Train to Busan (2016) — "At a time like this, only watch out for yourself."

Wearying. Wait, you an everybody sold? You tell us a question a little pologically to join that. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I am your host, Christashue, and I am joined by one good friend and well another who is an an aficionado as a self label doctor Pearl Mutter, all the way from Texas Tech joining me once again.

Hello Chris. She is a K drama anthropologist, which I think is a very good way of putting it, especially if you don't grow up in Korea and it's not a form of media that you're watching all the time. Miranda is here to join us to talk about Train Sony. Chris, thanks for having me. Oh, you're welcome.

Well, I I don't watch a lot of K drama, So before we talk about Trained to Booston, which is a K action horror film that seemingly made it quite across to the United States in a rabid, big way. Talk about it, but tell me a little bit about why K drama because that's very specific. It's a very specific thing, especially for Western audiences to be kind of getting in. Yeah, that's a great question. K dramas have a really specific aesthetic.

They started way back as a miniseries and sort of soaps just like we had here, Just like our grandmothers would watch these serial dramas that were really intense and had a lot of like intercosal relationships, and they grew into this industry that has spanned worldwide. Even if you are not interested in K dramas or Korean culture, you know who BTS is, and you have probably heard of at least one Cooeen and drama that's been popular at least here with Western audiences. For such a small country, it's really remarkable that they have suja booming entertainment industry specifically for media, for movies and TV shows. So, speaking as someone who's seen a lot of romance specific genre K dramas, because that's mostly what they're centered around, I can definitely say that there's tropes and things that often show up that a very specific audience enjoys and can appreciate, even if you see it over and over again, it's something that you always can enjoy, even if you're seeing the same kinds of characters and the same kind of love story.

There are just probably like at this point, hundreds of thousands of Quean dramas where you can sort of watch the same love story unfold over and over again. That's really appealing to people who watch it for just pure enjoyment. But then there's also something as the closest analogue. I mean, I know you said soap operas in American culture, but I mean something what would be something more contemporary would it be? I mean, it sounds somewhat And this is not to be dismissive at all, because this is a massive industry.

It sounds in a way like Hallmark. It's kind of in terms of like trope expectations in the way they're received by the audience. There are people that outside to it look at it and go, well, that's quaint and kind of kitchy and saccharin, but the people that watch it don't care. And I mean, I'm is it somewhat in that same. Vein I would say there are definitely k dramas that are created for that particular audience.

But it has changed in the same way that, like our early two thousands, shows feature a lot of things that we would now consider inappropriate, a lot of kinds of relationships and a lot of phobias that now Netflix or any other streaming service would absolutely not approve of having on their family friendly show. And again, it's just like shows here where there's many different genres and approaches that they take to these stories. So I would say, yeah, some of it is kitchy and some of it is hallmarky, but some of it can be just as violent as Western You know, trainabis as an excellent example as Western media because it's a really fast evolving industry that's changing as the country is changing.

So, as you mentioned, we are going to be talking about Trained to Boos on which if you've listened to episodes of my show that feature Doctor pearl Mutter, you'll know that he's not necessarily a fan of horror movies at least well not the Witch anyways, from the sound of it. So I'm I'm actually glad that you're on this episode, Doctor pearl Mutter, because I think that this movie is a great kind of bridging of the gap between horror action and Miranda to your point, drama, like a lot of it, like to the point of I mean again, I wouldn't say maud Len or Sacherin, but it's definitely of a tone and type that is very specific and aimed in a very specific direction and very successful for what it's doing.

But on this episode of the Culture Cast, we are going to be talking about twenty sixteens Trained to Busan. So the film is directed by Young Song Ho. It stars Gong you Jung You Me and nia Ma Dong Siolk and the film is about a father and daughter on a train together going to Boossan and then the zombie I wouldn't say apocalypse happens, but a zombie infection begins in the country of South Korea and the worst and best of humanity happens all at the same time. It's a lot, it's it's a fun movie. Maybe I don't know how.

Yeah, I don't know if it's fun. I think it's a movie, and I think it's a movie that is well, we'll talk about it, but uh, Miranda, I'm gonna kick it to you first. And then doctor promoter why Trained to Bouson kind of already alluded to a but why specifically This movie. Was extremely popular both here and in Korea, and it's easy to see why because it's very exciting. They do a great job of keeping the tension up the whole time.

It's unique because it's it's on a train so not only are they keeping a fast paced like within the narrative, but they're literally keeping a fast pace because they're on a speeding vehicle. And it also has a really start studied cast. So Gong You is a very famous actor. He was in Squid Games, he was in Guardian the Great and Milany God, which are too extremely famous Korean pieces of media that I've come out within the last ten years. And Ma Dong Suk, who is another extremely popular actor who's usually in action films, you know, just because of his physique, and he's sort of he's sort of like the rock.

He plays the same guy every time, but he's you know, he's an incredible actor. He's really funny. Most of the jokes in the film. You'll be talking about how the jokes are kind of few and far between. It's mostly tense drama, but most of the jokes were you know, from him, right, And that's that's a character that he plays in almost every single piece of media that he's in.

So it was it was really set up for success. And then this director also, i think, utilized a lot of things that are difficult to employ in like in a Western movie. For one, there's no guns. Nobody ever fires a gun. The military have guns, but none of our characters do.

There's not a single civilian that has like an automatic weapon, and I think that makes it much more exciting. They mostly use baseball bats or their fasts, and I think it's much more exciting to watch somebody hit a zombie in the face with a bat than it is to just watch them shoot them from farther away. It's a level of snakes you can't get with with guns. Yeah, no, and yeah, no, it's I hadn't thought about that, but it is. Yeah, okay, yeah.

I think it makes a big difference to the kind of weapons that you're using. And also there's a heart to the story. There's you know, very very tender scenes between many of the characters, not just the father and daughter. It establishes really really realistic and frankly like super moving to the point of tears by the end of the movie, when we've we've you know, spoiler, we've lost some people. Along the way.

Every every element of it is really well bad whilse There's just enough action and there's just enough how it felt scenes that the whole movie is is entertaining all the way through because it never it never lets up, like there's always there's always something going on, whether that be the characters talking to each other, fighting off zombies or whatever. But I think ultimately it's really interesting because the director understands how human relationships work, and he understands how to connect his characters to the audience, so we actually care if they live or die, which is one of the most important things when you have a film like this. And it's rare in I mean it's rare in horror period, regardless of who's making them, be it a Korean director or an American director.

