‘Marvel Zombies’ Is Quietly Referencing One of the Best Korean Horror Films

Marvel is really pulling out all the stops with this one. Spider-Man is shown decapitating enemies, dead Avengers return as the main villains, and Blade slices through Ghost with Khonshu at his side. With a rating of TV-MA, Marvel Zombies is looking to be an epic (and bloody) miniseries from this corner of the comic book world. With teasers, trailers, and official clips already released by Disney on YouTube and the like, fans get a peek at how far this “What-If” series truly goes. Surprisingly, one of the previews not only divulges some of the show’s most anticipated fights but also includes an homage to another zombie hit right off the bat.

Let’s rewind to the very beginning of the second trailer. With the city crumbling and zombies constantly emerging, the infected start to drop from the sky — many falling off the rooftop and through the windows of a nearby building. Shang-Chi and Katy are in the middle of all of it, helpless. While the scene comes and goes in the blink of an eye, all those zombies in your face at once — whether for the characters in the series or for you watching it — is pure nightmare fuel. The impact is something else. With that being said, Marvel Zombies has taken a bite of inspiration from 2016’s Train to Busan.

‘Train to Busan’ Takes the Zombie Horde To a New Extreme

This Yeon Sang-ho-directed horror film perfectly conveys an overwhelming sense of suspense while also compressing the zombie apocalypse narrative into a confined environment. Almost every member on board this fast-moving train has a story that’s worth telling. While not all of them can be named here, actor Gong Yoo plays the main character, Seok-woo, an employee of an investment firm who tries to protect his daughter at all costs. Jung Yu-mi co-stars as Seong-kyeong, the pregnant wife of Sang-hwa (played by Ma Dong-seok). Initially trying to survive alongside the many others aboard the train, these two manage to hold their own all the way to the film’s climax.

As much as Marvel Zombies and Train to Busan are far apart in style, one thing is sure: the zombies are hungry, and they will unknowingly sustain massive damage to get to their next meal. While the South Korean film focuses on ordinary people and not superheroes, the undead mentality remains the same. Similar to the Marvel Zombies trailer, where dozens of zombies fall face-first onto the pavement, this same horror schematic appears in Train to Busan more than once, delivering the same effect to audiences. This type of sequence is even more terrifying in live action.

They Both Make the Powerful Powerless

This is first seen in a news report that comes on early in the film. A news flash displayed on a television within the train shows zombies literally dropping from helicopters onto unsuspecting skateboarders and pedestrians. This blink-and-you’ll-miss-it impending doom moment was an inspiration for Marvel that came from all the way across the globe. No matter how badly these fiends are injured in Train to Busan, they get up — even all distorted like — and are once again ready to devour humans.

Simply put, this has become a well-established trope in this horror subgenre. Hordes of zombies can make much more of an impact than one or two. We all know that. Just look at Brad Pitt’s World War Z (2016) — the massive wall wasn’t even tall enough in Jerusalem. The Horde, a French horror film released in 2009, had so many zombie arms reaching out for one man that it was unlike anything audiences had seen before. But what Marvel Zombies and Train to Busan do that brings them together is the same thing that sets them apart from the others. This is another reason why Train to Busan could be an inspiration behind the new Disney+ miniseries.

Both presentations feature characters who were once strong in their own right, but now that presumed power and prestige are gone. The ones running away in the Marvel Zombies trailer are Shang-Chi and Katy from the 2021 MCU movie, and the main character in Train to Busan was a hedge fund manager. Neither money nor martial arts means a thing when you have hundreds — if not thousands — of insatiable zombies on your back.

Yes, Marvel Zombies is not canon, so it won’t affect the main MCU timeline, and Seok-woo’s job is only referenced briefly in phone calls — but the parallel still holds. Hero or not, they all thought they were at the top of their game, but the zombies always bring everything back to reality. If you want to check out either of the titles highlighted in this piece, Train to Busan can be watched anytime on Netflix, and Marvel Zombies is available to stream on Disney+ from September 24.