Posted by I went on a little zombie kick after watching Cargo, it had been a while since I had done that and honestly just turning my brain off and watching some movies makes it a lot easier to do book reviews.
This one is actually a Korean film, so the entire movie is in subtitles, that used to bother me but as time goes on I’ve become much more patient with ‘reading my movies’. I’m glad I gave this one a shot, it was a lot of fun watching a different cultures take on zombies.
The main character is a businessman who has his daughter with him on a train ride. There’s a passenger in one of the cars that’s sick, she’s been bitten on the leg and no one at the time realizes the danger of the situation. Of course, she turns into a zombie and starts chowing down on the passengers next to her, which causes them to turn into a zombie as well. Soon the entire car is in chaos and the infection starts spreading to other cars.
The MC and a few others have locked themselves safely away and have contacted the conductor to let him know what’s going on. They hear that the city of Busan is the only city that hasn’t closed its doors.
This was a fast-paced movie where the tension never lets up, there is always a zombie right on the tail of the main characters and it makes it more of an edge of your seat kind of movie. There are also a lot of deaths, some of them predictable, but it was still enjoyable. There were a few character tropes used, like the tough guy trying to save everyone and the scared woman who cries a lot, but the main characters struggle to keep his young daughter alive was endearing. There was also a character meant to be hated, and my god did they succeed in making me despise that guy – the selfish dumbass who gets people killed trope was used well.
There are lots of zombie hordes here as well, so if you’re the person who wants to see a massive swarm of zombies going after a few survivors, and lots of people getting eaten – this one could be for you.
Overall I liked this, it’s refreshing to get a different setting for zombie movies and I’ve been enjoying going through a bunch of different sorts of zombie flicks. Again, there was a pretty big divide between IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
My score would be 7.5/10
This was an enjoyable flick. Nothing truly profound, just hordes of zombies and predictable deaths.
I liked the selfish asshole, too – the guy’s facial expressions were so over the top, and he was so histrionic, that it was almost a parody, but still awesome.
Wasn’t the government dropping the zombies on the populace to “fumigate” the riff-raff? I remember thinking this plotline wasn’t developed properly – but I concede my memory might be foggy.