Director: Sang-ho Yeon
Writer(s): Yeon
Starring: Yoo Gong, Soo-an Kim, Yu-mi Jun, and Dong-seok Ma
There are some movies that start off so ingeniously and unique that you just know they're going to be good; Yeon Sang-ho's
Train to Busan is such a film. A man driving an urgent package to an urgent destination drops his phone and, while attempting to retrieve it, hits something in the middle of the road. It's a deer. He surveys the damage to the front of his truck, and looks a little upset, but the package is too important to care about anything else. He gets back in his car and drives off.
But the slow tracking shot back to the deer, along with the ominous swell to the soundtrack, tell us that something is not right. The animal is still, blood surrounding its body, just as we would expect. Then, it starts to twitch, then violently—and ever so awkwardly—jumps to its feet, the camera lingering closely on its face at which point what we already knew is explicitly verified: this deer might be moving, but it's not alive.
It's really quite an in-your-face open that sets you up for the “anything goes” world that you will be inhabiting for two hours. But there's also an ugly side to
Train to Busan, one that's in direct contrast to the popcorn atmosphere that the film is trying to achieve. And it, too, is foreshadowed right from the outset.
In the very next scene we are introduced to Seok Woo, a businessman for a large corporation who seems deeply involved in his work. As it turns out, he is, to the point that he has to ask a coworker what to get his daughter for her birthday...after being reminded that tomorrow is, in fact, her birthday. Not surprisingly, we later learn, that selfish attitude is the main reason behind his impending divorce. Nothing in this movie can be that simple, though, so naturally, there's some collateral damage in this situation: their young daughter, who also happens to be celebrating her birthday the following day. And, of course, her only wish is for Seok to take her to Busan, to see her soon-to-be-estranged mother. Seok, ever the businessman, tries to use the “I'm too busy” excuse, but finally caves in to his daughter's request.
And that, even more than the occasionally amazing action scenes, becomes the film's trademark: It's all covered in a cloying saccharine coating, where every event feels like little more than a reason to beat us over the head with more emotion. Yes, we already get the strained relationship between father and child, because it's instantly made evident in several of the opening scenes. We already get that the child, who cannot be more than ten years old, is innocent, and sweet, and pure, and merely a victim of her father's workaholism. Yet the movie still rubs our noses in just how angelic the daughter is, even at the common sense cost of safety: After his father, a high-ranking executive, is tipped off about a route to avoid that would lead to guaranteed quarantine, she tries rushing off to tell everyone else. But when she is stopped, her father informing her that it's every man for himself in this scenario (a sad, but hard, truth), she accuses him of being selfish. Sure, stupid kid, it's only a good decision if you agree with it, even if your stupidity leads to the deaths of everyone around you, right? It's a movie that so desperately wants us to take it seriously, that it's impossible to feel anything but utter annoyance, especially as the painful outpouring of emotions continues to be a story device until the very end.
Now, don't take this rant the wrong way: there are movies that have successfully pulled off the difficult combination of emotion and horror.
The Orphanage is a phenomenal example; it scared and moved me almost in equal measure. Even B-movies can do it:
Trollhunter is unexpected proof of that, a film that had the audacity to “humanize” its monsters, something Hollywood would never have the guts to do. But the problem is the way
Busan tries going about it: in the most formulaic, mundane ways imaginable. Each “heart-tugging” scene feels like it was ripped out of a Hallmark channel film, and with the same amount of conviction as you will find in those, which are themselves, tired retreads of one another.
Then there are the group of survivors, which are completely generic in mind and action. We already have “indifferent businessman who will change his ways and become a hero”, and “completely angelic little girl” covered, but there's also “popular cheerleader/athlete combo”, “rough-around-the-edges man who turns out to have a heart of gold”, his wife, who ticks the box marked “pregnant”, “homeless man who turns out to be okay after all”, etc., etc., etc. Bringing the groan-inducing cast of characters to completion is the “whiny rich man who will survive at all costs”; he also doubles as the film's central living villain, as if the overwhelming hordes of the undead aren't enough. It all becomes too much, and it eventually comes falling down under the weight of its own half-assed (though admittedly ambitious) ideas.
The title pretty much sums up the plot, in which a zombie outbreak befalls a train, leading the dwindling number of survivors to stay alive as long as possible against the growing hordes of the undead. That's it. And within this context, there are certainly some fantastic action sequences that show director Sang-ho Yeon can be a force to be reckoned with....no matter how much of a seasoned horror or action film fan you are, there's virtually guaranteed to be at least one scene that will drop your jaw to the floor. Along those same lines, I can't chastise him for lack of ambition, and many of the special effects are very well done. And the zombie movements, as well as their intense desperation to kill, are some of the best I've ever seen in a zombie movie, period.
It just becomes a problem when you're more dreading the obligatory banter between scenes, than you are looking forward to the action. And the longer that went on, the more I found myself disappointed with many of the “fight” sequences, which are largely bloodless (or only lightly bloodied), and in which it becomes clear just who the screenplay is favoring at any given time. If tired predictability is your favorite trait in a horror film, then you will have a great time riding this train; it's just an English-language audio track away from a multi-million dollar run at the multiplexes.
RATING: 5/10
