The Train Of Death

Travelling can be quite rough if you have to drive for many hours. Sure, you can stop and rest along the highway but if your journey takes about 12 hours it´s not like you are excited about driving that long. I rather travel by an airplane, bus or on a train if i am travelling a long journey. Of course you will travel with a lot of strangers but i don´t mind, if i feel like being alone i can just listen to a podcast or watch a movie on my computer. Even though i enjoy flying to other countries the most comfortable way to travel has to be travelling on a train. You can move much easier than on an airplane or a bus and they even have a restaurant you can visit if you need a snack or a lunch. Even though i have travelled many times on trains here in Sweden i have also tried travelling on a train in both Scotland and Spain. There were some differences and i would say that the Spanish trains were a bit more modern than the train i travelled with in Scotland. Nothing wrong with the train journey itself in Scotland but they didn´t have any real restaurant on board the train just a breakfast wagon. I would like to try another train trip in Europe in the future, perhaps in Italy or France would be nice? Speaking of trains there are a lot of movies taking place on a train. You have action star Steven Seagal fighting terrorists on board a train in Under Siege 2 - Dark Territory and you also have horror movies such as the zombie film Train To Busan. I would highly recommend the South Korean horror film Train To Busan because it is really intense and very well made from director Sang-Ho Yeon. Not only are the zombies creepy but the atmosphere surrounding this zombie invasion is really intensive. Watch this film on streaming if you want a fun horor night. Speaking of horror films on trains i have heard about an Indonesian train horror film known as The Train Of Death, a title that sounds exactly what i would call if i travelled on a train with Meghan Markle. I have seen several good Indoniesian horror fims so i was quite curious about this one. Is this a must watch before Christmas arrives or is The Train Of Death just as terrible as Prince Harry´s novel Spare?

A brand new railway line is about to take off to Sangkara Resort, a tourist complex located in the middle of the forest. What most of the passengers don´t know is that during the building of this railway line a lot of railway workers myseriously disappeared for unknown reasons. On this trip they are about to face some of these workers spirits on board this train.

Making a horror film on board a train is actually a good idea as long as you have an intresting story and horror scenes that function as well. In the case of The Train Of Death this is a ghostly horror film in many ways and there is especially one thing that happens in each tunnel the train passes a tunnel, one wagon at a time is disconncted that the ghosts themselves manage to do. This makes the whole train journey far more complicated of course. In the past i have seen some impressive Indonesian horror films and i would probably say that The Train Of Death lands somewhere in the middle between the Indonesian horror films that i remember, i would call this pretty serviceable horror film. The best part of The Train Of Death is without a doubt to see the demonic ghosts attacking passengers and especially when it gets reallly bloody and gory. There is also a nice friendship story between the sister characters Purnama and Kembang, both payed well by actors Hana Masalan and Zara Leola, where one of the sisters is dying from a terminal disease. I do think the practical make up effects on the demonic ghosts looks good and especially one of them look creepier than i expected. Ok so we might as well dig into something i felt could have been better with this film. It takes a whole hour until something really starts to happen. We do get glimpses of the demonic ghosts but they don´t really attack until the film have crossed the 1 hour mark. This means there is a lot of dialogue scenes and in some scenes you really don´t care about certain characters on this journey. On the plus side i do think this film is well acted for the most part and looks good. I believe that if you love horror films in general i think this film could be worth checking out if you want a different take on a ghost story. Director Rizal Mantovani have made a horror film that actually feels like an old school idea while adding some more modern ingredients into the mix and manage to give us a film that´s completely fine. The Train Of Death may inspire you to travel by trains more often and i have to see that as a positive sign for this enjoyable horror film.

Rating: DDD