Zombies On A Train is the pitch for this High Concept horror but that doesn't hint at the depth in character and heart on show. Seok Woo (Yoo) is a hedge fund manager bringing his daughter, birthday girl Soo-an, to his estranged wife in Busan. But there's been outbreak of a virus – first reports are of rioting – and an ill person makes it on board the train just before the doors close. As the infection runs through the passengers, the survivors – made up of pregnant women, teenage lovers, businessmen, the elderly – do what they can to keep the doors to their carriage shut.
With a zombie movie you're always on Allegory Watch and this South Korean offering from Sang-ho Yeon (his first live action film after a run of animations, one of which, Seoul Station, was a zombie movie) seems to be a damning diatribe on the golden parachutes the Money People afforded themselves when the economy went bust. With the hero a cold hedge fund manager, and whose company may or may not be responsible for this virus outbreak, we have a conflicted and layered character in Seok Woo. His instinct is to protect him and his daughter only - "You only care about yourself," Soo-an tearfully tells him at one point; "You're an expert in leaving people behind" is another barb thrown his way – but watching him morph from selfishness to altruism is what keeps one engaged despite the eye-catching special effects, inventive action sequences.
And it has plenty of those. The bodies contort grotesquely as the infected change, the neck wounds gaping and bloody. One scene has the heroes trapped between two tilted carriages, one which boasts zombies, inches away, leaning against the cracking glass. Another scene sees zombies form a zombie train as they scramble over each other to reach an escaping engine. The running punch up sequence with Seok Woo and buddies battling their way through three carriages of undead to reach other survivors is as fun as it is edge-of-your-seat scary.
It can lean on convenience from time to time – it's handy that glass keeps the zombies at bay in one scene, but glass isn't strong enough to hold them off in another; the speed of infection is seconds in one person, delayed for minutes in another – and some scenarios can be familiar (the unstoppable horde reminiscent of World War Z, and of course there's zombie train horror Snowpiercer) but Train To Busan remains a thoroughly riveting horror with a real touching climax.
Go see it.