I was not a big fan of Korean movies or TV series. In fact I only ever watched Korean movies in theaters 2 times (which I could not remember the titles now). However, when I was informed by my wife about a zombie Korean movie, I was like, hmmmm sounds interesting. Anyway, when I saw the trailer, I was intrigued and was looking forward to the movie playing in theater. Yesterday, my wife who had been eyeing to watch this one, told me that she wanted to see it while it premiered. So she went down to Grand Indonesia, bought two tickets for 6.50 PM show. Actually the time was a little bit tight, but I thought should be fine as it was not raining and traffic should be OK. Unfortunately, a big jam was happening near the mall, so it took me much longer. Luckily, I reached cinema at 6.55 PM and the show had not started. Fiuuuh. Well let's get on to the movie, shall we?
Brief Story Line
Movie started with the scene of a small truck driver who was not allowed to go through a location that was blocked with reason of gas leak. He drove away and accidentally hit a deer. Later on, a fund manager named Seok-woo (Gong Yoo - The Suspect, The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince TV series etc) was having phone call with his divorced wife, arguing about accompanying their young daughter Su-an who wanted to go to Busan to see her mother. When he came back home, he gave Su-an (Kim Su-an) her pre-birthday gift (which was the reason she wanted to go to Busan on her birthday the following day). Su-An really insisted on going to Busan despite Seok-woo's reluctance and stalling for another week as he was having a very important task at office. Finally he agreed to it after seeing the video of her recital shown by his mother.
On the morning of following day, Seok-woo drove to the train station with Su-an. They finally got on board the train. A woman who seemed to be sick got on the train without the inspector seeing it. In the train, we would be introduced to the various characters in the movie. Starting from two elderly sisters In-gil and Jong-gil, a bunch of high school baseball team where Jin-hee (Ahn So-hee - Wonder Girls Korean group band) who had a crush on Young-guk (Choi Woo-shik - Set Me Free, Hogu's Love TV series), and also Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok - The Neighbor, The Unjust etc) with his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong (Jung Yu-mi - The Himalayas etc) with last but not least Young-suk (Kim Eui-sung) & the train inspector Ki-chul.
To cut the story short, the sick girl apparently was infected with whatever virus that made people became zombie. She went outside the toilet and started wreaking havoc and bite the train attendant who already informed Ki-chul earlier and was rushing to that compartment located at the back of the train. The train attendant was trying to escape and ran towards the baseball team compartment which created panic as she also became infected and started to bite the team. They tried to run and escape to the next compartment where Ki-chul finally see what was happening and warned the train driver. Everyone in the next compartments started to run towards the next compartments but mostly unable as the zombies were very very fast.
Su-an who was in a toilet in the middle compartment heard the noises and when she went outside she saw the people running towards her compartment chased by the zombies. Meanwhile Seok-woo who just realized Su-an was missing as he was asleep, started to panic and looked for her. He saw her just in time and ran towards her and ran back to their compartment. Seong-kyeong who was also in the toilet was told by Sang-hwa to run quickly back to their compartment when he saw zombies coming. So he fought them a little bit and almost could not make it to the safe compartment.
Panic started to come to these passengers and they started to hear the news of "riots" happening all around the city and nation. While the zombies in the next compartment were still trying to bit the healthy passengers.
So what would happen next? How could this virus be spreading around? Can the remaining passengers be saved and survived this terror until their ultimate location in Busan? Find them all in this very much entertaining, pulsating, zombie apocalyptic movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I totally enjoyed this movie. It is one of the greatest zombie movie I have ever seen. Unlike The Walking Dead TV series where the zombies were slow and you can practically "bully" them, the zombies in this one were very quick. Perhaps they were more similar to the Z Nation TV series. This movie has got it all, the tension, the drama, the touching moments, the shocking scenes, even including providing moral message. The audiences in the movie were mostly providing the additional "sound effects" of relief, shocked, cry, laughter etc. I think my wife and the guy sitting next to me were among those who provided such noise. LOL.
This is certainly not the kind of movie for young children. There were a lot of gruesome scenes of zombies eating people, and there were blood all over as well. I think the movie was a little bit like emotional roller coaster where you would be given time to understand the remaining passengers' relationship and actions while other times you would be feeling the worry of our main characters' survival and passion. The make-up effects of the zombies were very good, some special effects were also quite good especially during the scenes involving the trains in the ending scene. My only bit of small disappointment was more towards the cinema as the picture was small and not fully fitting the large cinema screen.
In the end, I think this movie also had its very important message about sacrifices and also a reminder to not being selfish and think of other people as well.
So if you are interested in enjoying the thrill of being chased by very fast zombies in a confined place like a train, and if you want to enjoy all those emotions I mentioned earlier, then this one is definitely for you. It is not a supernatural ghost movie, so those who do not prefer to watch such horror movie should not worry and I think could enjoy this one.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Note:
This is the first zombie movie produced by Korean movie makers. I read in the internet that this was a very huge success there and broke the record for most audience watching (> 10 million). I also just found out that there was an animated prequel to this movie titled Seoul Station. Could not wait to look for it and watch it!
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