Busy important businessmen don’t have time for silliness and frivolity. They don’t have time to waste present shopping, even for their only daughter. Certainly not time to check back on what they purchased in last year’s last minute rush. And most definitely not enough time to take a train – even a bullet train – across Korea to try to make things right with his estranged wife in an attempt to reunite the family.
The fact that a virus has rendered half the population fast moving bloodthirsty zombies is just a further impediment.
This daddy-daughter day just got even more hectic.
Aboard a train filled with zombies that viciously assault any living thing they see, Train to Busan plays out like (the far superior) Snowpiercer, with the few survivors (businessman and daughter, the young pregnant couple, the teenage lovebirds etc) having to navigate along the train and each new carriage seeming to represent a new zombie infested puzzle that they must solve before they can be permitted to risk their lives in a different way.
There is much blood but no gore, so none of the jaw dropping nastiness of exploding corpses or gross kills – of either living or undead. It is occasionally amusing but never funny. It is fast moving but never exhilarating, with the pivotal moments more reminiscent of World War Z, another film that dulled the blood and attempted to use movement to generate the threat, also with a slightly underwhelming outcome.
It plays out as it sounds, like a series of The Walking Dead shorts, only without any signature scenes or moments that seek to maximise all of the traits of the zombie genre. And while I am pretty much done with The Walking Dead (but I’ve been saying that for three years now) I would probably rather watch that than board this rather routine train to Busan again.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. Occasionally fun but ultimately toothless zombie flick.
