Summary
The car is shrouded in darkness, but the guards can still see as they are wearing special masks. The revolutionaries must fight in the dark, and we see them from the perspective of the soldiers. The fight is brutal, and we watch many men get slain by the soldiers. Mason watches as well, through binoculars, her eyes wide. Suddenly, a reinforcement group of revolutionaries carrying torches storm into the car and attack the soldiers.
With the light of the torches, the revolutionaries get the upper hand. One of them grabs an officer and threatens to kill him if the authorities do not surrender. When Mason does not surrender, the revolutionary slits his throat and continues to fight, stabbing Mason in the leg. As Curtis runs towards Mason, he realizes that one of the guards has gotten ahold of Edgar. Torn between killing Mason and saving his friend, Curtis stands still as Edgar gets stabbed in the back.
Suddenly, Curtis grabs Mason and she screams for everyone to stop fighting. He threatens to kill her if she doesn't allow him to keep going forward in the train. As one of the guards runs to kill Curtis, Yona sees and impales him on a spear. Gilliam approaches Edgar's dead body and closes his eyes, before making an announcement telling the survivors to wash themselves in the water supply section.
The revolutionaries wander into the next car, where they find running water with which to clean themselves. Meanwhile, Tanya and Andrew, the two parents with missing children, question Mason about their children's whereabouts, threatening her with violence when she doesn't reveal anything. As Andrew threatens to cut off Mason's arm with an axe, she tells them that Wilford would know where their children are, that he likes kids and will be able to provide them with answers.
Gilliam is doubtful about whether Wilford actually loves children, and Mason launches into a laudatory speech about the leader. "See if he'll come save you," whispers Curtis. When Mason says that Wilford would never leave the engine room, Curtis threatens to hurt her, then threatens to turn off the water supply. She laughs at this suggestion, reminding him that the water comes from the front of the train, from breaking up snow and ice and turning it into water.
Curtis holds a large knife up to Mason's throat and threatens to kill her, but she insists that she can help them. "You've got to go to him and I can take you!" she offers. She then says, "If I take you to the front, you have to kill him, and let me live." She takes out her top teeth, disgusting Andrew.
That night, most of the revolutionaries rest while Curtis and Gilliam stay up discussing the next move. While Curtis is determined to get to the engine and dismantle the existing order, Gilliam is discouraged by how many people have died thus far. "Let me go ahead," says Curtis, suggesting that Gilliam stay behind and look after the others. When he suggests that Gilliam will eventually be their leader, Gilliam scoffs, telling Curtis he is already the leader of the revolution.
The next day, Curtis, Andrew, Tanya, Nam, and Yona set off with Mason towards the front of the train. At the last moment, Gilliam tells a young man named Grey to go with Curtis and he does. When the group assembles, a man draws them and they set off into the next car.
The next car is a greenhouse of sorts, with a grove of fruit trees and harpsichord music playing in the background. Next to a large fountain, a woman knits, and Mason leads the group through telling the various gardeners to stay focused on their work. Nam hands Yona some dirt with worms crawling in it as the group wanders into an aquarium car, filled with various fish. "Do any of you feel like sushi?" Mason, asks, and the group sits down at a sushi bar, as Mason informs them that they are lucky to be eating sushi during one of the two times in a year that sushi gets made.
Mason goes to eat some sushi, but Curtis stops her and makes her eat one of the protein blocks from the rear car. He watches her as she reluctantly eats the block.
Next they pass through a butcher car, and Mason asks if Curtis will remove her handcuffs, as they are about to enter an education car where a group of children are screaming in a classroom. He refuses, and they enter the classroom, where a teacher leads the class in a unison welcoming of the visitors. Tanya and Andrew look for their children among the students, but to no avail. One of the children remembers Tanya and Andrew's children being brought through the classroom towards the front of the train, but nothing else.
The teacher turns on a video, a propaganda video extolling the virtues of Wilford. The children love the story of Wilford's rise to create a transportation empire, and the teacher smiles maniacally as she describes his rise to power. When the government used a special substance called CW7 to counteract global warming, the Ice Age set in, so Wilford created a train that would travel around the world and keep people safe from the horrible weather. As the Teacher rubs her pregnant belly and praises Wilford, the children cheer for their leader.
