Train to Busan

Train to Busan
Korean film poster
Directed by	Yeon Sang-ho
Written by	Park Joo-suk
Produced by	Lee Dong-ha
Starring	Gong Yoo Ma Dong-seok Jung Yu-mi Kim Su-an Kim Eui-sung Choi Woo-shik Ahn So-hee
Cinematography	Lee Hyung-deok
Edited by	Yang Jin-mo
Music by	Jang Young-gyu
Production companies	Next Entertainment World RedPeter Film
Distributed by	Next Entertainment World
Release dates	13 May 2016 (2016-05-13) (Cannes) 20 July 2016 (2016-07-20) (South Korea)
Running time	118 minutes
Country	South Korea
Language	Korean
Budget	$9 million
Box office	$87.5 million

Train to Busan (Korean: 부산행; RR: Busanhaeng) is a 2016 South Korean zombie apocalypse horror thriller film directed by Yeon Sang-ho and starring Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, and Ma Dong-seok. The film takes place in a train to Busan, as a zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks in the country and compromises the safety of the passengers.

The film had its premiere in the Midnight Screenings section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival on 13 May. On 7 August, the film set a record as the first Korean film of 2016 to break the audience record with over 10 million theatergoers. The film serves as a reunion for Gong Yoo and Jung Yu-mi, who both starred in the 2011 film The Crucible.

An animated prequel, Seoul Station, also directed by Sang-ho, was released less than a month later.

Plot

Seok-Woo, a divorced fund manager, is a workaholic and absentee father to his young daughter, Soo-an. For her birthday the next day, she wishes for her father to bring her to Busan to see her mother. They board the KTX at a station in Seoul, also occupied by tough working-class husband Sang-hwa and his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong, a high school baseball team, a rich but selfish CEO Yon-suk, elderly sisters In-gil and Jon-gil, and a homeless man.

As the train departs, a convulsing young woman boards the train with a bite wound on her leg. The woman becomes a zombie, attacking a train attendant who also turns into a zombie. The infection quickly spreads throughout the train. Baseball player Yong-guk, a girl named Jin-hee who has a crush on him, and several passengers manage to escape to another car. News broadcasts report zombie outbreaks throughout the country. The train stops at Daejeon, but the surviving passengers find that the city has also been overrun, and they hastily retreat back to the train, splitting up in the chaos. The conductor restarts the train to head to Busan, where a successful quarantine zone has reportedly been established.

Seok-Woo, Sang-hwa and Yong-guk fight their way to where Su-an, In-gil, and Seong-kyeong are hiding, and together they struggle through the zombie horde to the front train car, where the other passengers are sheltered. However, Yon-suk and the other passengers deliberately block the survivors from entering, believing they have been bitten. Sang-hwa and In-gil sacrifice themselves to give the others time to force open the door and enter the car. Fearing that the newcomers may be infected, Yon-suk and the others demand that they isolate themselves in the vestibule. When Jong-gil deliberately opens the door to the zombies to be with her zombified sister In-gil, the zombies kill the rest of the passengers, leaving Seok-Woo, Su-an and Seong-kyeong safe, as they are in the vestibule. Yon-suk and the train attendant escape the onslaught by hiding in the bathroom.

A blocked track at East Daegu train station forces the survivors to stop and search for another train. In the process, Seok Woo, Seong Kyeong, Su-An, and the homeless man are separated from Yong-guk and Jin-hee after a burning train crashes. Yon-suk escapes after pushing the train attendant to be eaten by the zombies, then does the same with Jin-Hee. Heartbroken, Yong-Guk stays with Jin-Hee, and is bitten by her. The train conductor starts a locomotive on another track, but is also killed by zombies while trying to save Yon-suk. The homeless man sacrifices himself to let Su-an and Seong-kyeong escape with Seok-Woo into the train the conductor had activated. They encounter Yon-suk in the engine room, on the verge of turning into a zombie. Seok-woo fights him off, but is himself bitten. He puts Su-an and Seong-kyeong inside the engine room, and shares his last words with his daughter before moving outside. As he zombifies, he thinks of the first time he held his daughter in his arms, and throws himself off the locomotive with a smile.

Su-an and Seong-kyeong get off at Busan, and begin walking through the tunnel. Unable to see them clearly, the soldiers at the checkpoint are instructed to shoot them. However, the soldiers are startled to hear singing, prompting them to descend on the tunnel to rescue them: it is Su-an, tearfully singing the song that she had wanted to sing for her father at the beginning of the film, in honor of his heroic sacrifice.

