Train To Busan Opening Scene

[Shanta Plansinis]

Theaction scenes with the zombies are executed surprisingly well. First-time feature director Yeon Sang Ho does a great job of orchestrating some really fierce zombie attacks, which can be challenging given the confined train setting. The rules of the zombies are quickly established and they remain consistent. A scene where the passengers must make their way through four zombie-filled cars to get to their loved ones is especially intense yet fun to watch.

The Virus is an unnamed bio-engineered virus that became responsible for the Zombie outbreak. The virus spread fast throughout the Korean Peninsula in several days, completely destroying the country and causing total societal collapse.

This unnamed and unknown virus is a deadly artificial mutagen developed presumably and unintentionally by a biotech company that resulted in the contamination of natural water and first infected the animals like the deer in the opening scene which got up after being ran over by a truck. The virus then shortly and quickly spread through cities, such as Seoul and then throughout the rest of South Korea. The Korean military established evacuation centers in Daejeon and Busan. However, Daejeon quickly fell in the hours of the initial outbreak, due to its close proximity to Seoul and the KTX HSR line. Busan is left the last city in the country, and becomes a successful evacuation center for citizens to evacuate the peninsula. However, their efforts of establishing a safe quarantine zone wasn't successful, due to the fact that everyone was evacuated there, which made it dangerous everywhere. Busan eventually fell to a plane routing to Singapore with zombies crashing into the city. Because of the nation being overrun by zombies in a short time, many countries refused to take in immigrants from Korea for fear of them carrying the virus. Due to this, Korean Peninsula become abandoned for many years, with only small pockets of survivors across the country.

The virus spreads through bites or scratches and then it takes the victim a few minutes or possibly seconds to become infected. Possible injection of infected blood or bodily fluid may lead to infection. The veins of the victim turn black, and the symptoms of victims prior to infection are convulsive seizures and twitching. After infection, the infected may hunt down another uninfected victim with their ferocious speed, agility, and with a mob mentality. When the infected are bunched up as a horde, they have a tendency to trample or run over each other just to chase down an uninfected victim. There's no possibility of a cure or an infected victim becoming an asymptomatic carrier. The infected able to detect any sound, smell, and sight from which they quickly find other victims and infect them.

(Welcome to Scariest Scene Ever, a column dedicated to the most pulse-pounding moments in horror with your tour guides, horror experts Matt Donato and Ariel Fisher. In this edition: Ariel talks about perhaps the saddest scene in Train to Busan, and Matt presents the term "dread scare" for inclusion in the horror canon.)

One of the most horrifying scenes in "Train to Busan" is one that comes on the heels of both great loss and immense hope. It's when Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) gets bitten while trying to save his daughter, Su-an (Kim Su-an), and Seong-kyeong (Yu-mi Jung), near the very end of the film.

Seok-woo, Su-an, and Seong-kyeong make their way to the new train and manage to climb aboard while in motion. After fending off a literal mountain of zombies dragging behind them, they take a breath, relieved they may finally be on the way to safety.

battle hordes of zombies as they devour unfortunate passengers trapped on the bullet train to Busan. The cold world created with the blue, reflects the harsh reality that the passengers are facing. There is no warmth, even in the opening scene, that reflects how powerless Soo-An is to her environment, she is forced to live with her Dad, after the split of the marriage, even though she wants to stay with her mom. This color continues to become the color of the powerless as the zombie attacks start, with one infected passenger trapped on the train to Busan.

As you may have figured from that opening, I was able to go to Busan recently. Despite the lack of zombies, this trip was one to remember, partially because of how much we were able to pack into the few days we were there. This trip was decided last minute, with less than a week to decide what to do. One person brought up the idea of Busan (Thank you, Kendrick), and soon enough, we all kicked off to planning it out. With 14 people going (yes, you saw that right), finding accommodations was extremely difficult, especially since it was only 5 of us planning this out. We decided the best use of our money was to split into 2 airbnb's that, finding out when we got there, were in the same building. It took us 4 hours in Emart, well into 1 am for us to finalize our plans on where we were going to stay and how we were going down to Busan.

