Train to Busan, a South Korean production, immediately made my list of films I intended to catch after their theatrical run (in this film’s case, I don’t believe it played in my area).

The few reviews of it I read were glowing and intriguing, noting the film was a high-tension zombie film set, for the most part, on a train traveling from Seoul to, you guessed it, the city of Busan.

So I waited and, after a while, the film was made available for purchase,  I found it via VUDU on sale one day and, rather than wait for Netflix to get it, gave in and outright bought the film.  Yesterday I finally had a chance to see it and I’m pleased to say I don’t regret the purchase one bit.

Train to Busan’s two main characters are Seok Wu (Yoo Gong), a self-centered fund manager who barely has time for his very young daughter, Soo-an (Soo-an Kim).  He’s revealed to be a ruthless financial “shark” who is willing to ease an investor’s concerns over the phone and then turn around and make a killing selling the same stock he just told the man to hold on to (I hope I remember this right! 😉

When the workday is done we see him in a garage talking on the phone to his wife, who lives in Busan, and whom he is in the process of divorcing.  She tells him their daughter wants to come to Busan to see her and essentially begs him to do the right thing on her birthday (which is the next day) and allow her to come to Busan for a visit.

Seok Wu doesn’t care to do so and tells her.  When he reaches his apartment and gives his daughter her birthday gift, a Nintendo Wii game system, his daughter’s reaction isn’t what he was expecting.  He asks her why she isn’t impressed with this gift and the daughter points to the Wii system she already has and which he gave her as a gift for “Children’s Day”.

Feeling guilty over this and noting it is clear his daughter wants to see her mother, Seok Wu agrees to take his young daughter on the train to Busan.  He figures to miss only half a day of work and be back at the office by the early afternoon.  Together they drive to the station but along the way see fire trucks roaming the streets and a big fire taking up an entire floor of a high rise.  They don’t stop to dwell on the tragedy and instead drive on, reaching the train and boarding it.

We are presented with a larger cast of characters on the train, some of whom will be a part of the story.  Not one of them notices a distressed woman with mysterious bite marks on her leg board the train.

Very soon, pandemonium begins.

Train to Busan, as I noted above, very much lived up to my expectations.  It is exciting, action filled, and tense as hell.  It also knows when to slow down and give us character moments…along with building up the tension for the next action/horror scene.

For those adverse to gore, the film does not dwell on or show much of it, which I didn’t mind at all.  Sometimes, particularly in zombie films, gore becomes the way to give audiences doses of horror but in a film with this giddy amount of high tension, it wasn’t necessary to have much of it.

Though I ultimately loved the film, there are a couple of minor negatives worth noting.  For example, the film’s characters were just that, more “types” than “real” people.  Given the fact that the central core of characters is fairly large and the movie has only so much time to present them and then put them in danger, I didn’t mind though some others have pointed this out as a negative.

A little more problematic is the fact that this is a fairly low budget film.  Granted, outside of Hollywood “blockbusters”, most films made in foreign lands don’t have anywhere near the money the bigger Hollywood films require.  Nonetheless, there were some scenes in Train to Busan which I suspect the film’s makers would and could have made far larger and impressive had they the budget to do so.

Regardless, these two negatives are at best very minor.  Train to Busan is an exciting, action/tension filled zombie film that easily sits atop the list of the best of the genre.

Well done and recommended!