Train to Busan (zombie flick)

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This is for posters who are interested in foreign films, particularly, Korean films as they are certainly some gems in Korean cinema. Unfortunately, this movie isn’t one of them.

Train to Busan is getting a shit ton of hype right now and I’m guessing Korean film heads would want to check this one out eventually. I’m here to say sway you from doing so. The trailer looks interesting, but I actually thought it was a disaster movie. But it’s a zombie flick.


I’m not into zombie movies or Korean attempts at copying Hollywood blockbusters, but people here have been raving about this movie so much that I decided to check it out. To explain it simply, think of it as World War Z and Snowpiercer put together as most of the movie is people fighting zombies in a train. I didn’t like World War Z that much, but that movie is better than Train to Busan.
The beginning of the movie and the buildup up until they actually show the zombies is well done. They spend a lot of time developing the characters while only hinting at zombies through news reports and such, which seems like the typical way zombie movies start out. In fact, this movie follows a lot of typical western zombie movie tropes and doesn’t really do anything new or different with it. Even the origin of the zombies is your typical bio experiment gone bad. I was hoping that “Korean twist” would be added to it to make it more interesting, but if you’ve seen other zombie movies, you’ve seen this one.

Once the actual zombie attack starts, the movie actually gets worse. There’s a pathetic lack of gore, which takes away from the impact of a person getting bitten by a zombie. You would see a person get torn apart by a zombie and when he/she becomes reanimated, there’s not a scratch, except for some blood. The zombies themselves don’t really look scary and I think the camera shows them way too much, and the whole I’m thinking it’s just a bunch of extras acting as crazy as possible.

The story mostly revolves around this guy and his daughter (the aforementioned little girl) and it’s your typical story of a parent trying their best to keep their kid safe in a chaotic situation. The emotional focal point of the movie is on these two, and despite the buildup in the beginning, it eventually falls flat.

Everything just feels flat in this movie. There’s no weight to the action because you feel the characters will be safe until it is the “right moment” in the movie for them to die. There’s way too many dramatic scenes that you don’t feel the impact in any of them. Too many dramatic slow motion scenes of a guy heroically fighting off the zombies so others could survive. Things just happen with no real weight to them and you find yourself not really caring most of the time. There’s one scene in particular that is so unbelievably corny that it plummeted my already bad rating of the movie. The acting is all over the place, ranging from pretty good (the little girl is convincing) to really bad.

That’s not to say there weren’t some good things. The way the zombies twitched when reanimating was creepy and cool, even if the zombies themselves weren’t. The zombies are a lot like World War Z zombies in that they run frantically and stumble on top of eachother. There were some shots of them doing that that were cool. There’s your typical selfish asshole character that is such a giant dick that you’re waiting for him to die a painful death the whole time. He was one of the best parts of the movie, but once again, *Spoilers: his eventual death feels flat just like everything else.

Overall, not the worst movie I’ve seen, but I would have rather saved my money and time. There are way better zombie movies than this one.
 
I really enjoyed Snowpiercer and most Korean movies, but I hate Zombie movies so I will definitely skip this one.
 
I think it had potential to be a good movie, but it’s basically a wannabe Hollywood blockbuster with some sappy Korean elements (like, really sappy). If you like mainstream Korean movies, you might like this one. The Korean movies that get international clout are the ones that ironically aren’t as well-received with the mainstream Korean audience, and this one is definitely catering towards the mainstream.
 
Got burned out on Zombie flicks a while ago, but will check this out if it pops up at my local indie theater that shows foreign movies.

As far as foreign zombie flicks go I think the Rec series takes the cake. The first two were amazing and the third was a lot of fun (still haven't seen the fourth one).

The french have put out some decent Zombie films as well, "Mutants" and "The Horde" are worth checking out.
 
Got burned out on Zombie flicks a while ago, but will check this out if it pops up at my local indie theater that shows foreign movies.

As far as foreign zombie flicks go I think the Rec series takes the cake. The first two were amazing and the third was a lot of fun (still haven't seen the fourth one).

The french have put out some decent Zombie films as well, "Mutants" and "The Horde" are worth checking out.
The first REC is the best zombie movie I’ve seen. I haven’t seen many zombie flicks but I don’t think I’ve seen so far has topped that.
 
The first REC is the best zombie movie I’ve seen. I haven’t seen many zombie flicks but I don’t think I’ve seen so far has topped that.

I loved it as well, thought the sequel was better though just based on pure craziness and how insane it was.
 
I loved it as well, thought the sequel was better though just based on pure craziness and how insane it was.
The second one? I saw it, remember not liking it, but I don’t really remember what happened in it. Maybe I’ll check it out again to see if I like it this time. I heard there was a third one as well.
 
The second one? I saw it, remember not liking it, but I don’t really remember what happened in it. Maybe I’ll check it out again to see if I like it this time. I heard there was a third one as well.

Yeah there are four actually (haven't seen the fourth though). The second one throws in a pretty crazy twist and gets wild, the third one kind of leans more towards comedy than horror but it is still very gory and very fun.
 
I was just reading about the fourth one and I may check it out since it has the actress from the first one, who is sexy as hell. Have you seen Quarantine by the way?
 
Got burned out on Zombie flicks a while ago, but will check this out if it pops up at my local indie theater that shows foreign movies.

As far as foreign zombie flicks go I think the Rec series takes the cake. The first two were amazing and the third was a lot of fun (still haven't seen the fourth one).

The french have put out some decent Zombie films as well, "Mutants" and "The Horde" are worth checking out.

Have you seen The Return of the Living Dead
 
There is a Korean vampire film called "Thirst" that IMO is fucking fantastic. It's directed by Chan-Wook Park who also did the Vengeance Trilogy (including Oldboy). It's about a priest who becomes a vampire and struggles between the light and dark.

thirst-korean-movie.jpg
 
Tbh, it looks fantastic from the trailer and I like zombie movies so I'll definitely give it a shot.
 
Kimchified world war z?
Haha my friend and I made the joke that a zombie outbreak would never occur in Korea since kimchi supposedly cures everything.
Tbh, it looks fantastic from the trailer and I like zombie movies so I'll definitely give it a shot.
If you like zombies in general you might like it. The lack of gore is really disconcerting in this movie though. I think that alone could’ve made it better.
 
Watched it today. It was one of the best zombie movies I've ever seen. Zombies were fast and quite scary looking and the movie had some fantastic scenes. The zombie genre is too played out now and 9 outta 10 zombie movies are utter crap these days. It was refreshing to see something like this after a long time. I found this much better than World War Z which I thought was barely average.
 
just watched it. found it great, actually. what made it different was at least it had well-developed characters, compared to say, The Walking Dead, who can't even develop their characters throughout multiple seasons as well.
 
The zombie genre is too played out now and 9 outta 10 zombie movies are utter crap these days. It was refreshing to see something like this after a long time.

This. My thoughts exactly.
 
its been showing in theatres here for literally a few months, really popular. I definitley want to check it out :)
 

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