4. THIS GUY

If you’ve seen the movie, you know who he is. If you haven’t seen the movie, I feel bad for you. Dressed conservatively in a garish blue blazer when we first meet him, it’s when Sang-hwa loses the hideous garment that Train kicks into zombie-smashing high gear. The fact that we don’t know if he’s a pro-wrestler, bodyguard, or just a badass cage fighter on his day off don’t take away from the fact that this is someone you’ll want on your side when the zombie apocalypse inevitably hits.

3. IT’S EXCITING

It’s a good director that knows to make use of what he’s got, and Yeon Sang-ho knows he hasn’t the resources to go head to head with the likes of World War Z and its Hollywood resources. By containing the action to a single location (the train), Yeon cohorts were forced to be creative, piling on the tension for the audience while coming up with increasingly clever (un)death-defying scenarios for the characters to overcome. In this way, for the rare occasion when digital trickery does come into play, it becomes all the more impactful, especially when compared to the relatively restrained visuals inside the train. For other things they didn’t have the money to show us, Yeon uses snippets of newscasts, frantic phone calls, and yes, Twitter, to paint a larger narrative canvas.

Speaking of Twitter..

2. ZOMBIE FLICK FOR THE SOCIAL MEDIA AGE

Social media, streaming news, hashtags, cellphones – even ringtones play a part in Train to Busan, and it is glorious to see. Even TV favorite The Walking Dead never showed us how a zombie apocalypse would play out if it hit the world in its current state of smartphones and interconnectivity (but, to be fair, that’s probably because that show’s main story starts months after things like electricity aren’t widely available). Indeed, Train may be the very first mainstream entertainment to do it; here, we see everyone from grandmas to Su-An reach for their phones when they sense strange things are going on. Because who among us doesn’t turn to Twitter to find out what the heck is going on these days?

1. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! THERE’S A PREQUEL!!

For those who can’t get enough of the world introduced in Train to Busan, fear not! Yeon Sang-ho also directed an animated prequel film, Seoul Station, that hit Korean theaters a couple of weeks after Train to Busan was released. The film tells the story of a young woman’s quest to escape her life of prostitution, not knowing that her father has come to the big city in hopes of finding her and bringing her home. With the zombie outbreak in its early stages, and the army having been called in to combat it, father and daughter will be forced to survive by any means necessary if they hope to get out alive.

While there’s no word yet on Philippine screenings, if we were to go by Train’s overwhelming popularity, we wouldn’t be surprised if a local release was in the works.

Have you  seen the flick? Tell us what you think!

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