Yet, passengers and train crew get more alarmed over a homeless man hiding out in the washroom - one of the film’s frequent barbed comments on snobbery in Korean society. The last person to hop on is a teenage girl whose bare thighs are crisscrossed with bulging veins. Workaholic fund manager Seok-wu (Gong Yoo) takes his estranged young daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) on the KTX high-speed train to Busan to visit his ex-wife. While the anime’s excoriation of the police and army is softened in the live-action sequel, scenarios of humans and zombies precariously separated by carriages fittingly symbolize the dangerous gap between society’s haves and have-nots.

“Train to Busan” picks up where that film left off.

In “Seoul Station,” Yeon depicted a homeless enclave inside the central train station as the ground zero of a zombie outbreak. However, with a MERS epidemic sweeping South Korea in 2015 and soaring discontent with corruption and economic disparity, a zombie apocalypse serves as a potent allegory for the dog-eat-dog world. But whether it’s alleged prototype “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie” rip-off “A Monstrous Corpse” or the more recent “Zombie School” (2014), they’ve all been slapdash and unoriginal. Buyers for Asian-friendly genre products should clamber to board “Train.”ĭespite the vibrancy of genre cinema in Korea, you can count the country’s zombie films on the fingers of one hand.

Yeon has displayed recognizably cinematic sensibilities in his last three indie anime features - “King of Pigs,” “Fake” and “Seoul Station” - so it’s not surprising that he transitions easily into live-action, though his scathing, nihilistic vision of humanity is watered down for wider mainstream appeal. As an allegory of class rebellion and moral polarization, it proves just as biting as Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi dystopia “Snowpiercer,” while delivering even more unpretentious fun. Following a motley crew on a bumpy ride from Seoul to Busan to escape a zombie outbreak, writer-director Yeon Sang-ho’s action-horror railroad movie “ Train to Busan” pulses with relentless locomotive momentum.

Train to busan free online movie