As has always been the tradition at Toronto After Dark, Saturday night belongs to the undead.
2016's edition brought us flesh eaters from the UK and South Korea in
The Rezort and Train To Busan, respectively.
The Rezort came first, and the easiest
way to describe it is Jurassic Park with zombies. Coming a few years
after society has regained control of a worldwide outbreak,
well-to-do types pay to vacation on an island where you can shoot up
shackled zombies. That is, until a zombie-rights hacker shuts down
the system and lets them loose on the inhabitants.
This movie was nothing to write home
about, but considering its juicy setup and lush locale (Majorca) it
would've been really hard to screw it up. The characters were fairly
stock, but the zombies looked great and they got shot up a lot. Like,
a lot. If you're cruising Netflix and looking for something to
scratch that undead itch, you could do a LOT worse, trust me.
Moving onto the real meat, the second
film was Sang-ho Yeon's Train To Busan. I actually watched this a few
months ago when it played a limited run here, but I had no qualms
about seeing it again at TAD, as it's a super fun ride. It's
basically about a zombie outbreak making its way onto a train
travelling from Seoul to Busan. If you dig zombie movies, this has
basically everything you'd want and once that train leaves the
station, it doesn't let up.
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Yoo Gong in Train To Busan. |
With its confined spaces, I thought the
unique setting of the commuter train added a layer of tension that
worked really well. And you're in luck if you like your zombies fast, as these fuckers are bad-ass. Going from still to feral death machines in
mere seconds, I really liked the crunching and kinetic physicality of this particular brand of ghoul. With some digital assistance there were some really
striking images of mass numbers tearing towards their prey, and fortunately never looked as cartoony as it did in World War Z.
More importantly, and frankly
impressively, Train To Busan featured an unusually high number of likable
characters to root for. The comic timing and dialogue was on point and there were some exchanges that were funny and touching in equal
measure. You can tell you've won over an audience, when there are
audible gasps and exclamations when people start falling to the
zombie horde. Utilizing a really terrific cast, most notably
Dong-seok Ma, Yu-mi Jeong and Kim (damn that kid can cry), Yeon was
really able to tug at the heartstrings.
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Dong-seok Ma in Train To Busan. |
Yeon (in this as well
as Seoul Station, his other project this year) also injected some
social commentary into his zombie tale, as class struggle and
paranoia were ever present. His message was more prevalent in Station (and its homeless population metaphor) but Yeon didn't shy away
from humanity's uglier attributes here either.
This is a must watch in my opinion. It
delivered on its premise and built tension not only from its
snarling antagonists, but also the constant endangerment of characters we had
grown to like. All aboard Train To Busan!
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