How Train to Busan Changed the Zombie Apocalypse Movie Game FOREVER (Spoilers Ahead)

If this were a video blog (vlog as the cool kids call it), I'd be spending the first two minutes helplessly sobbing on camera. And probably wiping snot off my nose with my phone.

My ears are literally ringing right now.

I need a moment.

Here's a still from the movie while I collect my broken-into-a-million-mothaeffin'-pieces self.

#ZOMBIEAPOCALYPSEBFFGOALS
from hancinema.net

There. I think I'm fine now.

Let's do this.

So everyone's been losing their shit over this movie called Train to Busan. Judging from the title, I automatically assumed it's a love story and I didn't give it much thought. One night, while I was making fun of some photos (of myself) from our trip to Calaguas, my sister barged into my room and started spoiling the whole fucking movie to my face. Well, I didn't really care as I'm not really planning to go see the movie (despite the rampage of invitations from my friends to go see it). Today, I finally gave in and spent two hours of my day off jumping into the bandwagon.

SMILE! :)
from fandango.com

A lot of people who watched this movie claimed it was "like World War Z." I liked World War Z primarily because Brad Pitt is in it (come on, let's be honest) and because it has zombies that run like hell. I've seen enough Western renditions of the zombie apocalypse, and they all kind of begin and end the same way. What makes them different from one another is the middle sequence—the action; the conflicts; the different camera angles of face eating by the zombies; and, in the case of the Resident Evil franchise, the evolution of zombies (which is totally mindblowing since zombies are technically dead and there's just no way in Valhalla that they can turn into bigger, juicier, and scarier wall-climbing versions). This makes me think, "Where did all this awesomeness start anyway?"

I did a little digging and found reliable articles here and here discussing the origins of the zombie as we know it today. Apparently, it's from Caribbean Voodoo folklore and a general term for any disturbing presence at night that could be a spirit, a ghost, or other forms. In time, it has merged into the belief that a witch doctor (or bokor as they're called in Haitian folklore) can render a person apparently dead and then revive him/her as a personal slave until his (the bokor's) death. This, of course, is done through some form of black magic (which is really just tetrodotoxin from our friend the deadly puffer fish) and other cool occult stuff making the victim lose personal will, thus the running around eating people's faces off.

I'm kidding. They didn't start running around eating people's faces off until the American masterpiece Night of the Living Dead.

Though there are accounts of people (most of them drunk novelists and are my heroes) claiming to have been face-to-face with actual zombies, none were taken seriously and just dismissed as another case of rare mental illness (both of the person claiming to have encountered the zombie and the zombie itself). Today, the zombie still remains a legend and stuff of nightmares, movies, and TV series. Personally, I like to keep it that way.

But Train to Busan. OH MY GOD, TRAIN TO BUSAN.

I'm like, "SU-AAAN! MOOOVE!" T_T
from deepestdream.com

First of all, the only similarity this movie has with World War Z is its being a movie about a zombie outbreak gone wild. THAT. IS. IT.

If you watch movies like I do, you always look for cause of conflict and follow the characters to its resolution. This movie is special because it's all conflict without cause or resolution. Well, except for the part that this bastard stirred a lot of conflict in me that finally resolved after his demise (which I feel bad about because HE FUCKING TALKED ABOUT WANTING TO GO HOME TO HIS MOTHER WITH HIS ZOMBIE FACE AND I'M CRYING AF).

WHYYY? WHY YOU DO THIS TO MEEE? T_T

So if this movie is all conflict with zero resolution, how did it change the zombie apocalypse movie game forever? Simple—it revealed all the facets of human nature in times of fast-running, face-eating adversity. Compared to Western interpretations of the zombie onslaught which is mostly about badass heroes and heroines with big guns finding a cure for the outbreak, Train to Busan is mostly about people losing their shit in an attempt to survive which made me, as the audience, think, "This is probably how it'll all go down when a zombie outbreak happens." Though a work of fiction, the movie gives an impression of being realistic in the sense that the characters are normal civilians with no military training or badassery for zombie killing. Just normal people who would probably get eaten first in a real zombie attack. It's actually a pattern with Western and Oriental portrayals of basically everything—Western is logical (finding a cure and stopping the madness) and Oriental is emotional (all the scenes in Train to Busan that will make you feel the feels). Like the hemispheres of the brain.

Let that sink in.

Yep, mind blown.

I give this movie 10/10 zombie teeth (if that's a thing) because (1) it's the only zombie movie that made me cry like a little girl and (2) it will teach you a thing or two about who to trust or feed to the zombies in a zombie apocalypse.

I also want to feature my favorite character before I wrap up. I like him because he's funny, he made me sob uncontrollably when he finally named his unborn kid before being eaten by zombies in front of his pregnant and stressed-out wife, and he's the only one who rightfully manhandled zombies in the movie. You the real MVP, Ma Dong Seok!

YOU THE MAN. \m/

We're done here.