To get your audience to resonate with the people in the movie is not I mean, it's not something a lot of horror directors care about because they look at it from the other direction, with killer or the kills are more important, not the people being killed. And that's the way so many horror movies have no lasting power at all, is because there's nothing for the audience to really connect with other than effects, which is fine, but those are not as few and far between as they used to be. Doctor Perlmutter, I'm very curious what did you think of training to busan Well, it surprised me because I loved it. I really I had. Watched zombie movies in the past, or Walking Dead type television shows.

Certainly I'm old enough to have watched like the original Night of the Living Dead, not in a theater, but like you know, maybe ten years after it was made. And I think it was. About season seven of The Walking Dead that I said, Okay, that's it. I'm done. I will never watch another zombie movie again.

I was so mad at some of the decisions, including some of the characters they killed off. I think, honestly purely for financial reasons in the TV show The Walking Dead, that I just said, I don't have to sit through this now. On the other hand, I have been writing probably my whole academic career about violence in media, and I wore criminal violence, and I'm interested in that as a top So I'm always curious at how different cultures, different directors, different storytelling lenses approach seeing exponential violence, like you know, people being killed, but in the worst possible way. So I think this film does violence in a really creative way. I mean, again, I'm not a lover of horror and violence, but like I sat through this every minute, I never checked my phone.

I never thought there was a scene that could have been cut. Actually, that's the second point, is that it's such a taut film. As Miranda was saying, is that what would you cut out? I couldn't think of a scene that they could have dropped in this movie. Everything made sense in a sequence, and they kept coming up with sort of new ways for the zombies to be threatening, I mean, new positions for there the protagonists to get themselves in trouble.

And then going back to something you said about CGI, this is such a well executed film. I think I looked it up, and I mean the budget is was I don't okay, Yeah, I have a note here what the budget was, and I guess this is an American dollars, Yeah, eight point five million dollars. And I was. Thinking World War Z, remembering if anybody except me watch World War Z, there was a scene in Jerusalem where the zombies are climbing up a wall, right, and it was so badly done. And this like two hundred and fifty million dollar movie or whatever the heck could cost.

The zombies all looked like blurry CGI. And then there is a there's a miniature version of this, and where the zombies are climbing trying to climb on a moving train, and every individual zombie looked actuated. And I don't know to this day whether it was like incredibly well directed extras and stunt people or or it was cgi. It just looked so good. There's a crowd scene where the soldiers who have been converted to zombiesm fall through a glass door and run.

And again every single zombie when you freeze frame looks like it's an individual who's become a zombie. And then the zombies on the train again, they're all individual. It's so well executed, with a budget that must have been like a rounding air or the lunch budget of World War Z. And I just was so impressed by that. And then lastly, picking up on something Miranda said, I teach a global communication class, and maybe and I've did teaching a version of this class for thirty five years, and maybe thirty five years ago I would have talked about American cultural dominance and hegemony, so like that people in Tanzania and Ecuador and Korea would be watching American box office Jaws and Star Wars, but we wouldn't be watching too many of those, in fact, foreign films like a character with Sawa Sarai movies or ingmar Bergmann, you know, relationship movies.

We're sort of a specialty thing like only like certain audiences watch them. So now we live in this multipolar cultural world. There's a Balywood, but there's you know, a solely wood. I mean the Korea. This, as Miranda said, this tiny country, tiny population, tiny geography, has this outsized cultural footprint where I'd say one hundred percent by Generation Z and now Generation Alpha and maybe some early millennial students are pretty well aware of what's going on in the world of k anything.

That's a remarkable phenomenon itself, and this movie is just a perfect example of that. When I was in college so to date myself, when I was in college in the late two thousands, I couldn't remember anybody being into anything culturally Asian other than maybe anime, manga something to that extent. And it's so I think for someone who is a fan of Korean culture, I think, just broadly, I think it's really refra rushing to see to your point, both at your points that Korean culture is kind of not only being given its due but also really being allowed to flourish in a way that doesn't feel forced. I mean, the I remember when Si was the first Korean artist most Americans had ever heard. That is so, I mean, he's a great artist.

I mean what's funny is like his best music never made it to the side of the world. It pretty much stayed in Korea. But it's really funny that that was kind of one of the early points of Korean culture that the world was exposed to, and then within a couple of years it was snow piercer and trained to Boo Son and BTS. And it's like, Okay, now it's not just it's not just a blip on the radar, it's a full fledged thing that is actually Randa to your point, taken over to the point where it is popular every Korea. I think, I personally think Korean culture and I think both put it pretty aptly.

Korean culture is rather popular I think globals, which is again to go back to what you've both already said for a country that does have such a small footprint and has had so many issues in the past globally with possible you know, political issues and you know, socioeconomic issues due to the country north of South Korea. It's I don't know, I'm glad to see that Korea is making a reason for the world to be invested in it as a country. And media export is like, you know, one of the easiest ways to do that, especially especially in the day and age of streaming, where you know, pretty democratic to put things on the internet. Because, if memory serves, the reason size video got so famous was YouTube, which is the ultimate democratic video platform.

As far as I'm concerned for good and for bad, but Korean culture, I would say the last ten ten years has been pretty big for the influx of Korean culture into American culture, Western culture, as it were. That's definitely true. I think a part of that is how stylized it is. There's it's very specific. I mean, there's there's waves of different aesthetics in k pop or the types of kate armis that are being released, but they're all really curated.

I think that's part of the appeal is how professional everything is specifically en right, Yeah. San And as someone who's been to South Korea and Tokyo Soul was cleaner than Tokyo like which as as most people who go to Tokyo always comment Tokyo is a very clean place. I can tell you soul even cleaner like the Korean culture. I just I respect their cleanliness and attention efficiency. Yeah, unlike anything else, like as close to the Japanese as any culture is.

Yeah, I definitely agree. I think especially in movies like like trying to busson what we were talking about before, with the tightness of the narrative, how there's like doctor promoter said, there's just nothing that you can cut. I think that's pretty levolent throughout the entire K drama industry. I think that they're very good about creating a narrative and sticking to it. I have a question on that you mentioned about the sort of esthetic of everything clean, but also like everything in its proper place.

