TRAIN TO BUSAN
What do we think about zombies?
I reckon they’re pretty freaking crazy. Dead? But still moving about? Are you serious? Nah that’s insane. Be dead, bro.
Some folks are absolutely nutso for zombies. They looooove zombies. They have those POP! Vinyl figurines of a zombie Wolverine that they put on their desks so when people walk past them in the office they hear ‘woah, holy shit, I thought you were a colleague just like any other, but you like X-Men and zombies.’
I feel about zombies the same way I feel about Godzilla. They get me where I want to go. I want to see a city be destroyed and if the thing that is delivering the destruction happens to be Godzilla, then I guess I’m going to be watching Godzille. It’s the same with zombies. I’m here to see society breaking down, if the way I get to see that is through watching hordes of the undead then I guess that’s the water I need to drink to help swallow the pill that is abandoned cars scattered on a freeway.
Train to Busan is a great zombie film from South Korea. It moves fast like some kind of vehicle on rails. God, I wish I could think of the type of vehicle it was like, but you know the sort of vehicle that once it starts going it keeps going, like a runaway this-sort-of-vehicle-that-I-can’t-think-the-name-of? That’s what Train to Busan is like.
The plot goes like this: a father and daughter board a train in Seoul headed for, you got it; Busan. As the train leaves the station the people on board don’t know yet what chaos is about to ensue but it becomes evident very quickly that there’s some kind of zombie outbreak in the country, and that one zombie has gotten onto the train – and you know what that means – one zombie will soon turn into a train full of zombies.
My favourite sequence comes midway through the film when the train stops at Daejeon Station. It sort of seems like everything might be under control until it becomes very clear that is not the case whatsoever, and swarms of zombies appear and chase everybody back onto the train. And that leads us to how I would fit into this movie.
It’s a great question: ‘How would you, Peter Jones, fit into a South Korean zombie film?’
Easily. There’s definitely room in the movie for one quick scene at Daejeon Station, slightly before our heroes’ train arrives, to meet an Australian tourist on holiday in South Korea. And back when I was twenty-nine I’d been through a big break up and did some travelling, there’s no reason to think that twenty-nine-year-old me wouldn’t have found himself on the Korean Peninsula.
IF I WERE IN 'TRAIN TO BUSAN' I WOULD: DIE BECAUSE I'M TOO SELF-CONSCIOUS TO LIVE
