This South Korean zombie film has restored Quentin Tarantino’s faith in the undead genre in cinema: yes, we’re talking about the now legendary “Train to Busan”. Check out what he had to say.
The horror genre is vast: from slashers and other serial killers to ghosts, demons, vampires, or even zombies, anything goes. But we must admit that when one of its subgenres takes over, feature films on the same theme follow one after the other – and end up getting boring. We have had the era of remakes of Japanese horror films, that of slashers, vampires, zombies…
So let’s talk about the latter, particularly popular after 2010 thanks to The Walking Dead. While the series started the movement, some quickly got tired of it – and among them, the famous filmmaker Quentin Tarantino who felt the same way until the famous South Korean zombie film, Train to Busan, made him change his mind.
As a reminder, the film tells the story of a single father (Gong Yoo), and his daughter (Kim Soo-Ahn), with a complicated relationship, who find themselves stuck on a crowded high-speed train when a virus spreads in South Korea, a virus that awakens the dead ready to bite indiscriminately…
Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan is one of the most endearing and visceral zombie films of the century. In his film, the director takes the basics of the genre and reworks them to his liking, all sublimated by a direction that defies expectations. It’s beautiful and poignant, and we’re talking about a zombie film.
The feature film, rated 4.1 out of 5 by AlloCiné viewers, is considered one of the best (if not the best) zombie films of all time. In addition to Gong Yoo and the young and incredible Kim Soo-Ahn, it also stars Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok and Choi Woo-sik.
“Total adrenaline”
During an appearance on the podcast “History of Horror,” Quentin Tarantino came to talk about the film, and the director was also won over despite the fact that he couldn’t stand the genre in question any longer.
“I love Train to Busan, and I actually showed it to a few friends in Tel Aviv who had never seen it before. And one of them said, ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a horror movie this intense.’“, he said.
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He continued : “It’s not a disease, it’s like nerve gas. It’s a weapon. A weapon that kills you and then revives you. Just that image of the father running, carrying the little girl, with what seems like a thousand infected people chasing him, almost on his back, with that ‘boom boom boom boom boom’ music, it’s just total adrenaline. When Train to Busan came out, I thought, ‘I can’t watch another zombie movie or another infected movie, I can’t do it anymore.’ And I was wrong.”
All is said.
Listen to Quentin Tarantino’s praise for the film in the video below:
The filmmaker goes on to point out, however, that the standalone sequel to the film, Peninsula (2020), by the same director, is, in his opinion, a disaster, a sort of Train to Busan à la Mad Max: Fury Road that has gone wrong. In any case, the original is widely approved!
Last Train to Busan can be seen again on MyCanal or on VOD.
