TRAIN TO BUSAN
During the Korean War, pivotal battles were held around the province of Busan to hold back the North Korean army. So the area has a long held role in the legacy of South Korea, as being the place where you hold out until reinforcements come. Here a commuter train to Busan becomes the last refuge against a sudden and virulent zombie attack.
Zombie films are everywhere nowadays. They have been to the 21st Century what vampires were to the early 20th. As metaphors for all of the ails of society, there is a never ending source of metaphors. The Rezort took on the world's blind eye to refugee rights. Others play with commercialisation.
Train to Busan, however, is a step above most of the rest, because it's not really a zombie flick. Yes, we have zombies, and like the great South Korean horror TV series Kingdom, they can run, and they pass their zombie-ness along like a virus. But they exist as a thing which exists to get our main plot going.
Which is about dads, Dads and their relationships with their kids, good, bad or could be better. Yet to be born or standing staring right at you.
Seo Seok-Woo is having a bad day. His job is suffering bad PR for a leakage, his marriage is undergoing a divorce, and he's on a train with the daughter he never had time for. The kid is convinced she saw people acting like zombies at the station. And then that woman rushes on board just before kick off. He is our lead, and we follow him as the disaster unfolds and he turns into the unstoppable determinator papa bear.
Well you know what they say. Bond with your child. Go to their recitals. Play with them. Defend them in a zombie apocalypse.
He's joined on this by Sang-hwa, his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong, one terrified homeless guy who has seen the zombie outbreak start before he got on the train, and members of a high school baseball team.
Sang-hwa is frankly too cool to exist. A grumpy hulking man, he snipes at everyone, bar his heavily pregnant wife whom he is besotted towards. But when ¤¤¤¤ goes down, he's like Darth Vader vs a bunch of redshirt mooks when it comes to taking out all the zombies ever. He saves people, he knocks out zombies with punches to the face, he is clearly Captain Awesome on this train. It's not just me that thinks this, the actor Ma Dong-Seok won a KOFRA (the South Korean version of the BAFTA) for this performance, and his career has skyrocketed in South Korean cinema since this breakthrough role in his mid-40s. And as he fights tooth and nail for a child that hasn't even been born yet, he teaches our lead about what it is means to be a dad.
"Dad's make the sacrifice and are the bad guy but are appreciated one day" he says. He's talking to Seo but he might as well be talking to the audience.
Because Train to Busan is about love. All of our likeable characters actions come out of love for another. Sang-hwa and Seok-woo try to save everyone, others try to save their own loved ones. Not always successfully. One memorable image has someone hold onto their loved one, even as they fall victim to the zombification, aware what is to come. Others outright sacrifice themselves to save others.
Whereas those you act out of selfish self-interest are doomed to hubris.
Not every parent in the world is on the right side of that fence, of course. Too many people suffer horrible, horrible parents, or feckless ones. It's not an easy job, nor is it ever meant to be. It is however an important one you need to do properly and lovingly if you ever find yourself a dad or mum. You don't need a zombie outbreak to know this. As Train to Busan implies, that relationship should be as strong as that every day of the week.
Train to Busan is a story about family relationships. The zombies are there to cement that story. As a result, it remains one of the most moving and great horror films produced in a long, long time.
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