Train To Busan (2016) - An overhyped disappointment
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Horror
markus-san — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 02:44 PM)
For me anyway (sorry Ebo and Nicko) So many good reviews, but I was left somewhat underwhelmed. Below are a few of the issues I had with this movie. SPOILERS AHEAD!
- First off, it is way too long at two hours. It could have been trimmed by about 20 minutes to maintain pace. There were moments when it just seemed to drag, and then it would suddenly burst into life again. A leaner 90-100 minutes runtime would have benefited it in my opinion.
- Coming from a country that has given us plenty of extreme violence, I found the lack of gore to be quite unforgivable. It is almost PG-13 violence for a zombie/flick. Yeah, a family-friendly zombie flick. (Not even sure whether they are actaully "zombies" or just infected with something like a form of extreme rabies).
- It is rather cliche. There is a tough guy. He has a pregnant wife. There is a kid (yes the only one on the entire train journey). A group of baseball players and their cute cheerleader. There are characters that sacrifice themselves to save others. There is a
The Mist
moment, when more than half of the remaining survivors turn against our group of protagonists for reasons that they "might be infected". It is a completely ludicrous and silly moment. - The zombies cannot see in the dark
. That's right, zombie eye sight you see, is not as good as humans. One character kindly points this out to us.. just in case we didn't get it. - it takes less than 2 minutes for a group of characters to crawl across a luggage shelf that conveniently doesn't have much luggage in it.
- A number of daft set pieces that just feel like they are there to stretch out the running time, such as the scene where characters become trapped between two trains that one has collided into, and of course the windows are full of zombies that are going to break through the glass. Fear not, our
hobo
will come to the rescue and sacrifice himself. - Moments where you really do have to suspend disbelief: A pregnant woman and a man carrying a child somehow manage to outrun a huge horde of extremely fast moving zombies and at the same time jump on a moving train.. although this is probably the best of all the set pieces in it's scope.
- The score is overall pretty bad, with too much sappy, sentimental piano music every time someone dies (the ending is particularly excruciating). Just keep it nice and dark please. Even
The Walking Dead
doesn't suffer from this nonsense. - The main antagonist (an evil train manager) should, you would hope and guess, get his just deserts in gory fashion, a la Captain Rhodes style.. but no, due to this being PG-13 violence, even this is a complete cop out.
- The only survivors of the movie are
the pregnant woman and the little girl - there was a chance to have them killed off at the very end but this is no
Night Of The Living Dead
.. ultimately a film with a lack of balls.
Having said all of this, I still rate it 6. I just can't be bothered to list any of the positives
.
Last Film Seen;
Train To Busan
(Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
6/10
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jackieleesk01 — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 03:55 PM)
I watched this on Sunday. I agree with a lot of what you are saying but it didn't affect my enjoyment too much. I really liked it.
A lot of your issues with the film is to do with the fact this film was made and marketed as a blockbuster movie in South Korea. It was intended to be accessible to a mainstream audience, which is why it wasn't ultra violent, with quite cliche characters and some suspension of belief required. It doesn't position itself as a gritty, hardcore zombie flick, it is anything but. -
markus-san — 9 years ago(October 19, 2016 01:08 AM)
A lot of your issues with the film is to do with the fact this film was made and marketed as a blockbuster movie in South Korea.
Fair point. It's South Korea's answer to
World War Z
, not
28 Days Later
..
Last Film Seen;
Train To Busan
(Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
6/10