This South Korean Zombie Movie Restored Quentin Tarantino’s Faith in the Undead
The horror genre is regularly defined by whatever its horror of the day is. The early aughts were brimming with J-horror remakes, and the years after that were grim slices of extreme horror. There have been slasher trends, vampire cycles, and bouts of trauma-centric horror. What’s popular inspires others, and in 2010, The Walking Dead was very popular. My mom used to host watch parties at our house. I had friends over not to hang out with me, but instead to sit down and watch the latest episode of whatever Rick and his merry band of zombie killers were up to. Naturally, zombie cinema exploded, and the years that followed were replete with one ambling corpse picture after another. Not all of them were bad, but like with other subgenres that blew up, it was easy to get tired of them. Famed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino felt the same way until one South Korean zombie movie changed his mind. I’m talking, of course, about Train to Busan.
Per Tubi: A father and his estranged daughter are trapped on a speeding train full of fellow passengers when a zombie virus breaks out in South Korea.
Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan, now free to stream on Tubi, is one of the century’s most endearing and visceral zombie movies. Yeon Sang-ho repackages familiar tropes, subverting some, while retaining others with confident filmmaking that shatters expectations with the propulsive force of an errant train. It’s pretty great, and unlike most, I’m even fond of the bigger, bolder, whackier follow-up, Peninsula.
Quentin Tarantino, while speaking on the History of Horror podcast, remarked, “I love Train to Busan, I actually showed it to a couple of friends in Tel-Aviv who had never seen it before. And one of them was like, ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a horror film this intense.’” Like Tarantino, Train to Busan is a perennial of mine. Especially for my more horror-averse friends, it’s a favorite of mine to pop on with company. So far, I haven’t had any complaints.
I’m someone who saw (and cried about) Warm Bodies three times in theaters. When Train to Busan pulled into the station, I was pretty burnt out on the undead. Quentin Tarantino was too, though on the same podcast, he shared, “When Train to Busan came out, I was like, ‘There’s no way I can watch another zombie movie or infected people movie, I just can’t do it anymore and I was wrong.’”
What do you think? Do you agree with Quentin Tarantino? Any plans to revisit Train to Busan? Still wondering what’s going on with that alleged English remake? Let me know over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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