Like the Korean movies I've seen, which are K comedy or K drama, part of the plot is driven by the sort of prescribed relationships people have, maybe like elders and young people and people dating or something like that. And this is a movie, of course about total mayhem and chaos, and so I thought maybe it even has more power to a Korean audience or to people who have watched a lot of Korean movies that this is so. I mean, in a typical KK drama or K comedy, correct me, Randa or explained to me, that would be a little bit of chaos, like two young people meet and they go against the sort of prescribed rules, and there's a little bit of breaking of the rules. But in this film, like everything has gone wrong, like everything's filthy, everything is broken, everything's blowing up, everything is being rubble, isn't I mean, you wouldn't see a lot of rubble in the street, you know.

By the way, just in historical context, we have to remember that this is a country which was completely destroyed in the war in the nineteen fifty nineteen fifty three of the Korean Civil War. The Korean War just devastated in the same way that you'd see some towns in Japan and Europe during World War two. And subject especially South Korea and North Korea are both incredibly poor countries, and so Korea is assent to being this this first world country where it's just assumed that their technology is always like three or four years ahead of ours. That's just a fascinating thing to see. But I'm sort of curious about this idea of disorder, and this film like breaking up what we usually expect from visually and behaviorally a Korean film.

I've only ever seen one other Korean horror well, I guess two. One of them is gong JOm Haunted Asylum, which doesn't really count. I mean it counts but a dozen in terms of chaos because where that movie ends up going, I think is very different. The other film that I've seen is The Host, and that movie still has that very not regimented, but very specific feel to it. It feels less chaotic than this movie.

This movie has a feel to it that, like I have not felt with Korean films before, maybe outside of The Chaser, which is one of the other Korean films I've seen, but that one again kind of leans more into horror and gore and serial killers, so it's kind of that's a little bit more of the point. But this movie is to your point, doctor pearl Mutter, just like there's it's chaos throughout, there's momentary lulls, but the momentary lulls, it doesn't even in those times. They have to figure out a way to make those lulls feel like not a lull, especially you know when you have a horde of zombies pressing up against a glass door in the back. Yeah, there's I think there's a problem in action movies, and I do see it in this one where the characters are cleaner than they should be.

Everybody's hair is still like poofed and curled, and you know, you can tell people still have makeup on, and I understand you want your actors to still look attractive. They do a pretty good job of roughing up the characters in this movie, but I still think they're pretty Nobody has any cuts, nobody has any scars. It's a pretty big deal whenever, or at least from what I've seen in KA dramas, of character ever gets cut on the face or anywhere else on my box. I mean they've got scars of like their hands, but like their faces are just like a little dab of blood, right. They're pretty pristine still, because that's important to Koreans to have clean often you know, lighter skin.

So in k dramas you'll often see like if somebody gets a cut on their face, it's a really big deal, like more so than it would be in one of our shows. And I don't I think this movie is still guilty of out of everybody would be a little more tussled up, like the Sue on you know's she's the kid, so she escapes some of it. I still think she would be grimier than she is. And the pregnant woman whose name I don't remember. You know, her face is pretty clear, but I still think she would be a lot like sweatier and grosser than she's depicted.

And the homeless guy is not that yeah standards, Yeah, I actually for Santa Monica. That's about it. Yeah, he could just walk into any coffee shop here, I feel like, and get away with it. Yeah, he's not that grimy. He was also a really interesting character.

I liked that he wasn't evil. I liked that he also sacrificed himself in the end. He was this you kind of really didn't know what his deal was. He was just tagging along. He wasn't connected to any of the other characters, but he got his moment.

He got to be a great guy in the end. And I like the bait and switch at the beginning of the movie as well, where you think it's going to be him that's the one who infects everyone, and then it turns out it's actually just this like young teenage girl instead, which I like, I was gonna say, like, I really enjoyed the movie. I had never seen it before I had heard about it, as I'm sure anyone who watches a fair amount of horror movies and is open to watching, what you know, non Western films, because my favorite cinema outside of well, my favorite cinema is probably Indian cinema still because the people that watch those movies actually care about going to the movie theaters. That's still an experience that matters, and so the people that make the movies are still I don't know, it just feels they feel invested for a different reason.

And it's weird because the Korean films that I've seen, this one was not one that I searched out, and I think it's actually for a similar reason to Doctor Pearlmutter, which is I'm kind of burned out by zombies, and it's not just the walking dead of it all, it's just kind of the all of it all. Like I would say, the most important zombie movie for me growing up was Sean of the Dead. It hit me at the right time, it had the right notes, it was speaking to me as someone who is a lifelong film lover and sits and watches movies all the time, like it's made by someone who watches about zombies and horror and other things. And this movie felt the same way that Sean of the Dead did, like it didn't feel it felt like a zombie movie, but the zombies were.

Ultimately, the zombies aren't the important part of this movie. The zombies are. You know, this just happens to be a movie about zombies on a train, but it's really about a group of people trying to survive together on a train and a dad trying to make good with the show that he actually cared. And that to me is very Sean of the Dead. It's very like putting the people before the panic, putting the actual human emotions at the core of it, and letting the fact that these are real characters breathe, and then putting then forcing them to have to deal with.

In both of these films cases zombie and this film hit me the same way Sean of the Dead did, where it's like, Okay, I feel like I've seen a zombie movie that for the first time in as Shna the Dead came out in like two thousand and four. So for the first time since something like Shanna the Dead, I feel like I'm seeing a zombie movie that actually doesn't care that it's a zombie movie, and it actually like lives that all the way to the end of the movie, where we almost have a Night of the Living Dead esque ending, where I was like, man, they're just gonna kill them, It's just gonna happen. I'm ninety nine percent convinced that we're just gonna have a Night of Living Dead end, And if they had done that, I actually would have been like, Okay, like it's completely earned that ending.

It earns the happy ending, but it totally could have earned like a one hundred percent downer of an ending the way Night of the Living Dead does, because the themes of the movie are not about the zombies. They're about how terrible human beings are to one another, and it's just by the grace of human beings being decent to one another winning out in the end that the two surviving characters don't die. And again, that's just very Night of the Living Dead Shanna the Dead movies. I care about the characters, not the zombies. And George Romero got that you know better than anybody in terms of putting the humans before the zombies.

