Train to Busan

Zombie apocalypse on a moving train. The story mostly focuses on a fund manager escorting his daughter to her mother's. But there's also a young couple expecting a baby, a couple of middle-aged sisters, a high school baseball team, and an executive for some major corporation. Everyone keeps hoping the next stop will be a safe place to disembark, but all it brings is more chaos. More people are killed, the survivors get scattered and frightened.

The zombies themselves are your typical fast zombies. The movie does a few things with the danger that comes from so many of them that simply pursue relentlessly. Glass doors eventually cracking and giving way behind the sheer amount of pressure being applied. There's one part near the end where a couple of them dive at a person and grab hold of the locomotive instead. Then more and more of those chasing fall on top and there's a whole tail of bodies being dragged along. Reminiscent of that bit from World War Z (the movie, not the book) where the zombies were piling up until they were almost over some enormous wall.

That part was kind of dumb, but I like the uncoordinated way they move. A few times you'll see a zombie fall over, then they stand up without using the arms in this boneless kind of motion (I'm assuming that was wires or some CGI thing, but maybe those actors are just really athletic). Like they have arms and they have some instinct to clutch and claw with them, but they don't know they can use them any other way.

As usual, the zombies are only half the problem. The cowardice and selfishness of the uninfected is just as big a hazard. The fund manager, Seok-woo (Yoo Gong) has no concern for anyone other than his daughter or himself. Which causes a fair amount of trouble with her, because she believes it's important to help others. Not the best time for a child to realize their parent is not a good person. Not a great time to see your kid make that realization, either. But maybe that's why he tries to better in the second half of the film.

The sequence where the people stranded in a few different train cars have to make their way forward, through multiple cars filled with the rabid infected hordes was well done. It's always the same objective, but things change from car-to-car. Not just in terms of the characters losing their weapons or getting tired. They also figure out things about the infected, weaknesses they can exploit, then use those in different ways.

The wealthy executive is a completely self-interested scumbag, as he literally throws other people between him and the zombies on multiple occasions. Right at the end, the movie tries to point out that he's really just frightened and what's to get home where it's safe like everyone else. That's cute, but I didn't see all those other frightened people throwing others to the wolves. I feel like there's a distinction between being the person who sees someone running with zombies at their heels and doesn't hold the door open to let them in, versus the person who shoves other people in front of the zombies. Maybe not much of a distinction, but it's there.