This rip-roaring, record-breaking South Korean zombies-on-a-train romp barrels along like a runaway locomotive – The Railing Dead. Owing as much to Bong Joon-ho (director of creature-feature hit The Host) as to George A Romero, Yeon Sang-ho’s breathless cinematic bullet train boasts frantic physical action, sharp social satire and ripe sentimental melodrama designed to reach into your ribcage and rip out your bleeding heart. Faster on its feet than 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake, wittier than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and more thrillingly spectacular than World War Z, Train to Busan joins The Girl With All the Gifts in breathing new life into a genre that simply refuses to lie down and die.

We open with a truck driving through a biochemical quarantine zone (“tiny leak, my arse”) and hitting a deer that promptly springs back to life with milky malice in its eyes. Meanwhile, divorced fund manager Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) scans news reports of “Mysterious Fish Death”. He is too tied up with a big business deal to attend his daughter’s singing recital, while all young Su-an (Kim Su-an) wants for her birthday is to visit her mother in Busan, a request to which Seok-woo grudgingly accedes. But as father and daughter board the high-speed KTX train from Seoul to Busan, so too does a wildfire plague that will give new meaning to the phrase “passenger disturbance”.

Moving nimbly from the confrontational animation of The King of Pigs and The Fake to the more mainstream live action of Train to Busan, Yeon retains a sharp graphic sensibility that pays snappy dividends. A platform attack eerily glimpsed from the window of a departing train gives a shiversome taste of what’s to come, alongside a homeless man’s traumatised declaration that they’re “all dead, everyone’s dead” (“Hey kid,” Su-an is told, “if you don’t study hard, you’ll end up like him!”). Before you can say Snowpiercer meets 28 Days Later, a thundering tide of flesh-eaters is pouring through the aisles, over the seats and down the corridors, a necrotising, limb-cracking wave of contorting, gnarly nastiness.

“At a time like this, you only look out for yourself,” Seok-woo tells Su-an when she gives up her seat, reinforcing her belief that “you only care about yourself – that’s why Mum left”. It’s no surprise that, as the ensuing carnage escalates, this failing father will be forced to reassess his insular view of the world, but as with all the film’s disaster movie tropes, familiarity does not detract from the fun. Indeed, there’s an impressive efficiency to the introduction of disparate characters through Airport-style thumbnail sketches (the bullish, blue-collar husband and his pregnant wife, the young baseball player and the cheerleader etc), all facing broad-strokes life-lessons that may or may not see each of them through to the final reel.

Scenes of carnage often offset by stirring melancholy melodies

As with Yeon’s previous work, a healthy distrust of authority underpins the action, a theme amplified here in the wake of the 2015 Mers outbreak. “Fellow citizens, please refrain from responding to baseless rumours,” burbles an authoritarian voice on TV, even as social media is awash with apocalyptic images of bodies falling from the skies and bloodshed on the streets. “We must stay calm and trust the government. We believe that your safety is not in jeopardy!” Crucially, the virulence of this outbreak is clearly equated with poisonous traits already embedded in society, with Seok-woo being pointedly described as “a bloodsucker” who “leeches off others” even as zombies sink their teeth into passengers.

When reports of rioting hit the onboard TVs, someone sneers that “in the old days, they’d be re-educated”. Later, a selfish mob who bar their doors against our ragtag band of heroes seem indistinguishable from the ravenous hordes eating their way through the train, with Yeon playfully conjuring mirror images of horror crushed up against the opaque glass.

Kim Eui-sung is in splendidly hissable form as the snotty executive who becomes the embodiment of first-class fiendishness, while Lee Hyung-deok’s agile camerawork and Yang Jin-mo’s dextrous editing crank up the ferocious pace as the undead swarm like insects up escalators and along tracks. Jang Young-gyu’s music alternates from squishy stabs and honking alarums to more lyrical piano tinklings, with scenes of carnage often offset by stirring melancholy melodies that emphasise heartbreak over horror.

Those looking for more back story may seek out Yeon’s animated scene-setter Seoul Station, but you don’t need a primer to be swept up in the torrential momentum of Train to Busan’s non-stop thrill ride.