And I don't know, like I think the Walking Dead was there at one point. I think it lost its way long ago, but it was there at one point when it was at its best. That's what it was about. And to your point, doctor Promutter, I won't hate watch it anymore, but i'll and I really don't even watch zombie movies anymore because Poe is Sean to the Dead and its success and Walking Dead, there was just so much zombie stuff all the time that I stopped caring and this unfortunately got lost in that shuffle, and it's unfortunate that it did, because this movie is really good. Like obviously I'm not saying any sort of like dow thing, we're watching it and talking about it because it's of the quality of the filmmaking.

But this movie's it lives up to what I Well, yeah. I obviously agree with that, especially about having a heart to the story is the most important part of the story. I definitely agree with the themes about it's showing the worst of humanity and how willing we are sacrifice each other and the very best and the nature of relationships where you're willing to laid on your life for somebody else or in some cases a complete stranger, and it's the ultimate sacrifice that you can make, especially for somebody that you just met a couple hours ago. But also even though the heart of the story being the relationships is what makes the movie great, as you said, I think the zombies are still equally important.

Like the type of zombie and how they're characterized. These zombies are really interesting. They're really scary because they're fast zombies and they're not trundling along Walking Dead zombies. I don't know if they were every fast zombies and the Walking Dead I never watched the series, but they're like zombie Land zombies. I mean, they're fully capable of getting you.

Yes, yeah, and they seem to be indestructible too. There's sad scene where they fall off of a helicopter and land on concrete, presumably breaking every bone in their body, and then they just get up and run around and they're also I think it's interesting how they they all have this specific character. It seems as if they were sort of trained. I think they did a really good job with the with these extras of having them move in a specific way, because they all seem to lead with their mouths. They're kind of Naruto running towards the main characters with their arms are behind them, and they're trying to get the mouths as close as possible to the main characters.

I thought that that was really interesting. I've watched this movie several times and I only really noticed it on this last We watch how they all move the same way teeth first, as if like whatever whatever this virus is is obviously making them do that specifically to spread. Yeah, the choreography is astonishing to me. I mean, I obviously it's a professional movie. You sort of expect the stunt people to do what they're told to do.

But it was almost like I was watching like the ballet in New York, which I don't do. So I'm creating an analogy that I've never seen, but I would expect that if I went to a professional ballet and people were dancing, or going back to K pop, you know, you see a K pop video where there's like fifty dancers and they're all in sync. In fact, Miranda didn't this sort of remind some of the sequences, not in a funny way, not in a self depth silly, super silly way. Some of the sequences felt like the choreographer from a K pop video came over and positively gave him advice on how do you get fifty people to be in sync like they the zombie? Whatever it is, right, we're told some by the way, we're told just enough and not too much to what's relevant to the plot.

There's no thank god, there's no cutaway to a bunch of scientists talking about, well, you know, I think the virus or the leak came and it did this. No, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Thanksfully, Get the Dead, Shawn of the Dead. I think put the nail in that coffin by having every every possible scenario be present jokingly in the first fifteen minutes of that movie, where it's animals, a meteorite, a satellite, and then you know, one other thing, and it's like, okay, it does it? Like it?

It stopped mattering, like I'm don't belabor the point. But then there's a prequel animated film that talks about it. So it was like, but you know, at the end of the day, cool, They still they got to make money somehow, you know, and then they're going to make a what is it? They already made a sequel to this movie, and then they're going to make a American reboot, which I both know. Yeah, Like, just god, why I actually watched this is a good example of that, right, animad Miranda and you could talk to Avouch.

This is why this movie was accessible. I don't see why an American audience couldn't have watched this movie and enjoyed it. I don't see why we have to have The Rock do. This, right, the Rock and Kevin Hart in Trained to New York. Like they could do on the Subway.

I think that would make a kind of interesting movie. They would have to change some things. They would have to be you know, I can't just repeat the story they have to. I mean, if nobody's seen Trained to boost On, you can you can just repeat whatever you want. I mean.

That's the sad thing is like I'm such an advocate for watching inter national cinema that I'm not like I'm waiting for the Train to boost On remakes so people in America will have seen it. To your point, doctor Promoter, It's like, at this point, there's no reason to not just watch it. You can rent it for four dollars on Prime Video. People are more app to rent I don't know, Mandalorian and Grogu probably than they would be to watch this movie. And it's like, Okay, I get it, that's fair, but I don't know.

I think, and again I always kind of go back to this bemoanment of people being unwilling to read while they watch movies. But I also think, you know, a movie that requires subtitles will always be something that loses a percentage of the population, which is unfair because that should not be a stumbling block in this day and age. It really should. I know why it's not because you actually have to pay attention to the movie and you can't just do something else. It used to be people were too lazy, and now I just chalk it up to people don't actually want to look up at what they're doing.

They want to look at something else, And okay, but then nothing you watch is going to be worth anything, which is why we live in a hell scape of a Netflix second screen experience where we got to remind the audience the stranger things what happened in the last fifteen minutes by saying it every five minutes, Like what, Okay, I don't need a remake of this movie because you could just watch this movie. Just like k pop doesn't need to exist in America. K pop just needs to exist as its own thing. And you just like you don't have you don't have CA. Well, I guess you do have some K pop artists coming over here and doing American like American mus like a music with American artists, or like English language music.

But I don't think it would be as popular. I just like I inherently don't think it would be as popular. I just don't think it's as It's like they don't ask Justin Bieber to go sing baby in French, like they know who the audience who's going to consume this primarily is. I think this movie is. I'm glad this movie was successful outside of Korea because there are still not enough Korean movies that have been successful in the United States.

I think a horror is a very easy way to get people outside of the States interested, because horror fans are always looking for the next best horror movie that nobody has heard of, and this one kind of falls right into that camp of a low budget Korean horror zombie film that is way better than ninety nine percent of the zombie movies that have come out in the last twenty years. You definitely spent money where it mattered. Like we were talking about the choreography, They got some really really stellar, very popular actors. They have these beautiful sets. I maybe it maybe it was cheaper to shoot on a train.

I mean, they're in a train car for maybe like half of the film. And we're impressive because they're shooting on a train. All that choreography that y'all have talked about is ten times more impressive because they're executing it in a smaller space. Like it's infinitely more impressive then, you know. I mean, again, they can do things out in the open, but the fact that it looks so good and seamless and expertly crafted on a moving train.

