Everything I Loved About "Train To Busan" Made Me Hate Its Sequel

Spoiler warning for Train to Busan and its sequel, Peninsula. If you haven't seen them, bookmark this page and come back. Trust me.

via The Globe

I was such a fan of The Walking Dead back in the day.

In college, my Sunday routine was grabbing an iced white mocha from the campus center coffee shop, popping up to the third floor to do my radio show, grabbing dinner after, and doing homework or writing until the next episode aired. I even dressed as Daryl Dixon for Halloween one year!

The thing that made me come back every week wasn't the zombies or the increasingly soap opera-esque stakes; it was the survivors. The found family that came to mean more than who you were surviving with.

Not so long ago, I watched All of Us are Dead and thoroughly enjoyed it. The Korean drama follows a zombie outbreak, focusing primarily on a group of high school students trapped in their undead-infested school with sidesteps to other survivors in the city (which includes some of the kids' parents). It may not be perfect, but it had so much of what I loved about the early seasons of The Walking Dead. I couldn't stop thinking about it. In many ways, I think I liked it more than The Walking Dead, imperfections and all. And let me tell you, I was NOT expecting to cry as often as I did.

After finishing the first (and, at the time of writing, only) season of All of Us are Dead, I still had that itch for more zombie content, so after overhearing a coworker mention he'd seen Train to Busan a few weeks prior, it felt like the perfect time to give it a watch.

I freaking loved it, in part because it wasn't what I was anticipating. Like I told one friend over text, "I went in expecting spooky scary zombie time, not emotional damage."

Train to Busan centers around a workaholic father and his young daughter traveling by train to the city of Busan, right as a zombie outbreak hits, leaving them trapped on the moving train with a dwindling group of survivors and an increasing horde of the undead.

Horror in confined spaces always piques my interest. Not having an escape route and knowing that danger lurks around every corner and is closing in. It's what I loved about the premise of The Belko Experiment (and what I originally thought Trap was going to be in the vein of), and one of the reasons I wish we'd gotten to spend more time in Castle Dimitrescu in Resident Evil: Village—even the real scares in that game for me came from the nighmare fuel that is that godforsaken demon slug fetus abomination lurking in the bowels of House Beneviento.

Train to Busan is about more than the horror, though. It's a story of redemption, the cost of human instinct vs being blinded by the will to survive, and, ultimately, heartbreak. And that's what I loved most about it.

And this culmination of themes is what made me hate its sequel, Peninsula.

This post isn't designed to be a comprehensive review of either film. I just want to chat. There will be spoilers for both films. And as I mentioned in my post about the Danish film Speak No Evil, I'm American, meaning there's a likelihood that some Korean cultural nuances will have escaped my notice.

Train to Busan

Train to Busan follows Seok-woo, a fund manager and divorced father absorbed in his work. Early on, we see him reading an article about a contaminated water supply, at which point Seok-woo immediately summons one of his employees to sever ties with the company and sell off his shares as he anticipates its value to plummet.

After work, Seok-woo returns home where he lives with his mother and young daughter, Su-an, with whom he has a strained relationship. With her birthday approaching, Seok-woo gifts her a Wii since that's what the kids are into these days (according to an employee), only for her to point out that he already got her one. All Su-an wants is to see her mother in Busan.

via Variety

Seok-woo initially brushes off her request, mentioning he's too busy at work but says he can take her a different day.

His mother calls him out on his absence in Su-an's life, most recently at a school recital by showing him a recording of her performance. Su-an is unable to finish her song as she's searching the crowd for him.

This compels Seok-woo to fulfill his daughter's request to travel to Busan by train.

There are hints of disaster along the way to the station, notably a towering fire in the distance. But it's not until their train is about to depart that the signs of an outbreak become apparent—and fast.

A woman runs aboard, battered and covered in bite marks. Within minutes, she turns and attacks an employee, the first of countless victims.

From here on out, Train to Busan becomes an exploration of the willingness to survive. We see Seok-woo go from a mindset of looking out only for himself to fighting to help others survive. Meanwhile, another passenger, Yon-suk, maintains his desperation to preserve his best interests no matter the cost, creating a mirror for Seok-woo's former ways. It's also worth noting that the company responsible for the chemical spill that caused the virus was the one Seok-woo cut ties with in the opening scene.

Seok-woo's redemption doesn't end there. After a final fight with a now-infected Yon-suk, he is bitten on the hand. The wound is especially poignant as it is the same one sustained by Sang-hwa, another survivor traveling with his pregnant wife, who after realizing he is bitten while barricading a door, sacrifices himself so his wife and unborn child (and Seok-woo and Su-an) can escape. Knowing his fate, Seok-woo seals his daughter and Sang-hwa in the front car before he transforms, throwing himself from the train in his final moments.

Sang-hwa's wife (named Seong-kyeong) and Su-an eventually reach a roadblock, so they continue on foot through the tunnel, where they are met by a team of military snipers who are ordered to shoot on sight since they are unable to determine whether they are alive or zombies. Here, the film ends with Su-an singing "Aloha 'Oe," the same song she was meant to perform at the recital. This time, she finishes it.

I'm only glossing over these details for this post. Filmosophy has a fantastic article examining themes and motifs throughout Train to Busan that is worth the read (find it here).

Train to Busan was so much more than I expected. Amid the action and fright, there was heart and well-rounded explorations of redemption. This segment feels so short as I'm writing it is largely because there isn't a ton for me to critique. Even though there were a couple of slower moments, the pacing overall works, and even the smaller moments feel woven into the larger narrative. It's a carefully crafted film.

