Okay, so first thing first: This movie should have been a remake of Speed where you can’t slow down or the zombies will get you, and then been called Bus to Busan, and you might point out that the movie is Korean and that punny title might not work there, but I am confident that something could be done.

That to the side, let’s talk about what this movie actually is, which is: A zombie movie. But a good one. The basic premise is that a bunch of people get on a train at an early point in a zombie outbreak (we’re just in the “weird headlines in the news” phase, along with maybe some “huh, that’s strange” firsthand observations); but as the train goes, it becomes clear that there’s a no-shit hyper-infectious zombie outbreak going on, both on the train and in the outside world, and the goal becomes to survive long enough for the train to get somewhere safe.

But there’s also a personal story going on here, because our main protagonist is a divorced dad who’s going with his daughter to her mom’s house, and their relationship — and in particular, the subsidiary question of what type of person he wants to be — is basically the core of the movie, which uses the zombiepocalypse to draw out those character beats.

One of the themes that really comes through in this movie is class conflict, with the rich people being seen as selfish villains to a degree that I think is rare in US films since the “slobs vs. snobs” era of comedy, except played totally serious. Given the primacy of that same class conflict in Parasite and also in Burning, it sure as hell seems like a thing that is top of mind in Korea recently. (Or maybe only in the movies that get released in America?)

Anyway, so yeah, this is a zombie film that’s well-done as a straight-up zombie movie — the action scenes are tense and significant, the obstacles they face feel largely organic, the zombies are exceedingly creepy without being gross and CGish — but also as a movie that has real characters, is well-directed, and has something to say about what it means to live in a society. I think this was super-popular and probably anyone who’s even tangentially interested in (or even not put off by) zombie movies has seen it by now, but recommended anyway.