But again, just the ramifications of shooting in his face like that and it being so convincing and well done is like, that's even more impressive. Would say. Movies on trains, though, tend to all fall into the same camp for me, which is there are some good ones, there are some bad ones, and then there's some that are so good they can have the train stop and people get off of it and then they can get on another train. And this is one of those movies, because that's kind of the problem with a movie where people are all on a moving vehicle, is what happens when the vehicle stops. Is at the end of the movie, or is at the end of the conflict.

I mean, doctor Pearl Mutter and I know one another because of the steven Sagall films and the steven Sagall podcast I used to do. And one of his more famous movies is Under Siege Too, which takes place on it and when that train stops, it's just like, wait a second, what are the stakes here? And I love that this movie. The steaks are the zombies are the stakes. It's like the moving train is part of the stakes, but because there zombies are the ever present threat, it makes it feel so much more like a ever forward moving film, like the momentum carries the film forward.

And it's not just because of the train, it's also because of the zomb. Also the feeling of being trapped. They're so and they're in such close contact with the zombies the whole time. I mean, though, just on the other side of a door, so and the door is I can't tell if it's made of plastical glass because when it breaks, it's like a glass. It shadows like a glass, but when they're banging on it, it's it bends like plastic, So I can't tell what that material is made out of.

But it's even more exciting because you know they're hiding in a bathroom or on top of those ledges for your suitcases, and it's it's very frightening to have your main characters be right next to those creatures, just like an arm's length away. I thought that was very clever. That was probably the scene that whoever is trying to remake the movie saw and was like, this is it. This is this is the scene where they're crawling in the the luggage rack, where it's like, this is the scene. This is the scene that people will remember because yeah, it's memorable in a way that things aren't.

Don't you think that? Like that was when I saw that scene. Let's tell people who haven't seen the movie, we're not really spoiling this movie. By the way, You're going to get the same experience if you haven't seen it. What after listening to this podcast, But like there's a moment where they there's about seventeen moments where they have to get like ten feet.

That's what's so exciting, right, Their objective is to get ten feet in distance, but there happened to be some human eating zombies in the way, right. And they never repeat themselves. They never come up with the same solution twice. It's so clever. And then this one time, yeah, they think, oh, we will crawl now.

Now think about this, how many how many times? I go back to the original Alien and Aliens movie where the alien or aliens goes into ducts, you know, and that's been repeated so many thousand times, where humans are ready for the aliens in like the regular space and oh they're coming out of the ducts or they're coming out of like you know, but the air conditioning or something like that. Well, here the humans to fool. The monsters are crawling along the luggage rack. And I haven't seen that before.

I was really thinking, like all the zombie movies I've seen, or all the you know, action on a train movies, I remember spying movies on a train or you know, thriller movies on a train. Nobody ever did that before. And it was they whoever wrote this movie, whoever the people who created this movie in did something really beautiful and intelligent. Is they sat They probably went on a train, right and they stood there and they go like, okay, I have to get ten feet past zombies. What are my choices?

And they refuw to compromise and just have the same thing happen every time. So I just thought that was so clever. And I love that there's a conceit as well that the zombies can't see in the dark, so they also have I mean, there's again to go back to the idea of like there's not a lot of mythology in where did the zombies come from? Or how long does the infection take? Or what is what you know what happens or what is the you know like you said no cutaway to scientists And and I think the other thing that's very smart about the usage of the space and the zombies is this is not one of those you get bit and five hours later you become zombie.

This is you get bit and you become a zombie if you're not a main character, seemingly instantaneously. If you're a main character, they give you like another minute to kind of judge, judge yourself or be judged by your mental headspace. I think for me, the constant changing of the way that they get around the zombies and the way that they use that space, it's just it speaks to someone who, like you said, doctor Permutter, understands if you do the same thing over and over again, we're not really being entertaining. We're just kind of just giving the audience the same thing and expecting them to do something different with it. And this movie shockingly doesn't retread any sort of like tread you know, trodden ground at all, which again, for a movie like this on a train, it's like this is the first movie that's ever taken place on a train, and especially not the first action movie.

And I would say this is more of a I mean, yes, it is a zombie movie and there are horror elements, but I'm not sure that this is I mean, it is a horror movie, but it's also an action movie. Like I wouldn't say this movie is overly gross, like we don't have like eyeballs popping out and heads being chopped off, like we do see people getting eaten. But then to Miranda's point, they look pretty normal after they become zombies. Their eyes are white and their teeth are gnashing, but they don't look like they're not gross looking. If this was an American film, they'd beat you know, arms hanging off or jog one or heads flit open and and this is just like kind of look like people with whited out contacts and blood capsules in their mouths, which is fine, I think again, it just goes to the point of like it makes them scarier that they have this erratic behavior and this like really specific choreography that makes them scarier than just you know, them being gory or you know, intentionally gross, which to go to the other Korean films that I've seen, The Chaser is a lot more graphic than this film, and The Host.

I think The Host is about as graphic as this film is in terms of it's more of like a monster movie, not a zombie movie. But I mean, I was impressed by how much they kind of held back for it being a zombie movie with the gore, Like really, it's not I have Sean of the Dead is kind of gorrier in a lot of ways, like they show dismemberment and shann of the dead more than they ever show dismemberment or anything like that. In this one, I feel like the low hanging fruit in zombie movies or any kind of like horror war movie where people are getting sliced up or shot at is showing somebody's intestines hanging out. Don't people? They love that for shock value, that's in so many of these movies, and they never do that.

I think the worst thing we see is somebody with a blood filled mouth, or one zombie has his arm broken and it's like way behind his head. It's never too egregious. That's something else I appreciate, because they don't really need that. They're scary enough as is. And I also really appreciated how then it wasn't blocked down by the characters grappling with the morality of killing them.

Oh, you know, there's still people, and you know we have to preserve them if we can. They never, really, nobody ever seems to question that, which I applaud. I think if you have a long running television series and you have a character who's like interested in that and who who thinks that they can be saved, that can be kind of interesting plot point. But I hate it when that's introduced in movies and zombie movies, where I think it's just kind of boring. I think it's it's it slows down the plot to have people trying to question whether or not it's okay to kill the zombies.

