A Movie You Might Have Missed #64: Train to Busan

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

Soo-an: Dad, you only care about yourself. That's why mommy left.

He's forgotten her birthday, he's forgotten to show up at school for her special song, but Seok Woo is going to make sure his little daughter safely gets from Seoul to Busan to visit her mother, his ex-wife. It's just their bad luck that a zombie virus breaks out while they're on the train. The passengers must fight for their families and their lives against the zombies.

We loved this basic zombie movie with the clever twist of NOT staying on a train but clearly having to BE on a train to get to Busan, where there might be a safe haven ... we hope. It was more thoughtful than the average zombie movie. (Is there such a thing as an average zombie movie these days? Oh, right, World War Z. That was very average.)

I especially appreciated the family themes as echoed through all the characters we really come to know ... from young love through fatherhood and old age. And it isn't afraid to look at how an extended struggle might turn survivors against each other as they trade common decency and humanity for personal security.

No wonder it made $85 million. A solid story, well told.

Scott and I discussed this in episode 244 of A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast.