부산행
Country of Origin: South Korea
Primary Audio Language: Korean
Director: Sang-ho Yeon
Film Length: 1h 58m
Synopsis: While a zombie virus breaks out in South Korea, passengers struggle to survive on the train from Seoul to Busan.
Star Rating: ★★★★★
Review: An unexpected tear-jerking zombie movie about sacrifice and both the emotional journey of one self-involved father, Seok-woo (played by Yoo Gong), and his physical journey to get his daughter, Soo-an (played by Su-an Kim), safely to the port at Busan amidst a zombie outbreak which may have been caused by the company he works for in Seoul. Train to Busan keeps the viewer’s emotions high and butts at the edge of their seat from the moment the train doors close until it eventually arrives in Busan, in a heartbreaking, but hopeful conclusion.
This was, by far, the best zombie apocalypse movie I’ve ever seen, and I was wholly unprepared for the emotional journey it would entail. It made me ashamed I waited so long to view this masterpiece, and I genuinely hope it goes down in horror/zombie history, as it rightfully should.
Considering the current world climate surrounding the Covid-19 outbreak, which has forced myself to conclude the remainder of my college semester at home, I thought it would be fun to seek out a general end-of-the-world/apocalypse film to add to the list, and what is more classic than a good zombie movie? I’ve been a fan of the genre since the first time I saw Resident Evil when I was 12 years old, but that being my primary introductory film meant I expected blood and gore, maybe some jump scares, I didn’t expect such a viscerally emotional story.
[Minor Spoilers] Seok-woo reluctantly agrees to take his daughter to visit her mother is Osan for her birthday and boards a train early in the morning, unknowingly leaving Seoul just as it begins to succumb to disaster. Bluntly, he’s a bad father. He’s uninvolved, often prioritizes his work over his daughter, misses Su-an’s school performance, and even gives her a repeat present for her birthday gift. His mother, who lives with him and helps to take care of Su-an, begs him to take her to see her mother like she wants. Eventually his guilt convinces him, and he decides to take her in the morning on the train and return to Seoul to go back to work by the afternoon.
On the train, other passengers include a high school baseball team, two elderly sisters, Sang-hwa (played by the outstanding actor, Dong-seok Ma, whose works I now plan to follow) and his pregnant wife, Yu-mi Jung (played by Yu-mi Jung), both of whom Su-an befriends, and then a disturbed homeless man who later is revealed to have witnessed a zombie attack before boarding the train. Just before the door closed, one last infected person manages to board, beginning a chain outbreak among the passengers.
Inevitably, all but Su-an and Yu-mi are killed, most of them sacrificing themselves in order to give the other passengers a chance at survival.
Unlike most other zombie movies I’ve seen, every death in this movie is felt, and I can’t count how many times I cried. The only consolation at the end of the film were that there was still a chance for the future and the humanity preserved in Su-an’s song, which she had failed to sing for her absent father in her school performance before the outbreak began.
Available On: Netflix
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this review- please leave a comment below to let me know what you thought, or make your own requests/recommendations for what I should watch next. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive updates about new reviews, posted every Wednesday and Saturday!
Comments