Cast

• Gong Yoo as Seok-woo, a fund manager obsessed with his work
• Jung Yu-mi as Seong-kyeong, Sang-hwa's pregnant wife
• Kim Su-an as Soo-an, Seok-woo's young daughter who wants to go to Busan to see her mother
• Ma Dong-seok as Sang-hwa, a tough, working-class man
• Sohee as Jin-hee, Yong-guk's romantic interest
• Kim Eui-sung as Yon-suk, a rich CEO
• Choi Woo-shik as Yong-guk, a young baseball player
• Choi Gwi-hwa as a homeless man
• Jung Suk-yong as Captain of KTX
• Ye Soo-jung as In-gil
• Park Myung-sin as Jong-gil
• Jang Hyuk-jin as Ki-chul
• Kim Chang-hwan as Kim Jin-mo
• Shim Eun-kyung as Runaway Girl

Reception

Box office

Train to Busan grossed $87.5 million worldwide. It became the highest-grossing Korean film in Malaysia ($4.84 million), Hong Kong ($8.52 million), and Singapore ($3.1 million). It recorded more than 11 million movie goers in South Korea.

Critical response

The film has received generally positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 96% approval rating based on 78 collected reviews, with an average rating of 7.6 out of 10. The site's consensus states: "Train to Busan delivers a thrillingly unique  – and purely entertaining – take on the zombie genre, with fully realized characters and plenty of social commentary to underscore the bursts of skillfully staged action". Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film an average score of 72 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly writes that the film "borrows heavily from World War Z in its depiction of the fast-moving undead masses while also boasting an emotional core the Brad Pitt-starring extravaganza often lacked," adding that "the result is first-class throughout." The film receives a coveted "The New York Times Critics' Pick" badge, with reviewer Jeannette Catsoulis taking notice of the film's subtle class warfare.

In contrast, the negative reviews have described the film as "Snowpiercer with zombies." David Ehrlich of IndieWire comments that "as the characters whittle away into archetypes (and start making senseless decisions), the spectacle also sheds its unique personality." Kevin Jagernauth of The Playlist writes: "(Train to Busan) doesn’t add anything significant to the zombie genre, nor has anything perceptive to say about humanity in the face of crisis. Sure, it lacks brains, and that’s the easy quip to make, but what Train To Busan truly needs, and disappointingly lacks, is heart."

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Recipient	Result
11th Asian Film Awards	Best Actor	Gong Yoo	Pending
	Best Supporting Actor	Ma Dong-seok	Pending
	Best Editor	Yang Jin-mo	Pending
	Best Visual Effects	Jung Hwang-su	Pending
	Best Costume Designer	Kwon Yoo-jin, Rim Seung-hee	Pending
37th Blue Dragon Film Awards	Best Film	Train to Busan	Nominated
	Best Supporting Actor	Kim Eui-sung	Nominated
		Ma Dong-seok	Nominated
	Best Supporting Actress	Jung Yu-mi	Nominated
	Best New Director	Yeon Sang-ho	Nominated
	Best Art Direction	Lee Mok-won	Nominated
	Best Screenplay	Park Joo-seok	Nominated
	Best Editing	Yang Jin-mo	Nominated
	Best Cinematography	Lee Hyeong-deok	Nominated
	Best Lighting	Park Jeong-woo	Nominated
	Technical Award	Kwak Tae-yong and Hwang Hyo-gyoon (Special makeup)	Won
	Audience Choice Award for Most Popular Film	Train to Busan	Won
25th Buil Film Awards	Best Film		Nominated
	Best Supporting Actor	Kim Eui-sung	Won
	Best Supporting Actress	Jung Yu-mi	Nominated
	Best Cinematography	Lee Hyeong-deok	Nominated
	Best Art Direction	Lee Mok-won	Nominated
	Yu Hyun-mok Film Arts Award	Yeon Sang-ho	Won
1st International Film Festival & Award Macao	Asian Blockbuster Film	Train to Busan	Won
36th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards	Technical Award		Won
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards	Best Foreign-Language Film		Pending
	Best Actor	Gong Yoo	Pending

Remake

Variety said in December 2016 that Gaumont would remake Train to Busan in English.

External links

• Official website
• Train to Busan at the Korean Movie Database (in Korean)
• Train to Busan at IMDb
• Train to Busan at Rotten Tomatoes
• Train to Busan at Metacritic
• Train to Busan at HanCinema