ul
Lynelle Staudt
Fund manager Seok-woo is a cynical workaholic and divorced father. His estranged daughter Su-an wants to spend her birthday with her mom in Busan. Seok-woo sees a video of Su-an attempting to sing "Aloha ʻOe" at her singing recital and succumbing to stage fright as a result of his absence. Overcome with guilt, he decides to grant Su-an's birthday wish. The next day, they board the KTX 101 at Seoul Station, en route to Busan. Other passengers include Sang-hwa and his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong, COO Yon-suk, a high school baseball team including player Yong-guk and his cheerleader girlfriend Jin-hee, elderly sisters In-gil and Jong-gil, and a traumatized homeless stowaway hiding in the bathroom. Before the train departs, an ill woman runs onto the train unnoticed. She turns into a zombie and attacks a train attendant, who also turns. The infection spreads rapidly throughout the train.
A blocked track at the East Daegu Station forces the survivors to stop and search for another train. Yon-suk escapes after pushing Ki-chul into the zombies. A flaming locomotive derails, separating the group and trapping Seok-woo, Su-an, Seong-kyeong and the homeless man underneath a carriage filled with zombies. Meanwhile, Yon-suk runs into Jin-hee and Yong-guk, pushing the former into a zombie in his attempts to escape. Heartbroken, Yong-guk stays with Jin-hee until she turns and kills him. The conductor starts a locomotive on another track but is also thrown to the zombies while trying to save an injured Yon-suk. Seok-woo finds a way out from under the carriage, but the escape route is shortly afterward blocked by falling debris. The homeless man sacrifices himself to buy time for Seok-woo to clear the debris, and he, Su-an and Seong-kyeong manage to escape onto the new locomotive.
ul
After fighting off zombies hanging onto the locomotive, they encounter Yon-suk, who is on the verge of turning into a zombie and is begging for help. Seok-woo manages to throw him off but is bitten. He puts Su-an and Seong-kyeong inside the engine room, teaches Seong-kyeong how to operate the train, and says goodbye to his daughter. In his final moments before he turns, he reminisces the moment of Su-an's birth, before throwing himself off the locomotive.
Due to another train blockage, Su-an and Seong-kyeong are forced to stop the train at a tunnel just prior to Busan. The two exit the train and continue following the tracks on foot through the tunnel. Snipers are stationed on the other side of the tunnel and are prepared to shoot at what they believe to be zombies, but they lower their weapons when they hear Su-an singing "Aloha ʻOe", in tribute to her late father.
The film is based on an original story created by Park Joo-suk. The team tried to reference the movements of the zombies in the game 7 Days to Die and the movements of the dolls from Ghost in the Shell, and also reviewed the movements from the nurses in Silent Hill.[12] The film was filmed in various stations from Daejeon, Cheonan and East Daegu.[12] The water deer in the movie was created using real videos of water deer and 3D modelling.[12] The scenery that is seen outside the train in the film was shot with an LED plate rear screen technique behind the set and by focusing on the characters.[12] The blood vessels of the zombies were drawn with an airbrush. The zombies were styled differently depending on the progress of the infection of zombies.[12]
The plot isn't complicated: Everyday South Koreans find themselves trapped on a speeding bullet train with fast-multiplying zombies, creating the kind of claustrophobic feel that freshens up the zombie trope. But beyond a fast-paced summer thriller, it's also an extended critique of Korean society.
South Korea is a destination which is gaining more and more popularity among travelers worldwide. As such, making your way from Seoul to Busan on a modern KTX bullet train has recently become somewhat of a route classic, taking you across the country from north to south in record-fast travel times. Among the simplest ways to get around in Korea is taking fast and modern trains, below we have put together answers to commonly asked questions about the Seoul - Busan rail route.
South Korea produces some of the finest cinema, period. Pick your favorite genre, and the Koreans have you covered. Some of my all time favorite movies come from SK. With Train to Busan; it's zombies on a train, and I had a Choo Choo of a fun time.
Like the attentive dad that he is, Seok-woo falls asleep. Su-an notices strange activity happening on the train, so she gets up and mills around. The attendants find a crazy homeless man in the bathroom. He warns them that something terrible is coming. Classic Monster in the House moment: the warning that goes unheeded. Su-an uses a bathroom.
