The Last Train Out of Zombie Town

Yeon Sang-ho (director), Train to Busan

Seok-woo, a tired workaholic Seoul capitalist, doesn’t want to travel; he’d rather be working. But his young daughter, Su-an, has guilted him into giving her the one thing she wants for her birthday, a trip to see her mother in Busan. He tells his assistant not to worry: “I’ll be back by lunch,” he grumbles into his cell phone as the bullet train leaves the station. Veteran audiences know his cynical optimism dooms everyone aboard.

This movie, billed as South Korea’s first zombie film, resembles Western zombie media in certain ways: the checklist of character types, mostly doomed to die. The growing paranoia, heightened by claustrophobia, as nearly the entire film occurs inside a bullet train. The grotesque body horror, as ordinary humans become distorted, twitching revenants driven by hunger. But, in making the transition to Korean culture, the zombie genre also draws in contemporary concerns and important modern symbolism.

Act One resembles a traditional horror movie, replete with little vignettes of friendly anonymity. Seok-woo ignores his daughter, hypnotized by his smartphone. Train stewards conduct business, pasted-on smiles concealing crippling boredom. A high-school baseball team commandeers one entire car. Meanwhile, enclosed in a toilet cubicle, a teenage stowaway with an ugly bite mark struggles with sudden onset of tremors she can’t readily explain. Embryonic horror simmers beneath the everyday banalities, in the Stephen King style.

There’s no transition to Act Two. Everything is normal, then instantly, one zombie becomes two, becomes four, becomes a rampaging horde. Uninfected humans race toward the train’s rear, the only refuge, while the sudden onslaught of monsters pursues them. Seok-woo, who almost loses his daughter to the invasion, becomes the group’s de facto leader when he realizes the infected can’t handle doors. He quickly makes a second discovery: they don’t attack what they can’t see.

Themes develop quickly. Seok-woo must make snap decisions about group safety, sometimes appearing to sacrifice individuals for the community. He tells his daughter she must think only of herself during this crisis, but soon realizes that’s not a sustainable attitude. Only working together will the uninfected survive. Meanwhile, Yong-suk, a fat businessman with obviously dyed hair (ahem), begins dividing survivors into the deserving and undeserving. The undeserving, he urges forward to die for self-serving purposes.

Actor Gong Yoo is most famous in South Korea for leading roles in romantic comedies and melodramas. Even to Western audiences, his appearance as Seok-woo seethes with TV-friendly masculinity. So when he gets angry, savagely attacking zombies to protect his daughter and fellow passengers, the transformation is palpable. Though it’s an ensemble movie, Seok-woo holds our central interest. The contrast between Seok-woo’s sultry good looks, and his blood-stained business shirt, becomes the movie’s dominant image.

Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) prepares his fellow survivors to fight
their way through the zombies in Train to Busan

Survivors become separated into three groups. Trapped at the back, Seok-woo, initially reluctant to fight for others, concludes they’ll only survive together. He leads an assault toward the front, knowing he’ll have to fight through entire cars filled with cannibal undead. In one scene, a high-school baseball star faces his entire team, and freezes. It makes us wonder: if our friends became zombies, could we fight them? Could we kill our friends to protect our families?

While Seok-woo gathers survivors together, Yong-suk encourages others’ paranoia. He insists they cannot know whether Seok-woo’s fighters are trustworthy, and demands they lock the doors ever tighter. Only we insiders, Yong-suk insists, can ensure we’re pure and uninfected; everyone else, even our former friends, are universally suspect. His infectious paranoia costs innocent lives, but protects himself. Seok-woo successfully saves several humans only to find himself shunned and isolated. But Yong-suk’s megalomania becomes his vulnerability.

On one level, this is an intense monster movie. The bullet train simply embodies the story’s massive momentum; the pace never slackens, and every momentary pause lets more terror into the characters’ lives. The combination of high-speed horror, glossy design, and ironic use of oversaturated daylight, gives this movie a gut-level intensity that allows audiences to enjoy it like the monster spectacular it is. You can find the deeper levels, but you don’t have to.

At another level, it’s a commentary about the fears, not always unfair, which emerge from carnivorous post-industrial capitalism. How do we protect ourselves without becoming irrational? How do we organize a community without letting demagogues hijack us for selfish ends? This movie doesn’t answer these questions, and suggests we maybe can’t answer them. Literally every choice has consequences. But it says we have to try, if any of us are going to get out alive.