Train to Busan - The First Zombie Movie That Made Me Ugly Cry

Original article here:

https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10075406/train-to-busan-the-first-zombie-movie-that-made-me-ugly-cry

Forget the gore — Train to Busan is the zombie movie that made me care

If you’re a horror fanatic like me, you probably grew up on zombie movies - that strange, shuffling staple of late-night TV. For most of us, it started with the granddaddy of them all: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Because the copyright had lapsed, it became a fixture on cable reruns and the go-to “movie within a movie” whenever a TV set flickered in some dingy horror apartment.

Romero may have denied political intent, but his film still felt radical: a calm, capable Black protagonist (Duane Jones as Ben) returning a slap he’d received from a hysterical white woman - it was something American horror directors hadn’t dared show before.

But soon the genre split in two directions: either full-on gore-fests like Lucio Fulci’s Zombie 2 and The Beyond, or punk-tinged splatter comedies like Return of the Living Dead that played for laughs more than scares. We hit a high point with Danny Boyle’s, lo-fi 28 Days Later, but by the time The Walking Dead turned zombies into soap opera, fatigue had set in. It had been a long time since zombies were genuinely scary.

So when I reluctantly rented the South Korean horror Train to Busan (2016), I rolled my eyes. “Zombies on a train? Talk about scraping the barrel.”

I braced myself for the usual formula:

• Cardboard characters I wouldn’t care about.

• A couple of “good” kills.

• Probably a final girl in a blood-speckled white tank top.

• Credits. TV off. Instant amnesia.

But instead, I got something I didn’t expect: heart. And not the kind you see getting ripped out of a chest and devoured! I mean real, emotional heart.

Director Yeon Sang-ho’s first live-action film hit me harder than any zombie movie ever had. From the moment Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), a selfish fund manager consumed by work and divorce papers, and his daughter Soo-an (Kim Su-an) boarded that bullet train, I cared. Soo-an wasn’t a cloying “stage school” kid - she had the kind of wide-eyed sincerity Pixar’s storytellers are always talking about when they say, “make me care.” And Seok-woo, far from the perfect action-hero dad, was cold, distracted, and absent…

By the time that train left the station, I was fully onboard.

More Than just Tropes on a Train

Why did I care? Where was the conflict? And what was the deeper meaning?

I’d already met Seok-woo, the father so glued to his phone that he doesn’t notice Soo-an sitting alone, miles away from him, emotionally as well as physically. That image was a wake-up call: be present, put that phone down.

Then the other passengers come into focus, each one embodying something larger than themselves:

In-gil and Jong-gil (Ye Soo-jung and Park Myung-shin), the elderly sisters whose bond seemed unshakable - until it wasn’t.

A baseball team of rowdy school kids, and two teenagers embodying the power of first love.

Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok), the muscular everyman who is everything Seok-woo isn’t: strong, protective, emotionally present for his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong (Jung Yu-mi).

Yon-suk (Kim Eui-sung), the ruthless businessman who embodies selfishness and capitalist survival at all costs.

***A quick sidebar about Yon-suk: I was live-posting during a Shudder Last Drive-In stream and tweeted, “That businessman is the one who needs a baseball bat to the head!” - and promptly earned my first-ever Twitter ban. (Hashtag #TotallyWorthIt).***

What makes Yeon Sang-ho’s film special is that none of these characters feel like clichés. They’re layered, human.

But let’s be clear: this isn’t a slow-burn psychological drama. These zombies are terrifying.

The first transformation is a bitten woman convulsing and twisting in grotesque, unnatural movements - and this sets the tone. These are not Romero’s shufflers. These zombies are fast. And creepier still, the director cast performers with dance and contortion backgrounds, giving the infected their disturbing, inhuman physicality. Bodies snap, collapse, and then lunge forward in unnatural bursts.

When they move, they don’t stop. They charge full force, eyes bleeding, teeth snapping.

Then it was game on…

The Final Stop

As the train hurtled forward, yes, we got the gore, yes, we got the crazy kills, but what truly sets Train to Busan apart is watching Seok-woo finally become the father he always should have been.I won’t spoil everything for the newcomers to this movie, but let’s just say the deaths cut deep.

And the final act? That’s where I absolutely lost it - full-on ugly crying, Heather-from-Blair-Witch style.

From Soo-an’s tear-filled eyes to Seok-woo’s bittersweet flashback of her birth - a moment of pure, unfiltered joy, the film lands with devastating emotional clarity. In that instant, he understood what truly mattered, and I did too.

And just when I thought it couldn't get more wrenching, Yeon delivers the tunnel sequence: a near-silent crescendo punctuated by Soo-an’s innocent song, the lullaby that has carried her bond with her father throughout. Tenderness collides with the threat of death, and it’s almost unbearable.

For me, it echoed Night of the Living Dead: a finale that weaponizes uncertainty and dread, leaving you unsure whether any mercy exists in this world. By that point, after two relentless hours, I didn’t know if Yeon was finished punishing me. The tension never let up until the very last frame.

And when the credits rolled, just like the train itself, I was wrecked. It took me days to shake it off that final sequence.

If you haven’t seen Train to Busan, do yourself a favour and buy a ticket. This is one journey you won’t forget and who knows, maybe it will make you ugly cry too.