Next, the teacher plays the organ and leads the children in a song: "What Happens When the Engine Stops? We All Freeze and Die." They then pass by a spot in the landscape where, 15 years ago, 7 people once tried to escape from the train. The bodies are now frozen in the snow, and everyone gazes out the window of the train to see them.
All of a sudden, a man comes in with a cart filled with "New Year's eggs from Mr. Wilford." The children all go and touch the eggs, which are still warm. Then, the Teacher announces that Gerald, the man from the last car who was plucked to come play violin, is going to play for them. As he does, eggs are passed out. Curtis looks at his, noticing a small hole in the bottom. As he cracks it open, he finds a capsule like the others, with a message inside, this time that reads "Blood."
Just as he reads the word "Blood," a string on Gerald's violin breaks and he gets a cut on his chin that begins to bleed. The man passing out the eggs goes into another car. At the very same moment, the egg distributor and the Teacher pull guns out of the piles of eggs and begin shooting. The Teacher kills Andrew, as everyone ducks for cover. Mason crawls on the ground, and Curtis nods to Grey, who throws a knife into the Teacher's neck, killing her.
Mason goes to shoot Curtis, but he kicks the gun out of her hand just as a video gets projected on the television in the classroom. It shows one of Wilford's minions shooting Gilliam in the head and staring up at the camera. Curtis gasps in shock as he watches the unthinkable. Tanya slaps Curtis' face to get his attention as he begins to cry. He grabs a gun and shoots Mason in the head, before reloading the gun and telling the group that they must keep going forward.
Analysis
While the revolutionaries come out on top in the battle with the guards, they lose one of their main allies, Edgar, when he is stabbed in the back. Curtis must choose between saving his friend and fighting for the revolution, and he is torn by this decision to such an extent that he stands still, suspended between taking the wounded Mason hostage and saving his friend. His inaction costs Edgar's life, and the moment is a tragic one, as we see that Edgar is his most loyal ally in the struggle.
One of the struggles of the revolution is that if Curtis threatens Wilford or his higher-ups, he is also threatening the well-being of his own people, who are the most vulnerable citizens on the train. As Mason points out when he threatens to turn the water off in order to get Wilford's attention, he would only be hurting the poorer classes. In the society of the train, the hierarchy is always hurting the weakest faction the most, and the only way to topple the hegemony in power is to fight one's way up to the top.
We soon see that the fascist government that Wilford oversees is as squirrelly and inconsistent as it is threatening and malevolent. While the revolutionaries must go through bloody and harrowing trials to make their way through the cars, it does not take much to get Mason to cooperate. All it takes is the threat of death for Mason to agree to help them. While one minute she is professing an idolatrous admiration for their leader, the next she is suggesting that they ought to kill him in order to save her. Such is the flimsy loyalty holding up the corrupt hierarchy on the train.
Curtis is a reluctant leader, in spite of his bravery and ingenuity in making his way towards the front of the train. Part of his hesitance stems from his sense of guilt at having all of his appendages. While other people's missing appendages signal that they have sacrificed more in standing up to the authorities, Curtis' perfectly intact body signifies that he has not worked hard enough to fight back. Thus, his body becomes a symbol of his sense that he does not deserve a leadership position on the train, even though Gilliam, the man he deems worthy of that position, says that Curtis is the one who should take on the responsibility.
The film is, at its core, an antifascist meditation. Mr. Wilford, the leader of the train, is a businessman, an industrial entrepreneur who used private funds to create a hierarchical system of government that could withstand the cold of the Ice Age and carry a handful of citizens of the earth around the globe. While he is framed by the teacher and by the propaganda video the children watch in class as a benevolent leader, he is also responsible for the violence and inequality on the train, and the fact that his violent ways go unquestioned is part of what makes him such an impenetrable and evil leader. Thus the train itself serves as an allegory for a hegemonic, capital-driven state, in which equality is an illusion and the leader is unquestioned in his authority, a beloved fascist figurehead rather than a respected, elected entity.
