Director portrays 'Korean' zombies
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Gong Yoo, left, and Kim Su-an, who appear as father and daughter in the film “Train to Busan,” high five during a press conference, Tuesday. / Yonhap
‘Train to Busan’
received with big
accolade at Cannes
By Yun Suh-young
A standing ovation is a big honor for any filmmaker at an international film festival.
The claustrophobic Korean zombie thriller "Train to Busan" received a 10-minute standing ovation when it premiered on May 13 at the Cannes International Film Festival's Midnight Screening. The festival's General Delegate Thierry Fremaux was quoted as saying it was the "best midnight screening in the Cannes festival's history."
Having received such wonderful praise overseas, the film is coming to Korea to win over local audiences with a July 20 release.
The film is the first commercial Korean film of this size with zombies. Very few films in Korean film history have featured the undead monsters.
"It is a genre very familiar in the West but not so much in Korea. I wondered how it would turn out if I brought the zombie concept and made it in a Korean style," said director Yeon Sang-ho of "Train to Busan" during a press conference held Tuesday in Seoul.
"I thought the speed of the train added to the chaos and confusion would evoke a particular type of thrill in the audience."
The film is Yeon's first live-action film, as he had only produced animated movies so far. "The Fake" (2013) and "The King of Pigs" (2011) are some of his representative works. His animations have received numerous awards at overseas international film competitions. "Train to Busan" is a live-action feature film inspired and extended from the animation "Seoul Station" (2015) which acts like a prequel to "Train to Busan."
The film is set inside a train headed to Busan, in which a strange virus spreads from one person who boards the train from Seoul and starts infecting other passengers inside the train and turning them into zombies. People die out and the main characters struggle to remain alive and reach Busan, which is supposedly claimed to be safe from the virus.
"In the beginning, I was a bit worried about how Koreans would look as zombies and perhaps that could prevent audiences from immersing in the film. But after seeing the zombies, it was even scary for the actors and in fact helped us act out real fear," said Gong Yoo, who plays Seok-woo, a coldhearted fund manager dad who tries to protect his daughter Su-an from the zombies.
The film evokes claustrophobic fear as it is set inside a train, echoing "Snowpiercer" where the characters couldn’t leave the train. The train set for the film was built to replicate a real KTX train running from Seoul to Busan.
The film is also the first Korean film to adopt LED technology during the filmmaking process by using LED rear screen projection to help the actors see what’s going on and react more realistically. Korean films are known to use green screens as background and later use computer graphics, but Yeon decided it would be “difficult to portray the reality."
"Director Yeon screened the parts that were filmed in advance such as infected people jumping at us to help bring out real feelings in the actors," said actor Gong.
"We didn't have to imagine while looking into thin air like we used to, but actually look at the expressions of the zombies on screen and react.”