What is the ultimate point of zombie movies? All of them are relatively the same. The outbreak starts, we follow a group of survivors, people die and everyone's screwed. There's always some safepoint to get to, but the safepoints are ultimately going to get overrun. Everyone is going to die in the end. 

These movies have always been presented as parallels to normal life. The idea that we're all basically the same as zombies started with the original Night of the Living Dead, moved to Shaun of the Dead, and now with Train to Busan. People lumber through life, doing monotonous tasks and barely emoting. Everyday people are zombies. We know we're all going to die in the end. But we continue living by attempting to further the future generations and give our children a better world to live in. 

Some people don't see zombie movies like that. Some people just see zombies as a fun thing to kill and an excuse to have some fun with weapons. This is also true, and that back and forth between fantasy action and depressing reality is what makes zombie movies so engaging. 

Train to Busan is really good. It shows zombies in a different setting. Its characters have depth and go through arcs over the course of the movie. There's emotional weight to the deaths, and it still has those fun moments of zombie killing. 

The zombies in this film were great! The way their bodies jerked around and twisted was so exciting and creepy. And the rules of this universe, with the zombies attacking based only on sight and sound was nice. So many zombie movies have them attack based on smell, which leads to dumb jump scare moments of zombies sneaking up on people. But you can't do that when zombies attack based on sight. 

There were some annoying things in the movie. The main antagonist, this businessman looking out for himself, was one of the biggest asshole characters I've ever seen in a movie. That's not a bad thing, but when so many other characters started blindly following his words, it began to stretch logic too much. At the end, the conductor randomly jumps out of the train to save the businessman and ends up dying in the process. I don't know why he did this. It seemed like people were following this guy's word solely for drama in the movie and not for any logical or emotional reasoning. 

Also, this being a zombie movie, nothing took me by surprise in terms of where the plot was going to go. The only real way it could go is everyone dies, or one or two characters survive. There is a nice reversal at the end that is quite clever. 

So why did I decide to review this film? Well, I just watched it recently for one thing. But is it notable for more reasons besides just being a good zombie movie? Honestly, not really. It shows us things we've seen before, with some of the pieces shifted around on the board. 

But here's the thing. Not every movie needs to be a fresh gasp of air. Sometimes it's good to just breathe and know you're alive. This is a very competent movie. It accomplishes everything it set out to do and only stumbles over little pieces of logic along the way. 

The way the zombies fell over each other and tumbled through train doors and windows seemed very reminiscent of videos I've seen of public transit in places like South Korea or Japan, with everyone shoving each other to try and get inside the train. That was definitely intentional, and added both depth and humor to the film at the same time. 

This is a film that deserves to be remembered. It's an essential film for fans of the zombie genre. It's also a good film for people who don't generally watch foreign films, because much like a zombie outbreak, it reminds us that some things are universal. 

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