Near-Perfect Zombie Classic Officially Rises From the Dead on Streaming

Public transportation etiquette is relatively straightforward. Let people off before you get on, keep your music to yourself, and under absolutely no circumstances become an infected cannibal and start biting the other passengers. The commuters aboard one Korean high-speed train have some difficulty with that last rule, resulting in one of the most relentlessly stressful zombie movies ever made.

Gong Yoo (Squid Game) stars in Train to Busan, which officially found a new streaming home when it arrived on Peacock on October 1. Yeon Sang-ho’s (Hellbound) 2016 horror phenomenon will be joined by its 2020 follow-up Peninsula. What begins as a simple birthday trip for a father and daughter turns into a high-octane fight for survival when a zombie outbreak ravages South Korea. Trapped on a speeding train, they must navigate a landscape of terror to reach safety.

The cast is led by Gong as Seok-woo alongside Kim Su-an (Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds) as Su-an, Ma Dong-seok (Eternals) as Sang-hwa, Jung Yu-mi (Sleep) as Seong-kyeong, Choi Woo-shik (Parasite) as Yong-guk, Ahn So-hee (Hellcats) as Jin-hee, Kim Eui-sung (Alienoid) as Yon-suk, and Choi Gwi-hwa (The Outlaws) as the homeless passenger.

How Good Is 'Train to Busan'?

It's not a huge leap to call this one of the greatest zombie movies ever made, and that's a position we'd feel quite safe and secure in taking. Train to Busan holds an outstanding 95% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising its ability to combine relentless genre thrills with characters audiences actually care about. The film went on to earn $98 million worldwide, and it was yet another huge boost for Korean cinema ahead of two of the most defining projects of the century in the shape of the Academy Award-winning Parasite, and then later, Squid Game.

And the characters are the important thing. While Yeon’s infected are fast, vicious and terrifying, the movie understands that watching anonymous people get eaten eventually becomes background noise, so you need to actually care about these characters in order for the movie to provide a connection. Seok-woo’s relationship with Su-an gives everything an emotional center, while Ma’s Sang-hwa became a huge hit with viewers, mainly because his approach to the zombie apocalypse appears to be punching it directly in the face.

Train to Busan and Peninsula are streaming now on Peacock.