It is incredible how quickly Train to Busan gets you to care about its characters. They are all archetypes, and none of their names register. This is how I remember some of them: gusty, funny guy with pregnant wife ( Ma Dong-seok) , selfish father ( Gong Yoo) , little girl with parental issues ( Kim Su-an) , homeless man ( Choi Gwi-hwa) , flirtatious students ( Choi Woo-shik and Ahn So-hee) … But these general labels are what we’d have likely slapped on them if we’d travelled along in that cursed train to Busan even as South Korea slowly turns into zombieland for no apparent reason.
Train to Busan brings absolutely nothing new to the zombie genre, but it shows that lack of novelty needn’t be a handicap at all. It has everything you’d expect in a zombie film: The close calls, the mass slaughters, the long chases. A lot of it is quite beautifully shot. A crucial shot of a self-sacrificing man is shown as a shadow… a dark figure of a man who, during the course of the film, manages to turn to light. The film is full of such delicious ironies. A man who isn’t allowed entry into a train compartment by another finds the tables turned later in the film. A homeless man, viewed throughout with suspicion by the other characters, is the reason two upper-class women survive. A woman who’s expecting a child is forced by circumstances to accept another. A girl whose singing falters on account of her father’s lack of support, sings her best when he’s gone forever. Such symmetry in writing doesn’t happen accidentally.
