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Late to the Party: Train to Busan (2016)

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Late to the Party

It seems like it was farther back than 2016 when Train to Busan, the South Korean genre-bending zombie movie, was at the top of both critic and fan year-end lists everywhere.  So, by just getting around to seeing it now, I’m not showing up incredibly late to this party, more like fashionably late.  But I am the last of my circle to see it.

My reasoning behind waiting for so long to finally check it out is simple.  I have been completely bored with zombie movies for years now, so nothing about the movie excited me.  Even when people would tell me that it was their favorite movie of the year, and that it’s not “really” a zombie movie, I still couldn’t get interested.  The two-hour running time turned me off a bit as well, since I am the king of the eighty-minute slasher flick, and two hours is a ridiculously long time to watch zombies feast on humans.  But alas, in the name of Late to the Party, I fired up my Netflix and hit play on Train to Busan.

Late the the Party: Train to Busan

Train to Busan (2016), courtesy Well Go USA Entertainment.

Immediately, I could see why people would think that this was more than just a “normal” zombie movie.  There’s a human element to the story from the start, with the struggle between the father and the mother for custody of their daughter, and the father being pulled between work and family.  And that’s not the only interesting backstory, either; just about every character on the train, from the confrontational jerk who just wants to protect his pregnant wife to the youth baseball team travelling with their girlfriends, has a mythology that reaches beyond the frame of the zombie attack.  The characters development, even when most of it occurs off-screen, raises the emotional stakes and helps the audience empathize with the principals.

Late to the Party: Train to Busan (2016)

Train to Busan (2016), courtesy Well Go USA Entertainment.

But Train to Busan is, first and foremost, a zombie movie.  The zombies are cool, closer to 28 Days Later… than they are to The Walking Dead, but they are still, in fact, zombies, so they’re a threat that modern viewers have seen ad nauseum.  And the zombies in Train to Busan don’t bring much to the table as far as re-invention goes.  They swarm and cooperate like the undead in World War Z, but other than that, they’re just the typical Return of the Living Dead, fast-moving zombies.

Late to the Party: Train to Busan (2016)

Train to Busan (2016), courtesy Well Go USA Entertainment.

There’s an exercise in film school screenwriting classes where the student is asked to spice up a tired old trope by changing the setting.  Stick your slasher in a submarine.  Put your vampires in a high-rise.  Set your creature feature in an airplane (I’m convinced that this is how we got Snakes on a Plane).  That’s what Train to Busan feels like to me, like someone tried to breathe new life into the retreaded zombie genre by throwing most of the action on a moving train.  And for the most part, it works.  It’s got a Snowpiercer meets the Dawn of the Dead remake vibe to it, but that’s better than seeing zombies traipse around a dilapidated graveyard, isn’t it?

Late to the Party: Train to Busan (2016)

Train to Busan (2016), courtesy Well Go USA Entertainment.

It seems that I may have been a victim of the hype train (no pun intended), as Train to Busan didn’t quite live up to my expectations.  I was expecting it to be much more than a zombie movie, but that’s really all it is.  It’s one in which the deaths hit harder because the film builds relationships between the audience and the characters, but when the dust settled, it was just a very well-crafted zombie flick.  It’s a good movie, but I’ll probably never find the need to watch it again.  I might even forget that I watched it this time.

 

Check out more Late to the Party fun!

 

Feature image by Chris Fischer.

 

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’28 Years Later’ Trilogy Taking Shape With Serious Star Power

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28 years later

Danny Boyle is revisiting his 28 Days Later universe with three new films. He will direct the first, 28 Years Later, with two more to follow. Deadline is reporting that sources say Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes have been cast for the first entry, a sequel to the original. Details are being kept under wraps so we don’t know how or if the first original sequel 28 Weeks Later fits into the project.

Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes

Boyle will direct the first movie but it’s unclear which role he will take on in the subsequent films. What is known is Candyman (2021) director Nia DaCosta is scheduled to direct the second film in this trilogy and that the third will be filmed immediately afterward. Whether DaCosta will direct both is still unclear.

Alex Garland is writing the scripts. Garland is having a successful time at the box office right now. He wrote and directed the current action/thriller Civil War which was just knocked out of the theatrical top spot by Radio Silence’s Abigail.

There is no word yet on when, or where, 28 Years Later will start production.

28 Days Later

The original film followed Jim (Cillian Murphy) who wakes from a coma to find that London is currently dealing with a zombie outbreak.

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Watch ‘The Burning’ At The Location Where It Was Filmed

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Fangoria is reporting that fans of the 1981 slasher The Burning will be able to have a screening of the film at the location where it was filmed. The movie is set at Camp Blackfoot which is actually the Stonehaven Nature Preserve in Ransomville, New York.

This ticketed event will take place on August 3. Guests will be able to take a tour of the grounds as well as enjoy some campfire snacks along with the screening of The Burning.

The Burning

The film came out in the early ’80s when teen slashers were being churned out in magnum force. Thanks to Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th, filmmakers wanted to get in on the low-budget, high-profit movie market and a casket load of these types of films were produced, some better than others.

The Burning is one of the good ones, mostly because of the special effects from Tom Savini who had just come off of his groundbreaking work on Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th. He declined to do the sequel because of its illogical premise and instead signed on to do this movie. Also, a young Jason Alexander who would later go on to play George in Seinfeld is a featured player.

Because of its practical gore, The Burning had to be heavily edited before it received an R-rating. The MPAA was under the thumb of protest groups and political bigwigs to censor violent films at the time because slashers were just so graphic and detailed in their gore.

Tickets are $50, and if you want a special t-shirt, that will cost you another $25, You can get all the information by visiting the On Set Cinema webpage.

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‘Longlegs’ Creepy “Part 2” Teaser Appears on Instagram

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Longlegs

Neon Films released an Insta-teaser for their horror film Longlegs today. Titled Dirty: Part 2, the clip only furthers the mystery of what we are in for when this movie is finally released on July 12.

The official logline is: FBI Agent Lee Harker is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes unexpected turns, revealing evidence of the occult. Harker discovers a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again.

Directed by former actor Oz Perkins who also gave us The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel, Longlegs is already creating buzz with its moody images and cryptic hints. The film is rated R for bloody violence, and disturbing images.

Longlegs stars Nicolas Cage, Maika Monroe, and Alicia Witt.

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