For the trip, we were going down from Thursday night to Monday morning. Long weekend trips work perfectly for me since I have no classes on Fridays and online classes on Mondays. It's that exact reason why I was able to do Busan and in the future, Japan. So, the majority of everyone was getting to Busan on Thursday night with some exceptions. Since I was one of the two who booked one of the Airbnb's, it made sense that I got down there earlier so we could make sure everything was okay with the place. Once again, our trustful Trip.com was how we booked our train tickets and the ride down was around 3 hours. There were 5 of us traveling down together and the journey was enjoyable and restful considering all of us fell asleep. But the views we saw were gorgeous and it was wonderful being able to see different parts of South Korea that were outside of Seoul. We were staying in Haeundae, which has one of the main beaches but unlike Seoul, everything is far from each other. But we lucked out with Airbnb because we were right on the beach which came in handy during our time there.

On our first full day in Busan, we planned to go to the famed Gamcheon Cultural Village. Nicknamed the "Machu Picchu of Busan", the village is formed by houses built in a staircase-like fashion. Many of the houses have blue roofs that show such a pretty picture against the harbor. This was my second time here since I had come to Korea originally in 2019. Still, I was in awe of this beautiful place and getting to see the different stores were fascinating. The story of the Little Prince is popular here and there were many stores and murals dedicated to it. There are also murals dedicated to BTS and Jungkook and Jimin who are from Busan, showcasing the pride the city holds for them. We took many beautiful photos and had a great time there. I even got to buy some enamel pins to put on my bag, I have quite the collection now. After the village and lunch, we went exploring the many seafood markets in Busan. Considering the city is the second largest in the country and the port city, many come here to try the different types of seafood offered. Personally, I do not like or eat seafood and walking around all of the fish actually made me feel nauseous. But, it was interesting to see all the different delicies here. But one thing that was told to us before we went was to not try any of the seafood from the markets because many had gotten food poisoning from it. So, if you go and try, I recommend you to eat with caution. But enjoy this picture of majority of us at the pier after going through the markets!

The next day, we all split off into smaller groups because we different things we wanted to do. My friend, Laura, and I had found this beautiful cafe that was on top of a hotel. We could see the entirety of Haeundae and the beach as well. While the food was okay, the views made up for it and we were able to have such a relaxing time there. Afterwards, I was able to explore Haeundae Market which while it did have seafood, it also had alot of cute stores that were fun to check out. There were alot of food stalls that made the area smell so good. Afterwards, I met my friends on the beach as they had been tanning and building sandcastles. The beaches, while available to the public, were actually not truly opened because it was considered the offseason. It is not recommended for people to be in the water because there are no lifeguards active at the time. But that didn't mean you couldn't dip your feet into the water. However, the highlight of the trip was to be later that night. When we were originally on our way to our airbnb that first night, our uber was explaining that it was possible to buy tickets to go out on a yacht. That had us all excited so we planned to do that saturday night. In fact, it was so worth it. While we tried to get the whole group, we were only able to do 10 people that night and the rest of the group went on Sunday night. Getting to be on the boat was amazing and a bonding experience for us as we just relaxed listening to the music and feeling the ocean breeze on us. It was so much fun and a memory that will remain the highlight of my trip to Busan. (We also figured that since we were on a boat, we had to recreate the Titanic scene).

Train to Busan was released in South Korea on July 20, 2016. The action horror film was the first Korean film to break an audience record of over 10 million theatergoers. It has since become a horror cult classic. It has spawned an animated prequel, Seoul Station (2016), released a month after Train to Busan. Peninsula, released in July 2020, is set four years after the events of the original film. As of this writing, Train to Busan is currently on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi.

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.

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