If you love horror, sometimes all you really need to know about a movie is what it’s about. Train to Busan, a 2016 Korean zombie movie, is admittedly a great movie for those who love horror as a genre. But the film, which is set to leave Amazon Prime Video at the end of March, is also much more than just the basics of the zombie genre.
Since its release nearly a decade ago, the film has become one of the most beloved foreign films ever to come to America, and it’s easy to see why. Here are three reasons you should be sure to check it out on Prime Video before it leaves at the end of March:
It’s a horror movie and an action movie
Train to Busan tells the story of a group of survivors trapped on a speeding train as a zombie outbreak spreads through the various cars. Because the movie’s zombies are fairly active and because the survivors are trapped on a train, the movie is both terrifying and thrilling in a way that many zombie movies never fully manage.
As the passengers move from car to car, trying desperately to fend off the zombies and maintain their own survival, the film transitions seamlessly between genres or can be both simultaneously.
It’s also got plenty of emotion
In addition to having all of the great action of an action movie, Train to Busan also manages to take some of the more emotional cues from the action genre. The film’s central emotional relationship is between a workaholic father and his estranged daughter. Surrounding that relationship, though, is a series of supporting characters that are all perfectly cast and have emotional arcs in their own right.
Some of these arcs aren’t overly complicated, and as you might expect, not all of these characters make it out of the film alive. When those characters succumb to their fate, though, you feel a mixture of the thrill of a horror movie and something more mournful and melancholy.
It’s a reminder that foreign cinema is not homework
If you’ve struggled to get into movies from other countries for one reason or another, few movies are better suited to be a gateway than Train to Busan. The movie is relentless in its pacing and rarely gives either its characters or the viewer a chance to breathe.
That relentless pacing makes it easy to forget that the whole movie is not in English. The performances read just as well, and every beat of the action is super crisp and clear. Some foreign movies really are homework, but Train to Busan is as far from homework as movies get.
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