“Ghost Train” Poster
Director: Tak Se-woong
Cast: Joo Hyun-young, Jeon Bae-soo, Choi Bo-min, Kim Woo-kyum, Kim Na-yeon
Running Time: 94 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Spend any amount of time in the world of 21st century Asian horror cinema, and you’ll soon realise that practically any enclosed space can become haunted. From elevators to toilet cubicles to school corridors – nowhere is safe if a vengeful spirit is on the loose. So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that in 2025 the latest dose of supernatural activity turns its focus to public transport, with the appropriately titled Ghost Train (and for those Asian horror aficionados out there, it’s worth pointing out that it isn’t a remake of the 2006 Japanese horror of the same name). It’s not the first time for Korean horror to unfold in the subway system, with 2005’s Red Eye offering up timeslip related ghostly happenings on a train, and the much more recent Ghost Station from 2022 revolving around a series of mysterious deaths in a particular train station.
In fact on paper Ghost Station and Ghost Train sound largely interchangeable. The 2022 production gave us a young female journalist working for a gossip magazine who’s investigating the mysterious deaths that have been occurring in Oksu station. Ghost Train gives us a young female YouTuber working for a broader YouTube channel who, facing declining viewership for her segment, opts to begin investigating the mysterious disappearances that have been taking place in Gwanglim station. As similar as the concept may be though, thankfully Ghost Train turns out to be a much more satisfying dose of summer season horror (which is when Korea traditionally unleashes its horror outings for the year) than the rather flaccid Ghost Station.
Joo Hyun-young (Amazon Bullseye, Pretty Crazy) plays the YouTuber in question, and with the recent viewership of her segment down from 100,000 to 100, she fears that “horror content has run out.” As a last-ditch attempt to recapture her channels earlier magic, she decides to head to Gwanglim station, and starts pressing the station master to tell her about some of the spooky experiences he must have gone through during his time at the station. Played by Jeon Bae-soo (Mantis, Uprising), while initially reluctant, a bottle of rare silkworm liquor soon finds him willing to open up about the strange events he’s witnessed over the years (and yes, I’m pretty sure if the title Ghost Station wasn’t already taken, then that’s what Ghost Train would likely have been called!).
It becomes a subtle running joke as Hyun-young continues her visits, each time bringing a new type of high-end liquor as currency for Bae-soo to tell another one of his stories, essentially making Ghost Train fall into the category of a horror anthology movie. Horror anthologies tend to be dubious propositions, mainly down to the fact that having so many creative voices sitting alongside each other risks an inconsistent tone, and at its worst a varying level of quality from story to story. The likes of the early 2000’s Three…Extremes got it right, but more recent efforts like Korea’s own Tastes of Horror from 2023 suffer from all of the mentioned issues.
Ghost Train has an ace up its sleeve though in the form of Jo Bareun. A writer and director responsible for 2021’s Ghost Mansion, even before becoming aware he was involved the similarities between the 2 productions were obvious. Ghost Mansion features a horror webtoon artist who visits a residential tower block said to be haunted, with the narrative framed around the time he spends with the building’s caretaker, who tells him stories of the strange events he’s witnessed. Ghost Train takes exactly the same template, just swap out a horror webtoon artist for a horror YouTuber, a caretaker for a station master, and the haunted building for a haunted train station.
Far from being a negative though, the formula is one that worked well, so it’s a welcome addition to see it replicated here. The fact that Bareun also directed all of Ghost Mansion, as opposed to having another creative voice handle the short film formats the caretaker’s stories take the form of, offered up a consistent tone, and the character of the webtoon artist acted as an anchor that connects each of the tales. For Ghost Train Bareun penned the script, however directorial duties have been handed over. Thankfully they’ve only been handed over to one director rather than many, taking the form of Tak Se-woong, with the production being his sophomore feature following his 2022 directorial debut Devil in the Lake.
Over its punchy 94-minute runtime Ghost Train offers up 4 tales of the unexpected (well, 5 if you count the conclusion of Hyun-young’s own story – which we probably should since it’s the only one that involves an actual ghost train!). The first involves a cocky youngster played by Kim Woo-kyum (Next Sohee, Seire), who finds his journey home interrupted by a mysterious woman with a tendency to bang her head against the door. It’s a classic trope, but somehow never manages to become any less unsettling no matter how many times it’s done.
The second is my personal favorite, when a young high school student played by Kim Na-yeon (The Deal, The House of Us) finds herself accosted by a woman whose face is covered in bandages, and who seems to enjoy complimenting the beauty of Na-yeon’s nose. Carrying around a glass full of acid, the increasingly unhinged character soon begins pursuing Na-yeon around the station, with the expected results. The third story takes on an almost sci-fi like twist, as a vending machine is revealed to dispense a drink that, upon opening, allows the drinker to make whoever they’re targeting in the immediate vicinity disappear. It’s a power that proves to be particularly beneficial for a homeless man living in the station played by Jin Sung-chan (Songam-dong), who begins using the drinks to climb his way out of poverty, until of course it comes back to haunt him in an unexpected way.
The fourth story begins to incorporate Hyun-young’s own life, as a female co-worker who she’s jealous of, played by a debuting Lee A-yul, finds her hand covered in some kind of mucus that one of the trains overhead handrails was covered in. The result soon has her noticing changes in her body, leading to an unexpected conclusion. If there’s one complaint to be had with the collection of stories, it’s that they lack any real explanation as to why they’re happening. It’s eventually revealed by Bae-soo that the station was built on top of a chapel a cult used to operate in, which feels like it’s expected to be enough for the audience to accept why all these spooky happenings are occurring, but they’re too disparate in their nature to have a connecting theme.
From the bandaged woman with the cup of acid to a vending machine that can make people disappear, while the stories are effective on their own, it would have made it even more effective if there was an overarching reason driving the mysterious happenings. Despite this Se-woong overall does a worthy job of transferring Jo Bareun’s script to the screen. While a connection may be missing on the supernatural side, onscreen the connective tissue between the stories is well handled, with welcome overlapping moments occurring between the tales. One example takes place in the first story when Kim Woo-kyum is buying a pack of cigarettes in a convenience store, and we see the homeless guy from the third story in another aisle, the same scene told from his perspective later on in the narrative.
In the end Ghost Train delivers on all the expectations an audience could want from a horror movie, offering up a briskly paced slice of subway scares that consistently entertains, and ensures you get off at just the right time.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10
