Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Starring: Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, Kim Su-an, Choi Woo-sik, Ahn So-hee, Kim Eui-sung
Country of Origin: South Korea
Running time: 2h 8m
What’s in a label?
In the narrow parametres of genre specification Train to Busan is just a zombie film.
Except it’s really far more than that.
When everything has to be stated clearly, compartmentalised, tagged, filed, and stored away then Yeon Sang-ho’s masterpiece can be easily classed in the zombie genre.
Yet it’s actually a story of South Korean society, which just happens to feature some of the most scintillatingly ghastly incarnations of the walking dead in any movie ever made.
Maybe that’s a bold statement, but I stand by it.
Released again in cinemas for its 10th anniversary, I was struck by the awe-inspiring magnitude and phenomenal ambition of a film that really means something to me. Train to Busan was released in July, 2016, when I was living and working in South Korea.
Watching it again at Regency Theaters in Buena Park, California, on Tuesday (August 18, 2026) transported me back to the more intimate surroundings of the Emu cinema in Seoul. An art space, gallery, cafe and cinema all rolled into one, the Emu complex in Jogno-gu is slightly off the beaten track and was a place of sanctuary and absolute bliss for me in the South Korean capital.
Its screenings of Korean films with English subtitles often attracted a small collection of expats, far from the crowded multiplexes.
I remember being absolutely flabbergasted at how Train to Busan depicted an eclectic spectrum of people from different classes, ages, and backgrounds with such clarity and humour in a life threatening maelstrom of blood infused breathing corpses.
A wonderful double bill of Train to Busan and it’s sequel Peninsula 반도 (2020) – which was one of the last films I watched in South Korea at Megabox COEX Mall in Seoul – at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) in my home city on Halloween 2020 only affirmed my affection for the movie.
The new remastered version confirmed my initial feelings, that this is definitely not a film solely about zombies and that it deserves to be watched on the big screen.
Viewing such an aesthetically spectacular amalgam of horror, family drama, disaster, and desperation on a phone, tablet or laptop just doesn’t do the film any justice.
A short introduction by director Yeon Sang-ho and brief interview after the final credits ended offered more insight on the techniques used to present the horde of the undead with break dancers used to provide the jerky, crunching, cracking mass of seething, frothing bloody chaos.
The human cannonball of zombies that pursue the passengers of KTX train 101 – a special replica with a wider carriage was built for filming purposes – startle, disgust and amaze with their extraordinary array of shifts in motion.
Whether clumped together in a deathly pile or crashing through glass like crazed Black Friday shoppers hypnotized by the enticing prospect of buying a cheap television, they provide a catalogue of unforgettable highlights.
When the camera pans out in the final stages to reveal the apocalyptic, animalistic pack in a manic chase to snare the last few survivors, it’s an astonishing shot which illustrates the sheer extent of the ongoing catastrophe.
Yet for all its wondrous visuals, Train to Busan tells a vivid story about relationships, between family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers, spanning through generations.
The cast is one of most brilliantly assembled in any South Korean film. All the characters are quickly established, and we immediately make an emotional connection with them – it’s clear they are not faceless, nameless prey to be feasted on.
As a beleaguered fund manager estranged from his wife and struggling to connect with his daughter, Gong Yoo manages to transform from a self-centred, out of touch, piece of work to a hero that helps others and looks out for his only child.
Kim Su-an, just 10 years old at the time of filming, manages to portray his lonely, confused daughter with such understated strength and resolve that we can’t help but root for her.
Strong man Ma Dong-seok is a proud father-to-be that will do anything to protect his pregnant wife, played expertly by the selfless Jung Yu-mi, while at the same time teaching Gong Yoo’s bloodsucking financial boss a lesson about parenting. The muscle bound Ma’s big personality also injects some comedy into depressingly gloomy scenes with some killer lines of dialogue delivered superbly.
As a high school baseball hotshot Choi Woo-shik is thrust into an invidious position when the disaster is in full swing, while his cheerleader girlfriend oscillates from ebullient affection to hysterical worry in a role which Ahn So-hee makes her own.
Elderly sisters depicted by the wonderful Ye Soo-jung and Park Myung-shin are not mere stereotypes but close siblings who don’t quite seem to understand everything about the fast-paced modern world.
While Kim Eui-sung is horribly effective as an utterly selfish CEO that acts ruthlessly to protect himself above everyone else.
Everyone is interconnected in an enclosed space with a shared common goal, regardless of status or position.
Themes of rampant capitalism, hierarchical privilege, entitlement and avarice, and self-preservation run deeply through a film which terrifies one moment and leaves us almost in tears the next.
After multiple viewings it’s not much of a stretch to surmise that Kim Eui-sung’s company big man is the real villain of the piece, when in fact the enemy is the system that produced such a vile character as well as the mass of biting flesh and bones intent on devouring an entire country.
Few people possess a photographic memory and even watching for the fifth time I felt stunned, astonished, distressed, and in wonder at the clearness and crispness of this new version of the film on the big screen.
While some seem determined to forcefully suggest Train to Busan can only ever be classified as a zombie film, I beg to differ.
It’s all about a nation and its people and how they react to a rapidly developing crisis, and it remains one of the finest and influential films in the modern history of South Korean cinema.
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