I think that they should just you know, barrel through the like they did, and focus on keeping the people who are alive alive. Well, to your point from before, do they actually kill any of the zombies, I'm not sure. Like the zombies seem in a very Return of the Living Dead way, like rather indestructible. I mean to your point of them falling out of a helicopter and then just getting right up and just running around and running at the camera, so they seem of singular focus, which I mean again is scary. I mean, in Return of the Living Dead, it's you know, brains, brains, brains, So we don't get that in this movie, they're not I don't know, they don't seem to be eating people.

They just seem to be biting people and turning them into zombies, don't. I don't know. I have I personally, I know that there is a sequel and a prequel to this. I don't have any interest in watching either of them because I like that, like you said, doctor Perlmutter, there's enough without being too much, without over explaining everything and force feeding me what I should think, Like you know, we see the deer at the beginning of the movie, and that's enough, Like you know, that is more than an enough for me to understand that there's been some sort of outbreak of something I don't need to know what and over explaining and to your point, Miranda, then having people like oh, that's my mom, Like at this point, even the characters in these narratives would have seen a zombie movie, they would know what zombies are.

Like that's the problem with with, you know, creating fiction in this day and age is if you've said something in twenties twenty six, people have heard of zombies. Maybe the only people that haven't heard of what a zombie is, like the bushmen of the Kalahari. Like, I don't know how you would make a zombie movie in twenty twenty six and have the scene of like, well we can still save them when that scene is synonymous with zombie fiction of any kind, like it if if you know a zombie movie and it's a lazy zombie movie that is going to be one of the trope. It kind of always is, and this movie, when the characters get bitten, it's just very matter of fact, and because there's not a lot of time in between when they get bitten and when they turn, which again I think is one of the smarter things the film does.

We don't get that hemming and haulling. It's just cut out of the movie intentionally. You can't have a scene where someone says we need to save them when from bite to turning is like a minute. That's just not a possibility. And I think for someone to do that with the zombie narrative is really smart because it robs it of a lot of the tropes that, in my opinion and might agree with Miranda, are very lazy.

And I think the best kind of fiction that's worth sharing with other people or talking about at length is not lazy, because there's even things that are failures tend to not be lazy. They're just making choices that maybe don't resonate with people. But I've seen plenty of bad movies that make a lot of really interesting choices that aren't lazy choices. But I've seen plenty of okay movies that make a lot of really lazy choices, and I'm just you know, I'm not here for in anymore. Randy.

I had a question for you. When I first watched this. One of the things I was looking for was to talk about in class, talk with my students about this action or maybe some discussion makes sense only in ex cultural set. Thing like sometimes somebody I know who's from another country, so you know, I watched this American movie, or I'll see this on Reddit. I just watched this American movie, and I can understand why this person did this, and it's something that's an American cultural trait or behavior was But this movie, it seemed to me like I understood what people were doing.

I didn't need to have a Korean cultural translator next to me. Did you feel that way? Absolutely? There was. I can kind of see why they wanted to make like an American remake of this, because it really is conducive to just taking this narrative and bringing in English actors.

There's nothing really that the average Westerner or really anybody from any other country probably would be confused about. Just there are many archetypes, meaning you know, like a dad who's not paying attention to his daughter's life and two high schoolers who are in love. That are just kind of universal in probably most media industries, in most countries, they just have developed, either through influence from other countries industries, or just from the way humans are just human nature, the way we interact with each other. I really don't think that there is any culture shock in the movie other than again, like the cleanliness of the train station and. The cleanliness of the homeless man.

Maybe yeah, I or mess in general. I would ask you, Miranda, because as someone who watches a lot of k dramas, for me, the thing that I've noticed with the Indian cinema that I've watched where the cultural kind of misses come in are comedies, because the humor. There is a lot of humor in cultural and social mores that are specific to you know, Indian culture or like Doctor Pearl Matter, my American culture or Korean culture. That's why I honestly stay away from foreign language comedies because those tend to be the hardest ones not to understand, but to appreciate. As a non speaker of the language and a non understan a non I'm not even non understand not understanding the culture as much as just not having grown up in that culture and having been kind of raised in it in a way where it's kind of second nature.

There are plenty of people that understand, you know, oh, you know, there's you know, let's say, you know, Mexican culture. Recently, Hispanic culture has become very you know, like I think it's kind of made more forays into you know, American culture, with you know, certain things becoming more popular or becoming more I guess well known, but that there's still a lot of like things even from those kind of cultures where it's just there's a miss on what I know and what someone else knows, and it's just I just wasn't raised around it or I'm not aware of it, and that's I don't watch Indian comedies. I really don't watch a lot of foreign comedies because a lot of the comedy is just lost on me as a Westerner because it's just culturally and socially specific.

And I don't know, I haven't watched a lot of Korean comedies, but I'm curious if it's the same way if you notice that in the Korean dramas, or if they're kind of similar to this, and that they kind of stay more in a for everyone who's watching it anywhere kind of gang. That's an interesting question. Sometimes there's Korean proverbs something from their history that they would reference, Like we would say, you know, a boat in hand is worth two in a bush, and a queen person would be like, I don't know what you're talking about. That. There's some stuff like that that's just you know, phrases that you grew up with or depending on you know, where you grew up, where your district was, and what part of the country you grew up.

And again, I don't think trying to Bussan had any any any jokes that weren't accessible, like there were there were some funny cute moments, like the the song that was playing on moducs Songs Sucks Phone when they were distracting the zombies and our main character called it cringey. That's just like a funny cute moment. And there was this one, the one small moment that I loved where he calls his he asks his his analysts subordinate analyst Kim when they're in the office at the beginning of the movie, if he's one of the Lemmings, and I wonder if that was a reference, like a Korean phrase. I don't think it is. But later in the movie, if you pay attention, you notice he's he's calling this analyst and he has a folder of contacts of assumably his subordinates, and the folder is titled Lemmings, which I thought was just such a cute moment, and again I think transcends every every culture of like, it's interesting that, you know, both our countries have this idea of like Lemmings being these stupid creatures, which originated in that Disney documentary which was faked.

Yeah, careful, careful, he's gonna come for your podcast. That's fine, you know what, Let them because it's that's true. But the truth is the horrifying truth. It is weird that that's still a thing that's being used in HAD twenty sixteen. Is only ten years ago.

