Macabre...ish Horror Review: Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer, 2013/ 126 min

A second ice age freezes the Earth and a few survivors take refuge on a train, a perpetually moving train that circles the globe. This train has everything! A greenhouse, an aquarium car, water purification car, dentist, tailor, club, pools, restaurants, a school, rich people, poor poor people, classism and the ongoing fight between the ruling class and the poor.

This ongoing issue is fueled by punishment like sticking people’s arms outside, freezing them solid and then shattering the frozen limb and making everyone else watch. And every once in a while the elite come to take a child or two to do the unimaginable.

But it’s not all bad, the poor get fed, these black gelatin ‘protein’ bars, the contents are unknown. But it’s better than the cannibalism that they were doing to each other, I guess.

People have been born and raised on this train and do not know a life outside of it. The ultimate punishment for ‘crimes’ is a sentence in the drawers. Seriously, actual drawers. The train operator and owner is seen and worshipped as a god (Ed Harris), the train seen as divine. And every once in a while the people have an uprising and so far, they’ve all failed. Maybe this last one will succeed, they have planned, prepared and thought of seemingly everything. The plan is to reach the engine, the front of the train and they are in the tail. They’ll have to fight through lots of security forces and reinforced doors that only open for seconds. They have few if any weapons but the plan is solid.

The outcome is both success and failure. Their leader of this uprising in (Chris Evans) and he learns a lot of truths and most of them are awful and the realization that there is no real way to win because even to win is to lose. But there is another truth and possibility but that means that this life, life on the train, is over.

This post apocalyptic movie is based on a book, by Jacque Lob, Le Transperceneige and if you like this there is a series by the same name. This movie is intense, graphic and infuriating plus it has Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer and Kang-Ho Song! It isn’t scary, more a thriller and a heavy one.