Yeon Sang-ho’s ‘Colony’ is the Terrifying, Adrenaline-Fueled Sibling to ‘Train to Busan’

Yeon Sang-ho‘s Train to Busan is undoubtedly one of the best zombie films ever made. With his latest, Colony, he injects the idea of collective evolution with the zombies in a much more action-packed scenario that packs a lot of entertaining and terrifying tension even if logic falls apart tremendously halfway through the film.

Horror master Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) directs a new Korean zombie thriller starring Jun Ji-hyun and Koo Kyo-hwan. Professor Se-jeong (Jun) is thrust into a bloody nightmare when a rapidly mutating virus is released during a biotech conference causing authorities to seal the facility. Trapped inside with no escape, Se-jeong along with a small group of survivors must fight to stay alive while the infected undergo horrific transformations.

Colony in a nutshell is if The Raid, The Last of Us, and Resident Evil were all mixed together. If you’re wondering if many of the film’s elements seem familiar, it’s because most of their themes in the film are not exactly novel in the zombie genre (particularly when it comes to the collective hivemind and evolution with zombies). Despite the familiarity, there is an undeniable level of fun and terror that Sang-ho has successfully injected into the film. Just don’t think toooooo much on the logic of the world building or the decisions made by the survivors, which we will get to in a bit.

Anchoring the film is the terrific Jun Ji-hyun, who many might be familiar with in her breakout role as My Sassy Girl. At first, the film suggests that the main lead is played by Go Soo, but early events reveal that this is certainly not the case. Shin Hyun-been also comes in at a crucial part later on in the film and the film is all the better with two strong heroine characters. In the genre realm where the leads are often male-dominated or with just one heroine lead, it is good to see this film having both female leads that pass the Bechdel test. The film also makes a rather compelling point that men are absolutely the worst when it comes to following instructions and making leadership decisions. Speaking of terrible men, Koo Kyo-hwan is having the time of his life with the villainous role of Seo Young Cheol but I HIGHLY recommend going into this blind in terms of this particular character.

Speaking of terrible decision-making, there’s plenty of it to go around within the film’s incredibly expendable ensemble cast. Some of the decisions seem to defy all logic and contradict the rules and events established before. It is understandable that less-than-wise moments occur for zombie action scenes to happen but when it happens at such a frequent rate as found here in Colony, you do begin to question the overall intelligence of the characters we’re supposed to care about. Yes, there are certain individuals that are rather malicious who we are more than glad to see get their bloody ends but when it happens to the sympathetic characters, it becomes hard to care about them as they just end up as zombie fodder.

The real stars of the film are the zombies themselves. Portrayed by modern dancers, their movements were simply breathtaking to look at and gave the film a unique edge over other zombie films. Director Yeon Sang-ho explains his decision: “Ultimately, we needed to express the exchange of information through the body,” he said. “Since modern dancers are accustomed to expressing abstract concepts physically, they did an incredible job portraying the very concept of the infected being connected as one. All the movements that the audience found impressive, including the motions when they ‘update,’ were expressed far better than I had imagined.” With choreographer Kim Su-in, the zombie movement was perhaps one of the best elements of the film.

Is this film as good and hard-hitting as Train to Busan? Ehhh… no. BUT! It might be because Colony is more interested in being an action-thriller while Train to Busan is anchored with the father-daughter emotional core and fleshed out with more memorable supporting characters (which is helped by the fact that the ensemble cast for Train to Busan was considerably smaller). I also didn’t spend a good duration of the film questioning the decisions of the characters, which I’m sure might have played a factor in the “communication breakdown” theme that Colony kept reinforcing through the film.

I still had one hell of a time with this film and would strongly recommend it to all genre fans. It will be released nationwide in the U.S. on August 28. You can find closest film screenings and movie times here.