Train to Busan Returns to Theaters for Its 10th Anniversary

Before Yeon Sang-ho unleashes another zombie nightmare with Colony later this month, Train to Busan returns to theaters for its 10th anniversary.

Train to Busan returned to theaters August 14 for its 10th Anniversary Remastered & Revived release, giving horror fans another chance to experience Sang-ho’s 2016 breakout in theaters. The anniversary run is playing as a limited theatrical release, with participating theaters carrying screenings across multiple days rather than as a single-night event

Train to Busan Is Back on the Big Screen

Train to Busan follows a father and daughter trapped aboard a speeding train as a zombie outbreak tears across South Korea. What begins as a relatively simple trip quickly becomes a fight for survival as the infection moves through the train and forces the passengers into increasingly desperate choices.

The film became one of the most recognizable international zombie movies of the last decade by combining relentless action with a story that never loses sight of the people trapped inside it. The anniversary release gives audiences who discovered it at home another chance to see that chaos unfold on a theater screen.

The remastered edition is also being presented in 4K as part of the film’s global 10th-anniversary re-release.

The Timing Leads Directly Into Colony

The timing of the re-release is especially interesting because Sang-ho is returning to zombie horror again just two weeks later.

His new film Colony opens in theaters August 28 and follows Professor Se-jeong, played by Gianna Jun, after a rapidly mutating virus is released during a biotech conference. Authorities seal the facility, leaving Se-jeong and a small group of survivors trapped inside while the infected continue to change.

Well Go USA is releasing both films, making August something of an unofficial Yeon Sang-ho zombie double feature: revisit the movie that helped define his international career, then see what he does with the genre ten years later.

What We Think

Train to Busan is one of those movies that earns its reputation. It moves incredibly fast once things start falling apart, but the reason the movie works is not just the zombies or the action. The characters give everything happening on that train weight, which is something zombie movies sometimes lose when they become completely focused on the next attack.

The timing also makes this re-release more interesting for us than a normal anniversary run. We already have Colony on our schedule for later this month, so revisiting Train to Busan right before Sang-ho returns to zombies feels like the perfect setup.

There is obviously no guarantee that Colony will be trying to recreate what worked in Train to Busan, and hopefully it is not. What makes the pairing interesting is getting to see where Sang-ho started with this kind of horror and then, ten years later, how he approaches another rapidly spreading infection with a completely different setting and group of characters.

If you have only ever watched Train to Busan at home, the anniversary run is also a pretty good excuse to finally see it with an audience.

Watch the Train to Busan 10th Anniversary Trailer

Source: Well Go USA.