And as we know, when a film is incredibly well-received, a sequel can't be far behind...

Peninsula

Also known as Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula, the sequel is set roughly four years after the first film within the same universe, but no characters return from the original.

Instead, Peninsula follows a ROKMC officer named Jung-seok, who is introduced while evacuating with his sister, brother-in-law Chul-min, and nephew. They encounter a family on the side of the road pleading for help, but after noticing that the man is bleeding, Jung-seok drives on out of fear that this stranger is infected.

via Consequence

Aboard the naval ship, an infected passenger turns and bites several people, including Jung-seok's nephew. Unable to leave him, his sister stays to comfort the dying boy, allowing herself to be bitten after he turns.

Four years later, Jung-seok and Chul-min are in Hong Kong, where racial tensions towards Korean refugees have risen. The two of them are recruited by a group of modsters to return to the now-quarantined South Korea on a mission to retrieve a truck reported to contain a significant amount of money, promised half of the loot in exchange.

This is where my dislike of Peninsula begins.

The opening sequence had a lot of promise. Leaving people on the side of the road is something we see pretty often in zombie media (as an example, Katja in Telltale's The Walking Dead mentions how many people Kenny chose to drive past while they were on the road during the onset of the outbreak), and it could have created a parallel to Seok-woo's initial stance of looking out for yourself and his subsequent redemption arc. The parallel of Jung-seok leaving that deserted family with the intention of protecting his own, only for his sister and nephew to perish, that's brutal.

It's also worth mentioning that although the film was produced in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many Asian communities were facing a great deal of hatred and hostility due to its origins in Wuhan, China.

With many zombie stories, the characters are more or less landlocked, for lack of a better term. The virus is widespread, but people typically remain more or less where they were when it started. When the Daryl Dixon spin-off series was announced, a coworker quipped, "How the heck does he even get to France?" because the notion of being able to leave the continent was perplexing.

(To which I replied, "Obviously, he waits for the ocean to freeze and takes a Zomboni across." P.S. btw Matt and Shan, I still think Zomboni is comedy gold.)

With the virus contained within South Korea, Peninsula started to pose those questions about how refugees are treated after escaping to other countries. Although it's not something I can personally speak to, as it is not my lived experience, it's something I wish had been explored in greater depth—especially given that it became an even more significant conversation during the film's production and release.

But it kind of went downhill from there.

Peninsula, simply put, is a heist movie where there happen to be zombies. Things go wrong, as you might expect as a viewer, with all of the crew except for Jung-seok and Chul-min being killed in the chaos, with the brothers-in-law being separated soon after.

Jung-seok is picked up in a car driven by two young girls called Joon-yi and Yu-jin, who bring him back to their place where they live with their mother and grandfather. Come to find out, they are the family Jung-seok refused to help during the evacuation.

Meanwhile, Chul-min is taken to a militia base where he is thrown into a coliseum-like death match with other survivors fighting against zombies in a pit. And this honestly made so much sense to me because, yeah, people do be compelled to seek entertainment.

This brings me to my greatest critique of Peninsula: everything felt so disjointed. When there are too many interesting concepts, it's hard to give each the time to explore them thoroughly. Train to Busan had scenes with other passengers, but the focus was kept on Seok-woo and Su-an, plus a handful of others. This meant we were able to grow attached to these characters and feel the heartbreak of their deaths.

We weren't given enough time to get to know the members of the heist crew, so I wasn't impacted by their demises the way I was with Sang-hwa, for example, whose death left me in a puddle; even Seok-woo's mother's death, which occurs off-screen via phone call, was more impactful. Meanwhile, we're whipped around from this crash and escape to a car chase accompanied by flamenco music that really didn't fit the tone of the movie. As for the kids themselves, they didn't feel necessary to me. Su-an's character was not only the catalyst for Seok-woo being on the train in the first place, but the root and pinnacle of his redemption arc; in relation to Jung-seok, Joon-yi and Yu-jin just felt kind of there. The turnaround for Jung-seok and this family that he abandoned during the evacuations felt too rushed. He acknowledged his part in their current circumstances and that they were unable to leave Korea, but I didn't get the same sense of remorse I got from Seok-woo.

Chul-min is shot pretty soon after Jung-seok finds him, which makes what was a cool concept and setpiece feel more like padding the runtime.

Jung-seok and the family eventually make it to the extraction site, where a helicopter is waiting for them. In the chaos, the mother has been injured and volunteers to stay behind and fight off the zombies so her daughters can get to safety. Remembering Chul-min's words about failing to protect his family, Jung-seok goes back for her, and they are all able to evacuate.

Generally speaking, I've got mixed feelings about the ending. I think it would have been more impactful if Jung-seok didn't make it out alive. The crux of the emotional conflict is the fact that Jung-seok chose to leave the family behind for the sake of his own. He isn't able to pull his sister away from his dying nephew, allowing her to be bitten, too. Chul-min's last act before being shot is saving Jung-seok from a bite. His inner turmoil, in part, stems from his failures and guilt.

Upon going back for the mother as she's locked herself up in a truck and drawing the horde away from her kids, Jung-seok being bitten and using his final moments to get her and the kids off the peninsula would have made for a full-circle moment. As was the case with Train to Busan, it's that shift from a character looking out for himself to willingly making a selfless sacrifice that makes the story feel complete.

Perhaps the most significant indication, apart from double-checking names, I was able to recap Train to Busan from memory, recalling far more than was mentioned in this post. For Peninsula, I needed a refresher. It wasn't as memorable for me.

What's your take on Train to Busan and Peninsula?