Investment banker Seo Seok-woo is a cynical workaholic and divorced father, living in Seoul. When his daughter Su-an wants to spend her birthday with her mother in Busan, at the other end of the country, he initially tries to refuse her. Ultimately though, guilt over his own absentee parenting prompts him to agree to her request.
Seok-woo does, however, refuse to let Su-an take the journey alone, and accompanies her onto the train. This proves to be very fortuitous, as Seoul descends into chaos behind them due to a zombie outbreak. Alas, one of the infected manages to get on board the train as well, and soon flesh-eating undead are rampaging through the carriages. Seok-woo, Su-an and the other passengers must try to stay alive long enough to reach a place of safety - though with the speed the zombie outbreak is spreading, it's unclear if any such place exists.
Train to Busan is a solid and engaging zombie film from South Korea. It has some great sequences as the dwindling group of survivors try to stay one step ahead of the zombie contagion, offering a few set pieces that are distinctive and memorable and don't immediately remind me of anything I have seen from the genre before.
If you're not one of those people who has become burned out on zombie media, this is an excellent example of the form, and well worth a couple of hours of your time.
On a meta-textual level, I also think the film has obvious parallels to the Korean War - where Busan formed the final stronghold for fleeing South Koreans before the the UN force's invasion of Incheon forced North Korean forces to withdraw. I would be very surprised if this parallel was not entirely deliberate.
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