Train to Busan (Busanhaeng)

TRAIN TO BUSAN (BUSANHAENG) (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016)

The passengers on a train bound for South Korea’s second biggest city see news reports of riots breaking out across the country but expect they are largely shielded from it as they zip across the land in TRAIN TO BUSAN (BUSANHAENG). Unfortunately for them, an infected person slipped onto the train without notice and starts turning others on board into zombies.

Among those fighting for their lives are fund manager Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) and his young daughter Soo-an (Kim Soo-an), a high school baseball team; and a pregnant woman (Jung Yu-mi) and her husband (Ma Dong-seok). A large number of riders emerge unscathed from the initial attack after noticing that the zombies lack object permanence. If they can’t see you, whether in the dark or by covering a window, they won’t pursue. The passengers plan to disembark at the next station, but when it proves to be overrun with the living dead, the best choice is to get back on the train, even with its threats, and go to Busan, which is reportedly still open.

TRAIN TO BUSAN bolts through its stripped-down premise like the fast zombies terrorizing South Korea. Director Yeon Sang-ho, a co-writer with Park Joo-suk, uses the urgency and efficiency in the zombies-on-a-train scenario to keep the film in a constant state of tension once the outbreak begins. It’s the kind of genre exercise that is essentially bulletproof. Put people in a contained space with their antagonists, and let the survivors get sorted out. Yeon and Park come up with several different situations for the humans to fend for their lives as though they are video game heroes completing levels. Pace and novelty are maintained while characterization and topical interests lag behind.

TRAIN TO BUSAN’s lack of backstory is a virtue because there isn’t a pressing need to know why this is happening, just that it is. The details that might bring more color and resonance to the struggle get papered over amid the excitement of sticking close to the protagonists as they try to avoid nasty bites. The characters are ciphers who don’t need names because each with any prominence has an identifying characteristic while the rest serve as set dressing. Whether or not the passengers abide by the Golden Rule carries significance, but the simplistic sprinkling of thematic import hardly provides serious contemplation of the pros and cons of altruism.

Still, this lean and vicious zombie movie is effective in a visceral way. Those in the hungry mob are unsettling with their spastic movements. TRAIN TO BUSAN isn’t especially gory, but the quickness and violence of the attacks and the snarling sounds imply visions of more horrific wounds than what gets seen. Although the film doesn’t aspire to achieve much beyond the basic thrills, it’s sufficiently satisfying in that regard.

Grade: B-

Warm Bodies

WARM BODIES (Jonathan Levine, 2013)

What’s a hunky, sensitive, undead guy like R (Nicholas Hoult) supposed to do after the apocalypse?  It’s been eight years since a plague left many, including him, as shuffling, brain-hungry vessels called corpses.  When he’s not chowing down on some gray matter, R trudges around the airport, shares knowing grunts with his best friend M (Rob Corddry), and kicks back on the plane he’s made home by getting misty listening to records.  (He’s a vinyl aficionado because it delivers better audio reproduction, natch.)

Like his fellow corpses in WARM BODIES, R is unable to recall his pre-zombie life.  He can make an educated guess about who he was based on his clothes and thinks he knows the first letter of his first name but that’s it.  While zombies have no memories of their own, eating brains isn’t just part of a healthy diet.  It also allows them to absorb their victims’ memories.

While hunting for food R and company encounter human survivors who’ve ventured beyond their walled city to scavenge for pharmaceuticals.  R feasts on the brain of Perry (Dave Franco) and the poor guy’s affectionate thoughts for his girlfriend Julie (Teresa Palmer).  This has a strange effect on R.  He develops feelings for the pretty blonde and chooses to whisk her out of the situation’s immediate danger and into safe hiding on his jet.

At first Julie is understandably anxious about the arrangement, but gradually R’s gentlemanly manner puts her at ease.  She can tell that under his cold, dead skin is a warm and generous heart, metaphorically speaking at least.  He is unwavering in protecting her from the corpses and the boneys, the name given to the faster, animalistic undead who have peeled off their skin.  Julie becomes fond of R, but how can she explain this star-crossed romance to her friends or her dad (John Malkovich), who’s leading the uninfected’s fight against their undead predators?