It doesn't feel fat. It was just so it was just such a funny, cute, little in joke, and we wouldn't have noticed it if there wouldn't have been a captioning for the screen for the what was being said on the phone, because there was in Korean. So I think that's it's really important to have captioning for even written stuff, because that can be really important in foreign language films. But it's definitely it was definitely really easy, easily accessible. That's one of the reason why it was so popular in the United States because it's if you're willing to read subtitles.

So if you're willing to listen to dubbed audio, which I am not, me can Yeah, you can. It's a great film. Anybody can enjoy it. Anybody probably above sixteen I would. Say, I was gonna say, like, is it I assume that you watch k dramas in the language and read the subtitles, because for me, as someone who watches a lot of foreign film, that is one hundred percent of hell I'm willing to die on and I do not care.

I will not watch something that is dubbed. I just buy outright refuse, unless it's unless that's literally the only way it was made, which I don't know if that's ever been the case. I won't watch something that's dubbed is not going to be better than just hearing the original language with subtitles, unless I literally have an unsubtitled version and can't get one. I just I've never watched a dubbed film that is better than the original with subtitles, and the ones that always stick out to me are those studio Ghibli films where I'm just like, I think they make them worse. Actually, and I was already not resonating with Howe's moving castle, but having to hear Christian Bale doing dubbed dialogue is not something that fixed this movie any Petter, Let's put it that one.

So I don't know, like, I haven't seen yet. The Korean films that I've seen have been all in Korean with subtitles. However, I was trying to watch this on Pluto TV, and this film is so popular that you can actually only watch this film for free on Pluto TV with Spanish subtitles, which I thought about it. I was like, I don't know how good my Spanish is probably not good enough to understand Korean translated into Spanish, which then I'm trying to parse back into my head. So I thought about it.

But you know, marian Don, you mentioned something else in the movie. And I've watched probably no more than maybe a couple of dozen Korean movies and maybe a couple of actual tele dramas, they never have an international cast. I've never seen a Westerner as a student in the high school or any I mean, I know this is trained to Bussan, which is a regional city, and it's not like a subway or a train in downtown Seoul, But why do you think it is that they never have just like a French couple who just happened to be on the train. Because Korea is a massive tourist destination and there's a lot of there are a lot of foreigners or people who live in Korean and teach English and think, you know, work in Korea.

Is that Do you think that's a cultural choice they make when they make these or am I just saw a very soball sample. I was pretty shocked the first time I saw a non Korean person in a K drama, I think the first time. I'm actually not positive because it's just so few and far between. It's definitely happening more. They're definitely introducing more people.

I mean, there's more like people of color in K pop music videos, and they're definitely diversifying their casts, you know, nationally, I don't think there's I don't know if there's a K drama yet that has a non Korean as like a main character. But I believe the last time I saw the first time I saw a non Korean person in a K drama was in the drama based off of the web tune True Beauty, which was released in twenty twenty, and I'm pretty sure they had a white person in the background at some point. I'm pretty sure. So it's really I think that was that's pretty novel. That was pretty novel for the time, Like in twenty twenty, it's really not unusual to have an entirely not just entirely Korean cast, but entirely Korean background actors and crew.

And I in the credits, I didn't see a single person who didn't have a Korean name. So yeah, it's definitely still very homogeneous. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say to its detriment, And I'm not really quite sure why that is why they haven't really broached including including more people. Yeah, you know, don't need part of it. Maybe that they know people are coming again for this really specific aesthetic.

Part of the. Aesthetic is Korean people. And yeah, it's it's not something again yet, it's a country that doesn't have so many people who were born there, not just expatriots, but people who were born there who were not Korean. So they just maybe they just don't necessarily feel like they need to include anybody of any different international and cultural. I'm thinking the flip side of that.

I remember the original Godzilla that was shot completely in Japan with all an all Japanese cast, but when they exported it, they said, oh, okay, if we're gonna show this the United States, we have to have an American character better. Yeah. Raymond Burr, right, played Perry Mason was most famous for that, and they shot these scenes which they edited in. But he's he's totally extraneous. You're being so kind to They edited him in Doctor Pearl Mutter.

It's they forced him into a perfect film and they made it a lesser version of them. Yeah, so I wonder, you know, I'm glad we don't have those days anymore, where they were going like trained to bussan. Yeah, we're gonna get some TV actor. I'm trying to think of somebody. Uh today, we're gonna we're gonna get Chris Pratt and we're gonna edit him.

At that time, he was of course a movie movie actor as well, but like, let's have him do reaction shots like he's at the train control. Hi, I'm an American trained supervisor visiting here. What's going on? You know? Just just edited in.

I think I really hate that I would say the thing that's interesting, and from someone who watches a lot of Indian cinema, Korean cinema also doesn't have the Indian cinema fallback, which is, we were a country conquered by British people for a while, and so our villains tend to either be Pakistani or oftentimes England, and so you have a bunch of we need white English actors who can do white English, as in British actors who will come in and do a high British accent from the like eighteen hundreds and be villains in Indian period pieces. And there's like a cottage industry of British actors who just go over to India and play British villains in Indian period pieces, because British actors playing British villains is just you gotta have a white person to do it.

Korean culture doesn't have Korean culture, doesn't. I mean, I mean Japan, I guess, and you know, I mean, you could have a Korean actor playing a Japanese character. I guess. I'm not sure. There's none of that in this movie.

I would assume if they need a Japanese actor for something, they will hire a Japanese actor for something. But of the Korean films that I've also watched, there have been no white actors. I've seen this The Chaser, and then I've seen a film that is about as tonally different from all of these films, Mister Go, which is about a giant gorilla that plays baseball. So and it's a Korea. It's like Airbud, but with a giant, mighty Joe Yung size gorilla that plays baseball in Korea.

I am shocked that that hasn't been made into an American movie. I'm shocked that we have not remade. Then, me too, and a little disappointed. Less fun than it sounds, because it's like it's as serious as this movie is. It's like a shockingly serious movie about a girl in her cgi gorilla.

And unlike yourself, I too am disappointed it was not remade because the an American audience, I feel like would have to have a fun gorilla playing baseball movie made for them, not a serious gorilla playing baseball move. But yeah, I Korean cinema is is very interesting because they just it all feels of a piece, but their sensibilities when applied to a specific kind of genre are so unique and again specific, that it yields very interesting results. And The Chaser is a very interesting example of a Korean serial killer drama. I mean, I saw The Devil very similarly, a very good Korean serial killer drama. Like they they they're like serial killer films are very brutal and go further than most Western cinema does.

