Train to Busan: Hell on Wheels at 200 mph!

I was just saying that horror films have been on something of a roll lately, when along comes one that knocked me out so hard I'd easily put it on my list of the best films of 2016. South Korean director Sang-ho Yeon's Train to Busan is currently streaming on Netflix, and if like me, you've been feeling like The Walking Dead has been pushing its expiry date lately, get ready for a real zombie horror flick, easily the best since Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. 

Seok-woo (Yoo Gong) is a work-obsessed fund manager with a divorced wife and a young daughter he can barely make time for. His daughter Soo-an (Soo-an Kim) convinces him to take her back home to her mother from Seoul to the southern city of Busan. Seok-woo wearily agrees, and they head south on the KTX bullet train. 

But sheer pandemonium has been breaking loose across the country as some kind of horrific infection has got out of a lab and is transforming citizens into hot-wired undead zombies, that race towards their prey like rabid spiders. The setup may remind you of World War Z, but with high-adrenaline direction more like that of The Raid.

Train to Busan kicks all kinds of ass. It's hard to find an accurate budget - one source listed it at only $182,000, but that can't be right, as the movie looks like it cost crazy millions. Sang-ho Yeon sure know how to get maximum yield out of his resources, and the makeup and effects are used judiciously and for tremendous effect. The film is incredibly well edited. A sequence at an apparently deserted train station is one of the most harrowing sequences of any film I've seen this year. I lost count of how often I gasped, or was yelling at the screen. Seok-woo is a selfish ass, and it's great to see his daughter call him on his behavior and see him start to realize he's truly lacking as a person. Soon-an Kim is just phenomenal here, giving one of the best child performances in recent memory. She's really fantastic, and the emotions she goes through are anything but simple. One of the great things about this film is the character work. The passengers on the train are relatable and compelling and feel realistically random. 

It's also loaded with social commentary. Sang-ho Yeon was evidently inspired by the Sewol ferry disaster of 2014, and like Snowpiercer, uses the situation of passengers trapped on a fast-moving train to make pungent social commentary, particularly about society's harshness towards refugees. It's effective and deeply unsettling.

It's only a matter of time before some nincompoop decides to remake this for U.S. audiences, so my advice is stick with the high-test original and see this now. Train to Busan is a phenomenal horror thriller that will not disappoint, and is just waiting to sink its teeth in you.