🎃 31 Days of Halloween – Day 10🎃
Train to Busan (2016)
★★½ · Rewatched Oct 10, 2025
Train to Busan (2016) is an example of how zombie films developed after 2002. It’s well made in the sense that it is never boring, and one jump scare (as the two survivors approach their destination following the climax) is genuinely effective. Not because of a musical sting, but thanks to the skillful use of timing to mess with audience expectations. However, it falls hard into the fast-zombie trope that took off after 28 Days Later (2002).
In that film, the speed and urgency of the infected felt fresh. But since then, fast zombies are often as cliché as Romero's shambling living dead. Train to Busan seldom ventures beyond what we’ve seen a hundred times before, while the greatest examples of the zombie genre all bring something new to the table.
George Romero introduced the flesh-eating hordes in Night of the Living Dead (1968), innovating on the earlier concept of undead voodoo slaves, introduced to cinema in White Zombie (1932). Romero then built on his own innovations by adding social satire and black comedy in Dawn of the Dead (1978). In that film, the undead became sources of humor, serving as a critique of consumerism.
Inspired by the demonic-possession film The Exorcist (1973), Sam Raimi dropped the genuine theological inquiry and nuanced character study aspects, and replaced both with zombie tropes in The Evil Dead (1981). Next, Raimi took the humorous approach of Dawn of the Dead even further in Evil Dead II (1987), dropping the former's satirical elements (and the shock value inspired by The Exorcist's baser scenes) and crafted a gory homage to The Three Stooges.
Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci continued the earnest approach of Night of the Living Dead in Zombi 2 (1979), his unofficial sequel to Dawn of the Dead (titled Zombie internationally). Instead, Fulci pushed the gore introduced in Dawn of the Dead to never-before-seen extremes. Always innovative, he even included a fight with a shark that can only be described as Zombies versus JAWS!
Zombi 2 also returned the genre to its supernatural roots in a way similar to Raimi’s integration of elements inspired by The Exorcist. While Raimi (a secular Jew) did not take these aspects seriously, the troubled yet devoutly Catholic Lucio Fulci took the religious basis of zombies that he reintroduced through Zombi 2's emphasis on voodoo even further in his follow-up works, The Gates of Hell trilogy: City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981), and The House by the Cemetery (1981). It's often forgotten that voodoo is not black magic mumbo jumbo, but a traditional monotheistic religion practiced widely throughout West Africa, and has often been absorbed into localized versions of Hinduism and Christianity. This shows in how Fulci handles the material.
One could go further into the development of the genre, but the point is that the better filmmakers brought something new to the table based in their own personal interests, whether sociological, religious, or otherwise. This is where the best zombie films live and help illustrate why Train to Busan feels generic and pointless by comparison.
In Train to Busan, we get a dumber version of the fast zombies popularized in 2002. Though arguably, fast zombies existed even earlier. Even in Night of the Living Dead, the first zombie who attacks Barbara is quick on his feet. Unlike the zombies in Train to Busan, who don't even remember how to open sliding train doors, he’s also capable of using a tool (in this case, a brick) to try to break the windshield and reach her.
The zombies in Train to Busan are comically stupid by comparison, and that humor is not deliberate. They lose any sense of threat because simply pasting newspaper over a window or turning off the lights instantly makes them forget the humans even exist. If these zombies were in Night of the Living Dead, Barbara would have been fine once she got into the house.
In Romero’s films, even those like Dawn of the Dead, where the zombies sometimes serve as a source of humor, they remain lethal when underestimated. The point is that if the living characters cooperated and didn’t let greed, ego, or grudges get in the way, the slow, shambling, seemingly mindless zombies could easily be dealt with. But because they fail to do this, they’re undone when the zombies display more cognition than they first appear to. Such as when the reanimated Stephen in Dawn of the Dead remembers how to access the safe room and leads the other zombies to Fran and Peter.
These vestiges the zombies maintain of their previous lives add genuine pathos to Dawn of the Dead, where the undead shuffle through their old routines. In Train to Busan, infection takes hold instantly (except when the script conveniently delays it, such as during the overly sentimental climax), and the zombies retain no memories of their past lives, instead becoming instantly feral. This not only makes the zombies less frightening but also eliminates the human elements of Romero's living dead, which were taken to their greatest heights in the poetic climax to Day of the Dead (1985).
Train to Busan attempts pathos as well, with every death accompanied by tears and a forced father-daughter storyline that doesn’t work within the pacing of this relentless siege film. None of the characters are developed enough for these moments to resonate, and the cheesy climax pales in comparison to Day of the Dead’s Bub avenging his human trainer’s death, a relationship that is built throughout the film and thus earns its emotional weight. Romero makes something that could have been ridiculous instead feel genuinely moving.
Train to Busan can't compete. While it delivers a well-paced action film, don’t throw it on expecting something new or with any real depth.
