Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!
Plot Summary: On the anniversary of a train crash, current passengers find themselves heading toward a similar demise.
Review: Try not to confuse this with that other movie...with the same exact title, made the same year, and instead of a train that one is about a plane! But, I should mention, this one was made first. Anyway, we have yet another instance of wasted potential; I should go back and count how many times I've written that phrase, because surely I'm at a hundred or more by now. This would have worked better as a 30 minute TV show episode or something, because they added way too much filler. More so, the filler is boring and drags the movie down as a whole. Then you have to account for the fact that they waste every good chance for a scare which is combined with a completely incoherent mess of a plot. I never would have imagined a haunted train story would be this complicatedly stupid.
To sum things up quickly, years ago there was a train that crashed and just about everyone died. That same day was the main girl, Mi-sun's, birthday and her dad was blamed for the crash...he was like a patrol guy or whatever the hell. To make her story all the more tragic they pointlessly decided to kill off Mi-sun's grandmother too...you know, for good measure. Now, years later on the anniversary of the train crash, Mi-sun is grown up and is like a stewardess for a train that has incorporated cars from the original wreckage. Obviously shenanigans occur since this is allegedly the final trip for the train, and the ghosts always sense these things. There were a few good ideas though, like the notion that the two trains merged in a way, but most of the better concepts are utterly wasted.
I think maybe the biggest offense is the overabundance of characters. I mean, who the hell are half these people? Not only do you not have time to remember them, but they're still introducing people by the last half hour! For example, there's one point that was supposed to be all emotional but you're just like, "Who the fuck is that?" It is kind of a cool twist as you realize a bunch of the characters are ghosts from the original crash, but the rest are current passengers with too many conveniently having a connection to the first crash. It's also a bit ridiculous as there's a psychic and a makeshift group of amateur paranormal investigators on board as well...among many other contrivances. But none of the characters are as stupid as the sudden appearance of a couple that is possessed by the ghosts of kids who want this current train to crash. Apparently they have a connection to the original crash and the movie wants you to think they actually lived at first. In fact, this movie thinks its twists are bigger and better than they really are. A twist can't be shocking if we had absolutely no time to be surprised by it. Like, we just met these characters, so who cares if they're really possessed and didn't actually survive the first crash; I'm not exactly attached to these idiots. And the whole mystery as to why the train originally crashed is beyond lackluster, and, of course, you knew Mi-sun's dad wasn't responsible. It would seem the father of the ghost kids was planning to kill his family, but his bottle of poison was broken so he decided to crash the train. Right.
While that is the gist of the story, the action plays out soooo slowly. The movie keeps cutting back and forth between the 50 characters while Mi-sun is losing her mind. If anything interesting were happening this wouldn't be too bad, but nothing ever happens except with Mi-sun for the most part. They clearly did not have enough of a plot to keep things rolling for 90 minutes. To make matters worse, the few scares that had a lot of potential--like the ghost coming out of luggage or the ghost rising out of a pool of blood--are rushed and end up being edited to look like shit. Then there are the super stupid scares where a random character is killed off just to push to story forward a tad, because even the makers must have realized how boring things were turning out. I really cannot stress enough that the majority of the film is comprised of filler scenes to pad out the time between Mi-sun doing or seeing something. By the end, we get a huge bitch slap to the face as Mi-sun dies and now her ghost is haunting another train or whatever. Oh come the fuck on.
I really want to hate this movie a lot, but it does enough correctly to skate by into mediocre territory. I imagine they had this vision for a creepy, ambient haunted train, but somehow the direction was led astray. I swear, some of those filler scenes had to have meant something in the original script or storyboard; like that guy and the dissertation, the music box, the one guard surviving the first crash and his love interest, the whole thing with the psychic girl, the guy taking the ghost photos, etc. Regardless, there were some good ideas, the music was decent, and the effects were kind of cool. If you can overlook the massive flaws, filler, contrivances, and wasted potential, you may find this slightly less boring than I was able to.
Notable Moment: With so many cool moments screwed up, I guess I'm going to have to focus on something they did right. There were two moments when a guy had a music box playing Bach's Air on G String (as it's more commonly referred to as). This doesn't connect to the plot for shit, like most of the movie's events, but it's my all time favorite musical work and that uniquely music box rendition was to my liking.
Final Rating: 5/10
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