Back in 2016, director Yeon Sang-ho delivered horror and heartbreak in equal measure with the high octane zombie thriller Train to Busan, an impassioned plea for human unity in the face of societal selfishness. Now, ten years later, Yeon’s latest foray into the world of the undead dares to ask – in the age of regurgitated social media takes and trends, bot floods, and mass AI-induced psychosis looming on the horizon, are we all now too connected?
In his fourth zombie movie following Train to Busan prequel and sequel Seoul Station and Peninsula, Yeon once again wastes no time getting into the action, situating its main crop of characters in a bio-tech conference right in the corporate heart of Seoul. Kwon Se-jeong (My Sassy Girl’s Gianna Jun in her first film role in a decade), a beleaguered professor with little to lose and everything to gain, quickly finds herself at the center of an viral infection outbreak that turns its victims into slathering, bloodthirsty beasts hellbent on taking down anything in their way with animalistic fervor.
According to zombie lore, the rules of making it through an infection outbreak are simple, right? Find those left alive, arm yourselves, and wait for it all to blow over. Most movies of the genre operate on the plot device that humans are generally smarter than the mindless shamblers trying to eat their brains, meaning outsmarting them is usually the quickest and easiest way to ensure survival, but Colony‘s brutes are brainier than your average biter.
As the chaos quickly spreads through the building, Se-jeong and a typically ragtag group of survivors, including her ex-husband Gyu-seong (Go Soo), bullied teen So-eun (Lee Dam-hee) and her tormentors, security guard Hyeon-seok (Ji Chang-wook) and his sister Hyeon-hui (Kim Shin-rock), quickly learn the hard way that not only are these Infected all tapped into a collective consciousness, they’re also able to trigger instantaneous evolution en masse.
Inspired by, as the name suggests, the group sociology of insects, Colony’s Infected are easily some of the most physiologically interesting that the genre has spawned in years. They’re also – as most zombies are – a direct reflection of the current state of humanity, one in which information (and more and more frequently, misinformation) runs rampant via the ultra-high-speed information exchange we call the Internet. Initially unable to tell the difference between real people and cardboard cut-outs, the Colony hive feels eerily reminiscent of your Boomer relatives falling for embarrassingly obvious AI-generated ragebait on Facebook.
It's not just that they're thematically terrifying, either. Much like the Infected of Train to Busan, the Colony swarm is made up of bone-cracking, jaw-snapping vectors brought to life by choreographer Jeon Youn and the same dance collective who worked on Yeon's aforementioned breakout horror hit. Inspired by the nurses of Silent Hill and the gynoids of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, there's an uncanniness to their movement that's only exacerbated when the fleshy fusion starts. Yep, that's right. Blood isn't the only bodily fluid spilled by these Infected, who literally ooze a viscous white mucus that indicates their assimilation into something of a mycelium network. It’s oopy, goopy, and downright disgusting.
Cinematographer Byun Bong-sun keeps the action electrifying with frenetic camerawork that highlights the unpredictability of the Colony hive, with composer Chae Min-ju's ominous soundscape incorporating everything from discordant screeches to thumping, industrial style beats. In typical South Korean action cinema style, there's a flair of the overdramatic to every facet of Colony (complimentary) that keeps you hooked even as the story and characters begin to wear thin. I'm not the first to make this comparison and certainly won't be the last, but Colony has many of the aesthetic hallmarks of a horror video game adaptation – both good and bad.
In fact, if Zach Cregger’s ends up being a total dud (which is doubtful, sure), Colony could well be crowned the best Resident Evil movie of 2026. The DNA of the iconic horror gaming series, from shady corporations meddling in bioweaponry to a delectably devilish supervillain (an incredible Koo Hyo-hwan, who devours every scene he's in with charismatic abandon), runs through the film like the T-virus in a Raccoon City citizen's bloodstream.
In a year where 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has already set the bar impossibly high for infected/zombie horror movies, Colony firmly stands its ground. And while the film never quite reaches the same lofty heights as Train to Busan (few horror movies do, let's be honest), it's still a rip-roaring good time with plenty of timely commentary to flesh out its bloody bones. Enjoy with an audience for full immersion, although hopefully not the mindless kind.
Colony hits theaters on August 28.
