TV Films of the Week: Train to Busan

Quite Marmitey. Robert Eggers' black-and-white psychological horror film sees Robert Pattinson land on an isolated New England coast in the 1890s where he joing Willem Dafoe on lighthouse duty. Cue inventive cursing, weird visions and a scary seagull. The Lighthouse teeters on the brink of absurdity throughout, but Pattinson and Dafoe give it their all, and if you go with it there are rewards to be had. If nothing else, you probably won't have seen anything else like it.

Monday

A Quiet Place, Film4, 9pm

John Krasinski directs and stars in this sci-fi horror thriller in which being quiet is the only defence against blind aliens who react to noise. Krasinski plays Lee Abbott who, along with his wife Evelyn (played by Emily Blunt) try to keep their family alive. Whether the premise really holds up is something you will probably only start thinking about after you've been suitably unnerve

Thursday 

Sicario Film4, 9pm

A film of terrifying grace. Set against a backdrop of Mexican drug cartels operating on the American border, it traces Kate Macer (another appearance by Emily Blunt this week) as she takes on a new assignment as a member of the FBI's Special Weapons and Tactics team. Director Denis Villeneuve keeps the action moving with brutal efficiency, and Blunt acts as a voice of reason in a landscape devoid of that very quality.

Friday

Train to Busan, Film4, 11.20pm

Zombies on a train. That’s it. That’s the film in a nutshell. What more do you need to know?

Admittedly, yes, Sang-ho Yeon’s 2016 movie is also concerned with conformity and fear in South Korean society, the role of fathers in modern capitalist society, and, in passing, is a hymn to the country’s high-speed rail network.

But, really, you’re watching it because it’s got zombies – South Korean ones if that’s not already clear - and they’re on a train and they’re attacking people. It’s that simple. Who’s going to live? And who’s going to be bitten and turned into a bloodied, milk-eyed monster ready to snack down on the nearest human flesh? Keep watching.

The first thing to say about Train to Busan is that it is a ride. At just under two hours it’s breathless, smartly constructed entertainment; a fusion of disaster movie with horror spectacle that sketches out its characters in broad strokes without every reverting entirely to stereotypes. The horror, meanwhile, is suitably gory and well-staged (there’s a moment near the beginning where we see a zombie attack out of the train’s window that has a creepy “did I just see that?” grace to it). And the action sequences, while a little unbelievable at times, move so slickly you’re more than happy to give them the benefit of the doubt.

On board the train are fund manager father Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) and his cute daughter Soo-an (Kim Su-an, giving a performance that never reeks of “child actor”). They are travelling from Seoul to Busan to reunite Soo-ann, with her mum (Seok-woo’s ex-wife).

It is not the happiest father-daughter relationship and you suspect that Soo-ann might think even less of her dad if she knew he was funding the dodgy biotech firms that might be behind the virus that’s turning people into gnarly, distorted flesh-eaters.

But soon he is having to try to protect his daughter as zombie attacks begin on-board and the passengers – a motley mix of OAPs, baseball-playing school kids and cheerleaders, a working-class good guy and his pregnant wife, plus the inevitable selfish CEO (played with some relish by Kim Eui-sung) who will sacrifice anything (and anyone) to ensure his own survival – have to fight carriage to carriage with whatever comes to hand (no guns for the most part; this isn’t America after all).

The gleeful speed and shocks don’t totally overwhelm the film’s subtler moments, but they are the principal pleasures. You couldn’t say the film has the gut-punch impact of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, or even the desire to reimagine the zombie mythology as in Colm McCarthy’s underrated film The Girl With All the Gifts (based on Mike Carey’s novel), which came out the same year. It’s more orthodox than both.

Still, the divisions in South Korean society – between young and old and between the classes – are played out satisfyingly enough and the film has a healthy distrust for bland-voiced authority figures. “We must stay calm and trust the government. We believe that your safety is not in jeopardy,” the passengers are told as everything falls apart. And greed in the shape of fund managers and CEO’s are clearly in the frame for what is rotten in the state of South Korea.

But, ultimately, what you take away is the rush and thrill and fear and gore. It’s zombies on a train. What more do you want?

The Awakening, 2.45am

To keep the Hallowe’en theme going, Nick Murphy’s directorial debut, written by Stephen (Ghostwatch) Volk, is a reasonably satisfying attempt at the traditional English ghost story to see in All Hallows’ Eve.

Set in the 1920s with the shadow of the Great War still looming over the country, Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall) is roaming the country debunking fraudulent spiritualists. But when she is summoned to a remote boarding school by teacher Robert Mallory (Dominic West) her rationalist beliefs begin to dissipate in the face of what she finds there.

The problem with The Awakening – apart from the fact that it rather loses its way by the end – is everything you can say about it sounds like damning it with faint praise. It’s a sturdy, solid, well-mounted, old-fashioned ghost story, with pleasing albeit mild chills and a touch of sexual tension thrown in for good measure.

As ever, Hall brings a real gravity to her role. You do wish the film managed to raise itself to her level. In truth, it is never quite unheimlich enough to linger in the mind, but it passes the time agreeably and offers the comforting familiarity of the traditional ghost story. If you find that sort of thing comforting, that is.