This zombified version of ROMEO AND JULIET ups the stakes in placing the couple between rungs on the food chain rather than feuding families, but it trivializes the love story because R’s devotion is not genuine.  He might as well have sipped a magic potion in secret, except in this case he’s gobbled some choice cerebrum.  R is having a vicarious experience performing the role of adoring boyfriend to an unknowing Julie, opening up WARM BODIES to the potential satire of idealization in relationships or projected familiarity in the communication age.  Instead writer-director Jonathan Levine reduces the allegorical components to their simplest terms and recycles the love-conquers-all motif in a scenario that doesn’t earn the payoff.

Although based on a novel, WARM BODIES feels like the product of a studio executive who thinks Shakespeare’s play is great except it could use a happy ending.  Oh, and zombies are popular at the moment, so might as well add them too.  The reappropriated plot works out an acceptable revised resolution, even if it’s betraying its primary influence.  The genre trappings are en vogue, perhaps cynically so, but using the undead as a prism for viewing tragic romance could have been a valid creative choice if the protagonists’ connection wasn’t forged how it is, especially because brain consumption in zombie lore doesn’t imply or require memory transference.

The lovers’ names, main struggle, and the balcony scene make the overlays with ROMEO AND JULIET unmistakable, but R and Julie get along like Tarzan and Jane as well.  He saves her from the threats in his untamed environment.  She humanizes the savage in place of serving as a civilizing influence on him.  Whether the Edgar Rice Burroughs parallels are intended or not, combining Shakespeare and zombies creates the expectation that the text will be treated with some irreverence, but to a baffling degree WARM BODIES is played mostly straight.  To Hoult and Palmer’s credit, they don’t look ridiculous articulating the earnest romance between the living and undead.  If only the film around them reflected the humor in it.  

Grade: C

Zombie Strippers

ZOMBIE STRIPPERS (Jay Lee, 2008)

George W. Bush, topping a ticket with Arnold Schwarzenegger, is reelected to a fourth term as President, albeit with some well-placed assistance from faulty Florida voting machines and Supreme Court justice Jenna Bush. Congress is dissolved. American war expansion rivals McDonald's franchises for global ubiquity. Public nudity is declared illegal. What a future. And then there are the undead pole dancers that give ZOMBIE STRIPPERS its title.

With wars being waged on so many fronts, the number of available soldiers is dwindling. To combat the problem scientists develop a chemo virus that will reanimate troops killed in action. This battlefield technology enters the general public when an infected soldier escapes from the research lab to an underground Sartre, Nebraska strip club.

Headlining and Nietzsche-reading stripper Kat (Jenna Jameson) becomes his first victim, but as it goes for more reputable artists, dying is a terrific career move for the topless dancer. Kat's zombie stripper act drives the men crazy and rakes in the money. Seeing how successful it is when the undead can dance, club owner Ian Essko (Robert Englund) chooses to keep her around while many of her fellow strippers also opt for this latest biological enhancement.

As if the title ZOMBIE STRIPPERS isn't enough of a tip-off, lead performances by a porn star and the guy who played Freddy Krueger let it be known that this is Z-grade schlock usually sent straight to video, even though the film is getting a limited theatrical run. True to the title, there's plenty of brain and viscera munching and an abundance of stripping. Neither will get pulses racing despite the second act being almost nonstop stripper routines. The bigger question is whether there's more latex covering skin or silicone underneath it in the film. It's probably a toss-up.

Like so many exploitation movies, the name of the film is more enjoyable and memorable than the actual product. Unsurprisingly ZOMBIE STRIPPERS is poorly acted, written, directed, edited, and lit, but it is so tedious to watch that this might be the first movie that would be improved if Uwe Boll were calling the shots. At least the oft-derided director would have dropped the pretense of shoehorning in political subtext in an attempt to bring class to such a trashy film.

Writer-director-cinematographer Jay Lee strains to make a statement about the Bush administration, but his clumsily integrated rants are as politically and intellectually juvenile as those of an anonymous blog commenter. Zombie movies, particularly George A. Romero's, may function as mirrors of current events, but just because something is an allegory doesn't mean it has anything to say. Using the word "ontological" in dialogue doesn't make it smart either.

ZOMBIE STRIPPERS is also plagued with excessive self-awareness of its campy qualities. When the film isn't annoying with its pseudo-braniac act, it's irritating with the nudge-nudge acknowledgement of its intentional badness.

Forget high art. Assessed on its own terms, ZOMBIE STRIPPERS takes it all off only to reveal nothing's there.

Grade: F