And I think it's just the Korean filmmakers. They have a very specific and unique vision for things and they know how to execute it. And I would assume that that extends to k dramas as well. Yeah, there's stn aesthetically, we were talking about that really specific Korean sort of filter that was probably more easily identifiable in the early two thousand. As I think I said, there's there's been some westernization and probably Kate dramas now more resemble Western TV shows, or maybe Western TV shows more resemble kind of k drama aesthetics, so.

Can it's a trade, right. Yeah, it's it's definitely mingling together, so it's sort of more difficult to tell and distinguish who's influencing who. Ye. Indian cinema without musical numbers was not a thing, but then the more popular Western cinema became in India, the less required Indian cinema felt to include musical numbers, And so now you have films that effectively feel like a Western film with a musical number at the end or one, you know, the rest of it is just like what if Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible had a two minute dance number, And that's what it feels like now, as opposed to forty five minutes of music intercut throughout the entirement. It's kind of sad in a way to see them kind of hewing closer to Western sensibility, because I'm not sure Western sensibilities are the right ones to be hewing close to in a lot of ways, especially given the things that are popular here.

And I'm not sure I agree or want to watch the things that are popular here, just because a lot of it doesn't feel like it's doing much of anything interesting anymore, and that feels like kind of the p So why would someone somewhere else want to do that to their things that they make because a little shocking to me. But I mean, I guess Western audiences know what they don't like, probably more than what they do like. Probably. I really want to emphasize the eight point nine million dollar budget. What they were able to do with such a tiny fraction of what a typical, large, sloppy, poorly executed Hollywood movie today costs is really remarkable, and it followed all the rules of Western filmmaking.

It's creativity, just execution if you want, just get down the checkbox of every single thing when the credits roll or like the carpenter and the sound design and everything like that. Everything was just so well done on this fractional budget. And I think anybody who has not watched a Korean movie this doesn't have one thing. I remember there was a Korean k drama that I was watching which was going along fine in terms of like an actual drama. It was a historical drama set in the royal palaces when Korea was a monarchy, and suddenly, out of nowhere you opened they opened the door, and there were these two ninety foot rabbits who were making lunch.

It was a little bit Indian drama there where suddenly you're taken out of the universe and people are dancing and things like that. But this film, I guess said no to magical realism. We're going to just make a straight, just super well done action movie. And anybody who has not seen Korean movies, maybe maybe because I guess the subtitles are a block, you're I have to put your phone down. Yeah, it's true.

Wow, please have to. Watch movies like people used to. I don't know, if you're gonna spend time watching a movie, at least look up every now and then, or actually look up the whole time. Look, I don't know, is that too much to ask. There are things that I can put on in the background.

There are plenty of things I wouldn't put on a movie I'm actively trying to watch in the background for the first time, or especially one that has a foreign language throughout. So I think if you're looking for a Korean film to introduce to people, that's not going to feel too overwhelmingly like outside of the pocket of Western cinema, and people can be amenable to zombies as much as like they're monsters, but they're not like heads exploding and none of that. Like it's about as gory as an American action movie is. This is a pretty good choice. And I don't you know, as much as I appreciate that James Wand wants to remake this movie, this movie's perfectly fine.

Actually, this movie is perfect in a lot of ways for what I think you would want from a film that's both international but feels very approachable for Western audiences, which is a gateway to showing them more kind of challenging foreign cinema. And to bring this full circle, doctor Promutter, you mentioned it at the top four in cinema used to feel like something that only weirdos would talk about, Like let's talk about Ingrid Bergmann the Seventh Seal, and it's like, I'm out of here. I don't care. It's like that used to be a very specific kind of person, and I think it's interesting to me that we're still fighting that in a way that somehow Indian or Korean or other cultures haven't been making action movies and comedies like no, there's all this really fun pop culture content from these countries that is not heady and serious, just like there's heady and serious English films, English language films, there's heady and serious Korean, Indian and everything else.

Like it doesn't have to be that. And I think we're just now because of streaming, coming around to the idea that like we can appreciate just an Indian action film, and that's it doesn't have to be some like gazing into the human existence in the void, like it just can be a fun movie. Trained to boot Hunt doesn't need to be anything more than a fun zombie. It pushes beyond that in a lot of ways, and I think it has a little bit more to say about the human condition than most zombie movies do. But you know, I think it's a really good off ramp for people who are looking to start a journey down Korean cinema that doesn't feel overwhelming in what it's asking of the audience.

So, but Miranda, since you picked this film, I will give you the last word on Trained to boost Hunt. I think you really hit the nail on the head at the end there. This is a movie that you can just enjoy without analyzing a lot of good action, really sympathetic characters, it's a lot of fun if you just want something to entertain you without thinking a lot about it, or you could dissect it for an hour like we did. There's a lot to talk about, but there's also a lot to just appreciate in a non complicated way. And those are as you said, the best kinds of movies too, to introduce people to something that they may not have been have considered before.

I do agree. This is such a good movie that if I was trying to get to a friend into Queen culture, I probably if I didn't begin with BTS, I would start here. So yeah, Well, on that note, if you want to find me and the things that I work on, because these two don't want to be found anywhere, you can find me over at wirdingwaymedia dot com, where doctor Promutter and I can be found talking about a whole host of films in the past on the Culture Cast. I haven't gotten them on anything else yet. That may change in the future, but for right now, the Culture Cast is the main place you can find doctor Perlmutter and I talking about things.

But there's plenty of other content on Wordingway Media that doesn't involve me, like Midnight Viewing and the Projection Booth and eighties TV ladies and the Feminine Critique. Plenty of things that I'm not on, so go listen to those things. If you want to support the show in a financial way. Patreon dot com slash culture cat is where you can go to kick a couple dollars my way. Every little bit helps, and you get access to the only thing that's not on weirding Way Media's free website, which is ranking on bond, which is coming to a close.

The next show will be free, but you'll be able to get the next show on the Patreon for ad some people care about and so all of the plugs out of the way. Thank you both for joining me. I had a great time both watching the movie and talking with you both about it. And yeah, as always, we'll catch you on the next episode.