If you haven’t seen it, then you need to rectify that this week.
Set on a super-fast-moving train that brings passengers from Seoul to Busan, it tells the story of a businessman father who doesn’t have much time for his daughter, when the zombie apocalypse breaks out and he and the rest of the train’s passengers are suddenly forced to fight for their survival.
Or, in some of their cases, sacrificing some of the others in order for them to continue living.
If you want, you can find the political allegory of this zombie movie (hint: pretty much every zombie movie is a political allegory), such as in Dawn Of The Dead (mindless consumerism), 28 Days Later (fear of man-made diseases), Night Of The Dead (race wars) and so on.
With Train To Busan, the message is clear that there is a lot of hate still simmering for the rich folk who sorted themselves out with Golden Parachutes once the local economy went to hell.
Or, if you don’t want to look for subtext, you can just enjoy the World War Z-esque zombie action-sequences set against the nearly-always-in-motion setting, while the father-daughter relationship proves to be a hugely effective emotional spine to pin everything to.
There is, apparently, a US remake on the way – Train To Brooklyn – but whether they can match the kinetic energy and vicious fear on show in the original here remains to be seen.
It would be a surprise if it could match the number of awards and End Of Year Best Of lists as the original, or the fact that the action-horror scored a fantastic 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Train To Busan is on Film 4 on Friday 3 August at 10.55pm.
Clip via Zero Media
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