Train To Busan
Why Are We Different?
Upon looking back at previous horror films originating from South Korea, notable examples including The Silenced, The Wailing and my personal favourite, A Tale of Two Sisters, you would be hard-pressed to find any Korean horror film capable of matching those. In comes Sang-Ho Yeon, with his action-horror film, Train To Busan. It dazzled its Netflix audience, and most importantly, its paired unveiling with The Wailing gave me hope for the next South Korean horror-genre films in line.
Seok-Woo, boards the KTX bullet train with his daughter Soo-An for a special get-together with her mother. It is especially difficult for him, as a father, to be attentive to his daughter’s needs, since those long hours at the office are unforgiving. Naturally, Soo-An is indignant on travelling from Seoul to Busan by herself without the escort of her father. Let’s put that into perspective shall we? It is a three and a half hour ride. I would not let my eight-year-old daughter do this alone. Coupled by Seok-Woo’s prior snafus, guilt drives Seok-Woo to bring Soo-An to see her divorced mother. The film starts off slow, hinting to the audience that an outbreak had occured before the rocky father-daughter relationship is introduced. On the KTX, the full might of this outbreak crashes onto the side of the train the two are boarding, in the form of a zombie apocalypse. Everything is frantic, the only thing you know is people running like hell, and piled-up corpses biting live ones in front of you. Seok-Woo’s goal is simple and humble: bring Soo-An to Busan unscratched (and unbitten).
Mix an epidemic sweeping across South Korea and the escalating dissatisfaction of economic disparity, this zombie apocalypse becomes the perfect allegory for the competitive society that we live in today. As the film starts and teases audiences with coups d’oeil of the real threat, the characters on the train remain dangerously ignorant of the dangers outside. That shadow diving comically on the platform, the ominous news reports of riots, and when the inevitable infection makes it way onto the train, this is like the COVID-19 illness being spread around right now. This train becomes a convoy of thrilling pandemonium, abetted by the claustrophobic layout of train comaprtments.
Midway through the film, your characters start to take centre stage. Yong-Guk and Jin-Hee, the high school teenagers, are still in the midst of discovering what they think is right and what society deems correct. Sang-Hwa and his pregnant wife Seong- Kyeong, represent the theme of kindness and humanity, which is repeatedly depicted throughout the film. And the main character, Seok-Woo, is described as selfish, much like any typical Korean passenger onboard the KTX. The film discusses societal inequality with its twist of twisted zombies and even it employs a repetitive emotional core of selfish, workaholic and absent father, the journey to becoming a better father is definitely interesting. Poignant moments are what make the emotional side of this film, emotional.
You’re clearly an expert on leaving useless people behind.
Seok-Woo’s office strengths are hyperbolized in leaving the zombies behind during the compartment-skip scenes. In fact, you can clearly see what motivates Yong-Guk, Sang-Hwa and Seok-Woo. For Sang-Hwa, it is the fact that his pregnant wife needs someone to look after her, especially during this zombified circumstance. Yong-Guk, the hot-blooded and “romantic” teenage pursuit. Given the zombies’ poor vision in the dark, the mini climaxes from compartment to compartment show just how dedicated Seok-Woo is to rescuing his beloved daughter on the other side of the train.
Like I mentioned, Seok-Woo is the one who undergoes this personality change. Unlike Train to Busan, in pictures where you need a hero to arise from the mass of brain-devouring zombies (think Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead), Seok-Woo completely ousts that cliché. Reprimanding his daughter for giving up a seat to an elderly and shutting the door on the onrushing zombies while risking the safeties of Sang-Hwa and Seong-Kyeong, his elitist and self-preserving (not to mention selfish?) attitude, very much contrast against what the audience would expect from the hero. That’s the point. Seok-Woo is not the hero. He’s not a hero. He is simply a man fallen victim to another one of society’s cruel tricks. If not for Soo-An’s innate decency and the burliness of the BFG Sang-Hwa, he would have stayed a jerk till the very end of this film. He would have stayed the same as the rest of the passengers onboard. What do I mean by that?
The biggest difference between the zombies and the passengers is that, well, the passengers don’t go around biting. Yet on certain levels, the passengers displayed the same fiendish and carnivorous instincts that their undead counterparts displayed. Their nescience of the needs of others highlights what is wrong with society’s standards and treatment of the inferior. We’ve all heard it before. You walk alongside your parents a beggar stops you to ask for some spare change. One of your parents ushers you away and whispers.
Hey kid, if you don’t study hard enough, you’ll end up like him.
In the event of a zombie apocalypse, only cooperation and altruism can give you a fighting chance. Unfortunately, the passengers, coincidentally wearing office outfits, refuse to lend a helping hand to the characters in their time of need. Just for some context, in Korea, office suit-and-tie jobs are the sought-after jobs, meaning a university degree, financial stability and significance. Don’t get me wrong, I doubt they voluntarily attempt to screw with the characters, but stuff could definitely have been done to help. Just, help. Their self-interest is best represented in humanoid form by Yon-Suk, who says the aforementioned “Hey kid” line to Soo-An in reference of the beggar. Why I think the zombies rank less scarily than the passengers on the ghoulish scale is not just down down to their adorable waggling gait. The passengers, as you can guess, are symbolic of humans today. On a narrower scale, the Korean prinicple of “minding one’s business”. On a larger and more mise-à-jour scale, these mindless shenanigans we are pulling during the current COVID-19 crisis. We forget that we are responsible for others to some degree as well. Who knows, this illness might just turn us into those dreaded zombies. By then, your Campbell chicken broth would be eclipsed by brains and flesh, human flesh. I think I am speaking on behalf of all the audience when I say that the passengers’ downfall is sweet, karmic retribution.
Bearing in mind the sheer velocity of the hostilities, I fell in love with the three male lead characters. Yong-Guk, Sang-Hwa and Seok-Woo show that humanity is thus far, still alive. The young father’s renovation and other heartwarming features shed light into a pit full of aggressive zombies and passengers alike. Comedic reliefs are always welcome, and the unpredictable script keeps the thrill of watching, alive as well.
The theme of this film was well understood by me and writing this article, particularly in this quarantine situation, has been important. The 2016 Train to Busan offers an insight to how humans will react when put under the magnifying glass, prompting us to ask, what makes us different from our zombie friends?
In Hindsight…
Although the callous behaviours of those passengers is infuriating, I want to take a moment to imagine what I would have done if I was in that compartment, zombies filled to the brim and my hopes of survival leaning on keeping some people out. What would you do? Sometimes, it is easy to paint yourself as the good guy, saying “Oh I would never do that!”. Nobody in their right mind would unlock that door without any consideration of what’s to come next. A sort of pros-and-cons list if you will. This renders my statement of “karmic retribution” slightly unfair and honestly, quite hypocritical.
But seriously, what makes us different?