Bad Guys Close In (53-73): Sang-hwa, Yong-guk, and Seok-woo gear up to go through the train cars. They make gauntlets out of athletic tape and arm themselves with baseball bats. The first car is pure fighting. In the second car, they almost die until they go through a tunnel. The dark confuses the zombies. In the next car they use cell phones to create a distraction, smoothly moving through the darkened car as the zombies attack a ringing phone.
In a tearful scene, Seok-woo says goodbye to Su-an. He tells her to stay with Seong-kyeong now. He leaves, walking to the back of the train. Before he fully transforms, he has an epiphany moment of his young daughter being born. He leaps off the train, self-sacrificing to save his daughter and Seong-kyeong. His transformation is complete.
Not only did Train to Busan reinvigorate the modern zombie movie with a unique, terrifying take on the tried and true creature, but the emotional weight of the film and the bleak commentary of social decline resonated with horror audiences in a very big way. The recent success of other foreign language films, such as Academy Award winner Parasite, can be attributed to the groundbreaking quality of films like Train to Busan, which defied language barriers and brought a good story to horror audiences. Available to stream on Netflix as of April 2020, Train to Busan follows the early stages of a zombie outbreak in Korea while passengers are confined on a train and traveling to various destinations.
Seok Woo, his estranged daughter Soo An, and other passengers become trapped on a KTX train (high-speed train) heading from Seoul to Busan during a disastrous virus outbreak in South Korea.(Source: MyDramaList) Edit Translation
Although there is Wi-Fi onboard the train, it provides a relatively weak connection due to the large amount of people using the Wi-Fi. Also, the Wi-Fi tends to go out when the train enters a tunnel, which often happens.
Train to Busan follows a man and his estranged daughter, among other passengers, on a zombie-infested train. The passengers must fight for survival as they ride the train to the last beacon of hope and a safe haven against the infected. The film was so popular, that is sparked a sequel in 2020, Train to Busan: Peninsula. The sequel lacked the magic of the first and wasn't as well received as its predecessor. Similarly, a controversial remake is in the works, with the official title being, The Last Train to New York.
At the heart of this zombie film, are the characters. Yeon Sang-Ho and Joo-Suk Park write these characters with a remarkable amount of layers, which makes Train to Busan feel so special. Take the main character, Seok-Woo (Gong Yoo), who at first, is a selfish and terrible father, and who rarely sees his daughter and is too caught up in his work life. But throughout the film, we see him grow as a person, not only caring for his daughter, but for other passengers on the train as well, saving them from zombies and sacrificing himself in a truly heartbreaking moment. There is no doubt that Sang-Hwa (Ma Dong-seok) was the greatest character in the film because of his charm, his care for others, and most notably, the love for his pregnant wife, with whom he still goes back and forth deciding baby names with. Similarly, he is one mean zombie killing machine, and goes through countless zombies with just his fists, punching and elbowing so many zombies. That's one of the coolest things any character has ever done in a zombie flick. This character has so much depth and so much at stake, that when he sacrifices himself, and screams a name for their unborn child, the tears will instantly flow, and you can't do anything to stop them.
Some may argue that Train to Busan isn't a horror movie because it lacks any real or effective jump scares. While this may be true, we actually say the film is one of the scariest zombie films of all time because the film is set on a train. A train is an incredibly compact area of space; it's hard to move around, even when there aren't zombies trying to eat you. And forcing the passengers and audiences to be on this train with zombies is nightmare fuel and creates an unbearable amount of claustrophobia. Add the compact space, with a speeding train that you can't escape, and you already have a pretty terrifying concept.
Train to Busan is a gorgeous zombie movie, that is shot to perfection. The film uses many wide-angle shots outside the train, as well as many close-up shots in the train to add to the sense of claustrophobia. Likewise, the editing is brilliant, making the action fluid and trackable, while also complementing the film's cinematography. The wider shots have more time to breathe and the close up shots are edited quicker together to make the scenes a lot more tense.
Gone are the days of slow-moving zombies created by horror legend George A. Romero. Now, thanks to World War Z and 28 Days Later, zombies are scarier than ever and can relentlessly run very, very fast. The zombies in Train to Busan are no different, with many of the zombies almost being as fast as a slow-moving train. If zombies ever take over the world, let's cross our fingers we get George A. Romero's slow zombies, as opposed to the rapid sprinters in modern zombie flicks.
b9b4d2437c