scope of things but it reminded me of that prairie dog in the beginning of Crystal Skull (which was big red flag for that film). I have to say that this was really one of the better zombie films out there and I hear there is an animated prequel that was realized a month later and now talks about a sequel. I give this movie a 7/10.