Train (2020)

What could be cooler than the idea of a murderer killing people in one world and dumping their bodies in the other?! This crime thriller with two parallel worlds looked like something I’d absolutely enjoy, and It did satisfy my thrill trash self a good deal!

Train is a super intriguing, intense, carefully crafted, and well-executed drama. It successfully avoids straying into side stories and gives all of its writing power to the main mystery aka finding the real serial killer, hence focused and very consistent in its storytelling. All characters and murder cases are connected, with every new ep, writers throw a new thread to catch on, every detail is purposed & noteworthy, nothing sounds irrelevant, nothing to waste screentime on. I’m sure such a thing would be even more rewarding to binge-watchers.

Also in terms of production quality, Train didn’t fail expectations!! That chilling dark vibe OCN always sends is clearly there. Cinematography is neat and somehow depressing, with a warm yellow tone for world A and a blue cold one for world B (each similar to their perspective characters!). Editors really did a brilliant job seamlessly switching from world A to B to the past to flashbacks. Music was also on point. Lyrics “I’m gonna find you”, playing at the end of each episode, make you look forward to the coming one, and another soft melody singing “I want to stay with you” makes emotional scenes a bit more felt.

On the other hand, Train is quite predictable, which is not necessarily a bad thing as I was still eager to watch and see if my theory was right or wrong, and everything was built up well with no apparent holes. But I found it cheap that certain characters had suspicion written all over their faces!! I have to admit, it made the resolution a bit underwhelming. I wished if writers would bring another twist but everything was foreseen at the end.

Another thing that bothered me was how I failed to connect with characters and their emotional scars. Although it could be only me, I think they could have chosen a better cast tbh. Most of the time, It felt like YSY was carrying the whole show on his shoulders. He totally lived his character and showed diverse emotions either playing the workaholic detective who lives to care&protect or the discontented inspector who lives with hate&shame. I rooted for him but it felt hella frustrating that no one was responding!

The FL was rather weak (in terms of performance); she had that one angry/sad expression on her face that I was absolutely numb towards. I’m not trying to undermine the actress’s effort, but in my eyes, they had little to no chemistry and it always felt one-sided. That shouldn’t be much of a problem for a thriller really but It’d have been much better if the story was more seasoned and I could feel the desperation to save someone or catch someone, yet clearly the mystery element was my only driver. That’s in part a problem with writing too; ‘cause most characters lacked personality and development, the main culprit’s character is so cliche, and many were merely running the story, I could see no problem if one of them was replaced :( If there’s anyone I loved, it’d be Jung min (the forensic doctor)& Jinwoo (junior detective).

Regardless, Train was an experience I enjoyed and anticipated every week. I recommend it and I’m pretty sure many will like it :)

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An okay crime investigation drama but had the potential to be better

I'll be honest, I only watched this based on the comments. It is good, maybe just for a one time watch. I wouldn't call it amazing though but that's just my preference. I like the idea of every choice matter. It shows the effects of the choices from one world to the other world. A lot of "What ifs" situations which to me helps the ML understand why he did what he did even though he may have lost his love in his world, to understand if everything he did was worth it and this parallel world showed him that.

It's a slow start for the first 2 episodes but it does get more interesting once this started to reveal the parallel world. If I have to say the highlight of this drama, it would be Shi Yoon's acting. He does a great job portraying a heartbroken police detective in his world and an attitude anger driven guy in the parallel world. The only issue with this is that we didn't get to see much of his parallel self which is unfortunate. It would've been nice to see both of them working together to the end but that didn't happen.

When I read the synopsis, I thought it was going to be Do Won traveling between his world and the parallel world to solve these mysterious murder cases. That's not the case. After showing him in his world for the first few episodes, the rest of the drama was in the parallel world. That was disappointing to me. I would've love to see the interactions of both world's police investigators, working together to solve this, with Do Won jumping between worlds and sharing info or having 1 or 2 of his investigators join in going to the other world, but instead we just had the ML figuring out everything while everyone else (including the FL) was clueless and not as useful as they could've been. Let me also say about the FL. I think she was good character in the original world but then she got killed off and became just a bothersome FL in the parallel world. She was tough but a very aggravating character. I just didn't feel no sympathy for her parallel character compared to her character in the other world.

Is it thrilling? Yes. Every moment I anticipate and want to know what happens next. A lot of scenes are pretty creepy, especially with the creepy background music.

Though there's talk about love between the leads, majority of the drama is not focus on romance so don't expect any sweet or cute moments.

Did I enjoy this drama? Yes, however there are plot holes in this drama that doesn't get answer. The bad guys always gain the upper hand and it seems like the good guys are always a step behind which sucks. I liked how this drama ended (not your typical happy ending) but I feel like there should've been more and yes it did felt rushed as well. Problems to the very end but the way they concluded it was okay for me. Definitely wouldn't rewatch it though. This is a one time deal for me.

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