By the sheer strength of 2016’s Train To Busan alone, director Yeon Sang-ho should be mentioned to the same sentence as the great George A. Romero when it comes to the evolution of zombie cinema. While Romero managed to create the entire concept of the modern zombie within the three installments of his lauded Dead Trilogy, he managed to clearly articulate both the rules that governed the living dead while using each installment to move the creatures forward, be it the various ways they seemed to be evolving, or the way they were used as metaphors for modern life.
Seemingly also having an uncanny knack for manipulating zombie outbreaks in ways that pushes the genre in bold, new directions, Train To Busan was not only one of the most intelligent fright flicks of the 2010s, but it also came loaded with heart and nail-gnawing excitement too, which rightfully installed it in my mind as one of the greatest zombie flicks ever made. Well, Sang-ho’s at it again, with his his first zombie film since 2020’s Peninsula – but can Colony bring all the scares, smarts and emotion we expect from the director, or is this one infection that’s burnt itself out before it’s started?
Notifying the police that he intends to commit an act of bio-terrorism during a presentation from the Chains Bio corporation inside the 32 storey Dongwoo-ri building, scientist Seo Young-chul first injects himself with a supposed vaccine before infecting CEO, Kang Woo-chul, with his slime mold bioweapon. The result, as you’d imagine, proves to be highly unpleasant as the infected man soon spreads the virilant virus throughout the place resulting in a total lockdown. But while the authorities gather outside, uncertain about how to proceed, those trapped inside with the drooling zombies notice that this version of the infected has a few new tricks up their mucusy sleeves.
For a start, the fact that they’re infected by some sort of mold means that the infected are connected into some sort of hive mind – that means when one of them figures out something and gets smarter, all of them get smarter after they “download” the shared information into their collective via a method involving a bloodcurdling scream. Realising that they need to stay at least a couple of steps ahead of the rapidly evolving infected, survivors trapped inside have to work out how to escape the sealed off building, and fast.
Ostracised professor Kwon Se-jeong and her caring ex-husband, Han Gyu-sung – who has been trying to secure her a job – have to try and marshal a group made up of a dashing security guard, his wheelchair-bound sister, some terrified teens and a cross-section of other civilians to figure out how to stay alive and un-infected. However, when they learn from a police officer in their midst that the only way the rescue team will touch them, is if they manage to locate the vaccine-stuffed Seo Young-chul and escort him to the roof. While this mismatched group struggle to become a cohesive unit, Han’s current wife races to unlock the secrets of Seo’s virus – but soon they discover that the infection may actually be the rogue scientist’s idea of creating a new world order…
I genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a zombie movie for a while that contains this many ideas within a single film, and as a result, Colony ends up being a lot of movie. It honestly seems that Sang-ho is coming up with something utterly new every other scene, either upgrading the way the infected operate, or having his overworked cast struggle to stay ahead of an ever-changing game. The result is a fast-paced monster mash that often sacrifices emotion for an overload of cool new stuff; and thus runs the risk of overstaying it’s welcome (you’ll be exhausted by the end) – and yet when it comes to delivering a rip-roaring, pulse-pounding, zombie adrenaline-fest, there’s still few who can do it at the scale Yeon Sang-ho can.
In fact, while there’s a lot of ideas and concepts here that technically have been cribbed from a wide range of other sources, Sang-ho delivers them at such a unrelenting pace, he makes them feel remarkably fresh. At the very start, the infected move and act exactly like they do in Train To Busan, with contortionists working overtime to show the sinew-stretching effects of the mold mutation taking hold. Similarly, the Dongwoo-ri Building and the people inside it aren’t a million miles removed from the base elements of either Dawn Of The Dead movies (Romero or Snyder, take your pick), and you could even argue that the notion of the dead exchanging info is fairly similar to some of the themes found within Stephen King’s Cell – but once Colony really picks up speed, the sheer momentum Sang-ho whips up is more than sufficient to barrel us through anything that feels too familiar.
However, there’s so much to Colony, it tends to cancel itself out at times. While the film introduces the idea that several infected will merge together to make one super-zombie (think the Marauder from the end of Evil Dead Rise), the idea doesn’t make it much further than a single scene and similarly, some of the individual threads of the supporting characters tend to be small potatoes once Sang-ho starts going more into the realms of Seo Young-chul veering into supervillain territory as his virus eventually allows him to control his mucus-hacking army at will. As a result, frequent time spent with bickering, blame-doging politicians threaten to overload an already crowed amount of social commentary. However, while Colony fails to have an emotional core as deep as Train To Busan (A zombie film that actually made you cry? Surely a miracle, no?), it’s still absurdly exciting and once you’re locked in, all those scattered ideas and metaphors for technology blurring our independence grab you roughly by the lapels and sprints to the finish like a jet powered mucus-zombie.
Certainly an improvement on the Fast & Furious stylings of Peninsula, Colony can’t quite nail you as hard in the feels as Train To Busan famously did. However, when it comes to big ideas, a even bigger scale and a breakneck pace that few zombie flicks can match, Colony would easily be the best on the 2026 block if it wasn’t for the Iron Maiden stylings of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Still, you have to agree, when you compare the sight of a cured Sampson and Ralph Fiennes rocking the fuck out with all the crazy shit this movie hurls at you (zombies drive and shoot freakin’ guns in this one), this has been undoubtedly the most interesting year for zombie cinema in ages.
Expecting Sang-ho to top Train To Busan was about as reasonably far-fetched as expecting George Romero to top his Dead Trilogy with Land Of The Dead (it was a nice thought – but it was never going to happen). However that doesn’t mean that Colony doesn’t come dangerously close at times. What it lacks in temperance, it more than makes up for in raw, edge-of-your-seat thrills as a bickering clutch of humans try to pit their wits against a horde of infected all working on the same page. Sure, there’s no “i” in team, but there’s certainly one in zombie…
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Where to watch Colony: