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It’s as basic as “zombies on a train,” but Sang-ho Yeon’s new thriller is a well-made example of the increasingly overdone genre. It trades on everything you’d expect: a selection of potential victims (from old lady with a limp, and teen baseball team to a pregnant woman and her very protective working-class husband); a confined space; a rapidly developing crisis (from getting bit to rampaging occurs in mere seconds); a meticulous picking off of the aforementioned crazy-quilt of passengers; and the assorted MacGuyvering needed to thwart off the zombies and make it to safety. Train to Busan is a good pick for fans of fare like The Walking Dead, where a reasonable amount of gore is interspersed throughout a story with characters we care about and see change. Train asks its characters to sort through their humanity, and decide whether to act for themselves or for the group; the chief protagonist here is a jerky investment-banker dad who is traveling with his estranged little girl. You get plenty of zombie-crushing, and maybe even experience a sniffle or two.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2016.
