YMMV / Train to Busan

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Young-suk's straightforward villain becomes more ambiguous when it's revealed that his reason for going to Busan was to see his sick mother even in the Zombie Apocalypse. Is he telling the truth? Lies to make himself better? Or is he just reacting to the sad memories brought upon by his infection?
• Awesome Music:
  • "Goodbye World" is a tearjerking piano piece that plays during the possibly saddest moment of the film, namely Seok-woo committing Heroic Suicide as he becomes infected, all while hallucinating himself cradling Su-an as a baby.
  • "First Pass" is a frantic and tense piece, playing as Seok-woo, Sang-hwa, and Young-guk fight their way through the train filled with zombies, especially the car where they encounter Young-guk's zombie baseball teammates, at which Young-guk becomes extremely hesitant.
• Catharsis Factor: Seeing Young-suk getting infected, which he tried to avoid by throwing so many others under the bus, then thrown off the train by Seok-woo is absolutely satisfying for most viewers.
• Cliché Storm: The "zombies on a train" premise is unusual and offers some distinctive imagery and setpieces, but the story doesn't exactly break new ground. There are no game-changing innovations in how this film's zombies work, and when it comes to the characters, all your favorites are here – from the estranged father forcibly reminded by nightmarish circumstances that he cares about his daughter more than anything else in the world; to the seemingly-crazy homeless guy whose incoherent doomsday ramblings conceal a hidden reserve of pluck and heart; to the rich Jerkass who cares only for his own survival and willingly sacrifices others to save his hide. The plot beats are quite familiar, including multiple Heroic Sacrifice moments when The Rest Shall Pass, including an absolutely textbook case of Big Guy Fatality Syndrome; a sequence where the Jerkass manipulates the remaining survivors into ostracizing and exiling the heroes; and a despairing character who willingly allows themselves to be attacked and killed by their just-infected loved one. And as for the ending, would you believe that the only surviving main characters are a little girl and a pregnant woman, character types way at the safe end of the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality? But none of these bother the film's many proponents, who cast it as a classic story told very well, not a narratively experimental work.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Despite the movie's limited run in the US, this and The Wailing are the most beloved Korean movies of the past decade, and made Sang-hwa's actor Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) an international star. This also played a big factor in Marvel finally^sidenote Kevin Feige wanted Ma Dong-seok to have a cameo role in Avengers: Age of Ultron, since one of the set pieces is in Seoul, South Korea, and Ma grew up in the US, speaks fluent English, and worked as a trainer for US-based martial artist before becoming an actor. However, due to the scheduling conflict, Ma declined. making him part of the MCU, playing Gilgamesh in Eternals.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the beginning of the infection's spread in the train, Seok-woo closes one of the doors on Sang-hwa as a group of zombies are pursuing him and Seong-kyeong. Since Sang-hwa simply opens the door and comically berates Seok-woo, who shrugs off his gesture as everyone being afraid, this scene is played for laughs. Later in the movie, Seok-woo finds himself on the wrong side of the door in the same situation, and he experiences first-hand the feeling that one gets when others' selfishness puts a loved one in mortal danger.
• Memetic Badass: Sang-hwa has this reputation for taking on zombies with his bare fists, even defeating one by effortlessly lifting it up towards the ceiling. It's a common statement/joke that he had to die midway because he was too powerful and would end the movie much quicker.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • [X] to Busan. ^Explanation Due to this film's reception, any South Korean Zombie Apocalypse-themed media will inevitably be given this epitaph as a comparison; for example, Kingdom (2019) was labeled as Carriage/Wagon to Busan, as the series takes place in a feudal-era Korean setting with zombies.
  • Train to Busan and Squid Game are connected. ^Explanation Gong Yoo would later go on to play a salesman who slaps a lot of people that he later invites to the eponymous Squid Game. Many fans jokingly created connections between the film and the series, such as the train that the salesman rode on being the eponymous movie's train (thus making it look like Train to Busan happens AFTER Squid Game), or the character refusing to cut off his hand after he gets bitten, opting to keep it so he can continue slapping people.
• Moral Event Horizon: One can write a essay arguing at exactly what point Young-suk crosses the line of fighting for survival into plain throwing his morality away. A pretty good start would be when he throws the train attendant to the zombies to buy time for a distraction to escape the train, or when he uses Jin-hee, as a shield which gets her bitten and turned, resulting in her infecting Young-guk shortly after. Let's not forget when he lets the train conductor, who went out of his way to save his life, get eaten so he can escape.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The zombie deer at the beginning, which means the film's universe also has a case of Raising the Steaks. We never see any more cases like this again, and the scene was most likely there for Foreshadowing, though.
  • The first female zombie's transformation sequence — she slowly rises behind the female conductor, along with a tense music and a close-up on the infected's face. Viewers and critics have also noted that this zombie is quite different than the rest, as she takes a lot of time before actually biting her victim.
  • The zombies raining down from the helicopters and then immediately getting back up to chase victims is pretty incredible, but we never see anything of its ilk again.
• Retroactive Recognition: Three years later, Choi Woo-shik would go on to captivate international audiences once more with a much bigger role in the even more widely-acclaimed Parasite (2019).
• Signature Scene: Several of them.
  • An infected woman entering into the train, starting the whole plot.
  • Daejeon Station.
  • Seok-woo, Sang-hwa, and Yong-guk fighting their way through the train cars filled with zombies.
  • Seok-woo's Heroic Suicide.
  • Su-an and Seong-kyeong walking through a tunnel with the former singing and being rescued by soldiers.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • One could make an argument that this is the closest thing South Korea has to their own adaptation of Stephen King's stories, as the film shares similar themes and tones to his body of work (The Stand, The Mist, Cell, and The Langoliers to name a few).
  • Or an excerpt out of World War Z, given that this film shares two elements of that film; the protagonists making Improvised Weapon and Improvised Armor out of duct tape, and the Human Ladder of zombies.
• Too Cool to Live: Sang-hwa is a strong, savvy, snarky badass who not only mows down zombies left and right but also has a loving, pregnant wife; of course he ends up dying. Still, even after turning, he holds back a crowd of infected for as long as he can to buy the others time to escape the train car.
• The Woobie: Su-an absolutely has it rough. By the end of the film, her father is infected and has to commit Heroic Suicide to protect her, her grandmother is infected and zombified too, and it is not known whether her mother is alive or not. Basically, her whole family is, for all intents and purposes, dead, and all she has left is Seong-kyeong, who will at least very likely adopt her as her second child if that's truly the case. Oh, and did we mention this all happens on her birthday?

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