The Train to Busan trilogy has quickly become one of the most beloved zombie film franchises in the modern day, though not every installment in the relatively fresh trio stacks up to its siblings. In 2016, Train to Busan re-invigorated the zombie genre with a fresh take on fast-moving unᴅᴇᴀᴅ, ravaging South Korea with a particularly ᴅᴇᴀᴅly strain of flesh-eating ghouls. Quickly establishing itself as one of the greatest zombie films of the 2010s, if not one of the greatest zombie films in general, Train to Busan didn’t take long to deepen its lore and story with two follow-up films.

Each of these films has left a different legacy on the now-trilogy of zombie movies, proving South Korean cinema is still a weighty contender in the horror genre’s market. It’s not just the fear of the unᴅᴇᴀᴅ mᴀsses that makes the trilogy so effective, but the potent human drama that pressurizes its hapless characters to the point of explosions like a violent powder keg of emotion, reiterating the age-old notion that, even in a zombie apocalypse, humans are still the most dangerous monster around. It’s no wonder that there are two Train to Busan projects in various states of development.

3

Peninsula

Still Good, But Lacking Compared To Others

In many cases, the third film in a franchise is often the worst, with a trilogy often coming to a sputtering and awkward stop upon running out of ideas when it comes time for sequel number 2. Sadly, this is also very much the case with the Train to Busan series, with Peninsula, also known as Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula, easily coming up short as the weakest entry in the current trilogy. That’s not to say it’s entirely a bad zombie movie, even still better than most. But for the тιтle’s legacy, it comes up very short.

Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula is set some time after the first film concludes, with the majority of South Korea officially becoming a post-apocalyptic hellscape as the zombies of the first film have more or less overrun large swathes of the country. The plot centers on a guilt-ridden former soldier who is contracted by the Chinese mafia in Hong Kong to retrieve some valuable booty from a truck stranded in the Korean peninsula. Along the way, he has to fight off not only the zombies, but a dangerous group of human militia surviving in the ruins of South Korea.

Funnily enough, this premise is alarmingly similar to Zack Snyder’s Army of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, which would come out a year later. While the zombie/heist movie hybrid is plenty of fun, the movie loses a lot by giving the protagonist nothing to lose at the beginning with his family already gone by the time the action starts. Jung-seok does get a great moment of redemption, signifying the completion of his arc, but the human drama simply falls flat compared to the adrenaline-pumping tension of the previous two films, even if it still outclasses most other zombie movies.

2

Seoul Station

A Bleak, But Beautiful Origin Story

Train to Busan doesn’t give the zombies themselves all that much focus beyond being a vicious force of nature for the human protagonists to race against, not elaborating much on how they came to be or how exactly they work. However, the animated prequel Seoul Station takes the time to fill the audience in on the backstory of Train to Busan‘s zombies, while still being able to offer the same level of palpable interpersonal drama and survival scenario dynamics that made the first film so powerful. Realized with stunning animation, Seoul Station is a worthy follow-up.

The film introduces a new protagonist, Hye-sun, a desтιтute young woman trying to escape Sєx work only to be pressured into it again by her current boyfriend. Her financial woes and toxic relationship soon take a backseat to the sudden breakout of the zombie infection in Seoul Station, with the film actually pulling back the curtain on how patient zero began to spread the horrid plague. As Hye-sun, her boyfriend, and her father, Suk-gyu, attempt to escape the unfolding chaos, they soon find that South Korea’s martial response is less than forgiving.

Seoul Station‘s breathtaking animation helps set it apart from the other two Train to Busan films, as well as its focus on the downtrodden and taken-advantage-of lower social strata of South Korea reminiscent of Parasite or Squid Games. However, even for a zombie movie, it’s relentlessly bleak, perhaps overtly so, complete with depictions of Sєxual ᴀssault and a downer ending that makes it hard to feel like the entire story that just unfolded had any kind of lasting impact. Gorgeous, brooding, and intense, Seoul Station is an even more sharpened human drama that loses something in its forlorn story.

1

Train To Busan

Still The Best, And For Good Reason

To no one’s surprise, the original Train to Busan still reigns supreme when compared to its two spawn. Many viewers still might not even be aware of the follow-ups, considering the release of Seoul Station was so close to the original as to be overshadowed and Peninsula was adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet Train to Busan stays remembered, and was able to gain acclaim at a time in which zombie media was a very crowded space between recent hit series like The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and movies like Zombieland.

Train to Busan takes place on the тιтular transit route across the South Korean countryside when the pᴀssengers suddenly find themselves face-to-face with a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly zombie outbreak. It’s up to jaded divorcee and co-parent Seok-woo to get his daughter to safety, whether that be her mother’s house or a militarized quarantine zone, fighting his way through the crowded train cars. The pair are joined by a high school baseball team, a blue-collar worker and his pregnant wife, a pair of elderly women, and a homeless stowaway.

First and foremost, the clever claustrophobic quarters of the train as the cars become filled with bodies is a brilliant setting for a horror flick laden with running zombies, keeping the tension high at virtually all times. More importantly, the film actually manages to get its audience to care about the characters as they’re picked off one by one, with Gong Yoo of Squid Game fame acting his heart out as the steadfast Seok-woo. Terrifying, exciting, and downright heartbreaking, Train to Busan will be a hard movie to top for any sequel.