Trains, planes and automobiles! There is
no transportation vehicle with enclosed space that has yet to be deemed unfit as a setting for a
horror movie. While Snakes
on a Plane (2006) definitely begot Snakes on a Train (2006 / trailer) but may or may
not have begot Flight
of the Living Dead (2007) — or, for that matter, Quarantine II: Terminal
(2011 / trailer)
— and all may or may not have begot Last Train to Busan (2016 / trailer),
there is little doubt that the roots of Kuang shu lie che (a.k.a. Rats on a
Train, Junkrat Train, and Train Disaster) are deeply entwined with that far
superior Korean fast-zombie movie.
Okay, there is nary a zombie in sight in Rats
on a Train, and the infectious rat bites convey a deadly plague-like disease
instead of a zombifying rabies virus (ala 28 Days Later [2002 / trailer],
28
Weeks Later [2007] or, closer to the rat bone, Mulberry
Street [2006]). But much like the [extremely boring] Chinese wuxia flick The
First Myth [2021], which simply beams the Marvel Avengers movies into
ancient China and replaces superheroes with gods, Rats on a Train beams Last Train to Busan to, dunno,
pre-Revolution rural China and replaces the unstoppable hoards of zombies with
unstoppable hoards of flesh-eating rats. But while Rats on a Train is perhaps
arguably no better a movie than The First Myth, it is at least far from boring
in any way.
Trailer to
Rats on a Train:
And while Rats on a Train could have
been a boring disaster — see: The
First Myth (2021) — director Zhenzhao Lin manages to make an entertaining,
interesting and at times rather suspenseful movie from the regurgitated
storyline "written" by ZhongShuang Hou, the scriptwriter of the hilariously
bad Zhongjí taifeng (2021 / trailer),
and Shangfan Zhang. As China has slowly opened itself up to producing lowbrow
genre movies, including horror movies, if usually with some oddly interlaced
propagandistic elements, the unknown director Zhenzhao Lin has revealed himself,
since around 2018, as a bit of a genre-film expert. From the almost-ambitious The
Unity of Heroes (2018 / trailer)
to the super-shoddy but mildly fun Snake (2018 / trailer) and Snake II
(2019 / trailer)
and Restart the Earth (2021/ trailer),
to others with a bit more aspiration, like The Enchanting Phantom (2020 / trailer)
— yet another remake of A Chinese Ghost Story (1987 / trailer)
— or Monkey King: The Volcano (2019 / full
movie), his movies have revealed a director who cares about his movies,
regardless of how lowbrow, who could possibly work his way up to
more "serious" movies (should he even want to).
Much of the appeal of Rats on a Train lies
in its temporal setting, which makes the movie very much a period-set horror. Whether
all the train cars are appropriate to the general timeframe of the story is
open to question, but in general the movie does well in presenting its
pre-Revolutionary China, a setting that does add a pleasing visual zing to the
tale. One only wishes that a bit more care had been invested in the extremely
weak and cheap-looking CGI. Even the first scene of rats simply scampering
around a room looks fake and animated, but while it seldom gets any better in
close-up, whenever the rats are attacking en mass things become effective
(excepting, perhaps, when they start to build towers like the zombies in World
War Z [2013 / trailer]
or pour out of house windows).
The movie's main character is
undoubtedly the stern father Su Zheng Huai (Chao-te Yin of Born to Be Human
[2021 / trailer]),
who is travelling [to somewhere] with his eldest daughter Su Wei (Yiyao Xia of Legend
of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen [2010 / trailer])
and young son Su Yuexuan (Chu Yuga). In the kind of chance encounter that only
happens in film, on the train he crosses paths with his Prodigal Daughter Su
Ling (Zhu Ya), who is engaged to a straight-and-narrow Imperial Army officer
(Benji Xu [?]). Other secondary characters get introduced, sounds foreshadow
what is soon to transpire, and the tension mounts as occasional false scares
occur — and then the rats attack...
Like Last Train to Buson, a good portion
of Rats on a Train does not happen on the train. After the initial attack and
escape, the survivors are separated into two train cars, the infected and the
non-infected, and a party sets off to the hospital in a town already ravaged by
the rats to get the antidote. But even as the number of that group dwindles — naturally
all tertiary characters without a name die — as they face almost insurmountable
obstacles on the way to the hospital's storage room (located in a laughably
over-the-top location that almost seems cut in from a harder, meaner horror
movie), tensions rise among the non-infected as the arguments to cut and run
(leaving the infected behind) rise. The latter scenes are a bit dry and
predictable, but the final resolution is oddly satisfying.
The narrative does have its share of
plot holes and narrative illogicalities — for example, that the rats that can't
jump over boxes in one scene but can in another, or that the train already has
rats despite leaving the first village just as the rats arrive, not to mention
the somewhat illogical judiciousness of whom they attack — and, as already
mentioned, the CGI is often (if not usually) amazingly cheap-looking. For that,
however, the main and secondary characters are all clearly delineated from the
start, both as stereotypes and as individuals, and there is more than the
average amount of character development and growth in interpersonal interaction
than generally found in most movies like this one, which strongly underpins
one's interest in the characters and what happens to them.
Unlike many Chinese movies of its ilk,
few of the actors in Rats on a Train ever lean too far into caricature, and the
unexpected thespian naturalism is a plus for the movie. Rats on a Train
warrants a watch, and not just those in a forgiving mood. It'll terrify the younger
kids, if not scar them for life, and even if the movie is basically trash, it
does have suspense and thrills, not to mention occasionally moments of
heartbreak and emotion.
Ultimately, Rats on a Train is definitely lowbrow, and
much of it is already very familiar, but it makes for a good cinematic ride and
is definitely makes for a good evening's visual entertainment. Indeed, you'll probably enjoy it even as you
recognize just how trashy it is.
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