10 Great Horror Movies That Will Crush Your Soul

Here's another South Korean horror. Within that country, there's a strong tradition of melodramatic storytelling, and in any South Korean genre film, you can usually expect it to be the case that there'll be some sort of emotional, heroic sacrifice or that many, many characters will die.

In the case of Train to Busan, a zombie flick set mostly on a high-speed train, nearly everyone bites the dust and only two characters are left alive by the end. Everyone else dies in ways that are often frustratingly avoidable, with many of these courtesy of one of the most purely unlikable horror movie villains in recent memory, a selfish businessman (Kim Eui-Sung) who keeps pushing other people into the path of the zombies. 

Furthermore, many of Train to Busan's deaths are hauntingly emotional and lean wholeheartedly into the melodrama that characterizes this country's cinema. In particular, the death of protagonist Seok-woo (Gong Yoo, who played the Recruiter in Squid Game) is one of the saddest horror movie death scenes out there.

At the end of the day, while Train to Busan also deserves praise for its brilliant action and cast, perhaps the key to its success is just how dramatically rich it is, and how well it balances genre thrills with a devastating emotional wallop. Having said that, despite how sad the movie is, it's also immensely rewatchable, and you might find yourself going back for more.