Zombies and our reality

There is one scene in “Train to Busan,” the blockbuster international hit from Korea about a passenger train overrun by zombies, that suddenly yanks the audience back to Philippine reality.

In the scene, hedge fund manager Seok-woo (K-drama stalwart Gong Yoo) and his small group of fugitives from the marauding zombies finally manage to gain entry to a train car where survivors have barricaded themselves. Seok-woo makes straight for a businessman who had convinced the other passengers to prevent their entry, and while he beats him up, the businessman (Kim Eul-sang) cries out: “Help me! He’s a zombie! Look at him! He’s been infected, too!”

Seok-woo stops and stares at the other passengers, and after a beat, the passengers make up their minds and side with the businessman. “Get out! We’re not safe from you!” the other panicked passengers cry out, pushing at the newcomers and deciding to expel them from the compartment into a gap between the cars, even if the group includes a little girl, Seok-woo’s daughter Su-an, and a heavily pregnant woman (Jung Yu-mi). They then likewise barricade the doors against them.

So this is how mass hysteria is created, I thought. All it takes is one man, or a few, declaring somebody else is a zombie or otherwise a menace to society, and the populace would instantly fall in with the diagnosis and the drastic action taken against the accused.

This is how the Duterte administration and its minions have managed to convince otherwise decent and rights-loving Filipinos that not only is it “right” for the police and military (and sundry assassins-for-hire) to shoot down suspected addicts and pushers, but also to conduct door-to-door operations in poor and affluent neighborhoods alike, creating an environment of general fear and trepidation.

Friends from around the country report that such is the atmosphere of intimidation and paranoia in villages and barangays that people are afraid to speak out or even hang yellow banners or ribbons from their doors. Really, all it takes is for a neighbor or an enemy to report you to the barangay office as a drug user or pusher and you’d be in mortal danger.

You don’t need zombies to live in dire fear in the Philippines these days.

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So maybe we do need a movie like “Train to Busan” to take our minds off the murder and mayhem taking place in our streets and in the minds of our elected officials.

In stark terms, the plot of “Train to Busan” is simple and straightforward enough. What is presumed to be an hour’s ride by bullet train from Seoul to Busan is turned into a nightmare scenario when the train is boarded by a zombie. She is a young woman who first infects two crew members, and they in turn prey on most of the other passengers.

The movie, directed by Yeon Sang-ho who had previously made his name with madcap, violent animated films, doesn’t bother about examining the origins of the outbreak. Although, sometime in the middle of the film, we find out that the outbreak has been traced to a laboratory funded by the hero’s hedge fund firm.

Instead, Yeon wisely concentrates on the impact that the zombie marauders have on the human passengers, who make up a cross-section of modern Korean society. There is Seok-woo, the workaholic fund manager who reluctantly, and somewhat resentfully, leaves his work to accompany his young daughter on her birthday to visit his estranged wife.

On the train the pair meet the thuggish Sang-hwa (mainstay gangster villain portrayer Ma Dong-seok) and his pregnant wife Sung-kyu (Jung Yu-mi), a pair of elderly sisters, a homeless vagrant, and a teenage couple who have joined their school’s baseball team for a tournament.

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The rest of the movie, punctuated now and then with TV news footage of the anarchy taking place across the country, is all about how the surviving, uninfected passengers manage to escape from the zombies and make their way to Busan.

The zombies are the most remarkable special effect in the movie. They are portrayed as staggering, blood-soaked creatures, with eyes that have clouded over, and driven by a sort of madness that compels them to feed on their prey.

A most astounding scene comes near the end, at the Busan train station where the heroic train conductor, along with Seok-woo, his daughter, and the pregnant lady (and, unknown to them, the infected businessman, too) have managed to clamber aboard and get the car moving. At once the zombies try to join them, clinging to the railings as hundreds of their kind pile on. We are given an aerial shot of the train, with a ribbon of zombie-humanity hanging on and following its trail until they are finally kicked off.

Almost from the beginning, “Train to Busan” sets off echoes of “The Host,” another Korean sci-fi movie hit about a sea monster mutated from radioactive material thrown into the Han River in the center of Seoul. The two films abjure the temptation to turn the plot toward a scientific investigation and instead focuses on the impact of the monsters on ordinary citizens who fight back with their meager resources and wit. It’s the

human element that’s truly heroic.

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One final note. On a whim, we decided to watch “Train to Busan” in a special effects cinema in Greenbelt 3, where the seats follow the action on the screen, and mist and mysterious movements scurry across your feet. Watching the movie was so exhausting because, not only was it truly terrifying, it was also quite an effort to try to stay in one’s seat, as one felt like flying off any second.

It is, indeed, an added dimension to one’s movie-going experience, but make sure you’re with someone you can hold hands with and who will keep you in your seat!