‘Colony’ Review: Zombie Thrills Searching for Emotional Center
Colony sees the Train to Busan filmmaker Yeon Sang-Ho return to the zombie genre after the subpar follow-up Peninsula. With his new film, he pivots back to his familiar strengths, taking a group of survivors in a single-location setting and throwing as many flesh-eating zombies at them as humanly possible. But Colony adds new concepts to the zombie mayhem.
Colony has a gimmick, but it never feels “gimmicky” per se. The rage zombies are all connected like a hive mind, which adds a few extra stakes. What one monster sees, they all see, and they act accordingly through their interlinked communication. Resulting in some clever sequences, even if it does not reach the gripping ambition of Train to Busan.
What is Colony about?
The film centers on a group of characters inside a building during a bioterror attack. The film hits the ground running, introducing the villain, Seo Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan), a biologist and genius who opens the film by explaining his bioterrorist plans to the police. Meanwhile, a professor named Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) has been invited by her ex-husband Han Gyu-sung (Go Soo) to hear the CEO of Chains Bio, Kang Woo-chul (Kim Jong-tae), speak about an innovation involving slime mold that could result in collective intelligence and cell regeneration.
While Kwon serves as our audience surrogate, the film also introduces more characters tied to the looming danger. The most compelling of these characters is Choi Hyun-seok (Ji-Chang-wook), a security guard and loving brother to his sister Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok) who uses a motorized wheelchair.
During our first introduction to them, we see Choi accompanying his sister as she shops around the building. Then we see Lee So-eun (Lee Dam-hee), a young girl bullied by her peers before the outbreak, and a counter-terrorism officer named Lee Bong-seok (Lee Joong-ok), who is called to the building to investigate Seo’s call.
Once the players are introduced, Seo takes revenge on the company he worked for, injects the slime mold into someone, and that character quickly mutates and violently attacks nearby people. The only person with the vaccine is Seo, who has injected the cure into himself, forcing anyone to keep him alive. The virus rapidly spreads as more infected people viciously attack customers and employees inside the building, forcing Professor Kwon and others to work together and escape the quarantined building.
Choi Kyu-seok and Yeon Sang-ho’s horror script has fresh ideas
Screenwriter Choi Kyu-seok and director Yeon Sang-ho pen a script that could easily have been derivative of so many other quarantine zombie films like Rec or Dawn of the Dead. But it’s the clever rules they invent for the hive-mind mechanics that make it spark.
For instance, the film explores ant colonies and how misinformation can manipulate them. The idea is then put into action in an intense scenario where the infected are trained to believe non-infected humans smell like a certain perfume. The screenplay also does a wonderful job of showing the colony learning new information, which is shown visually as the infected seize and tremble while staring up at nothing.
The film also incorporates new stakes by making the antagonist part of the infected network. Anything the infected sees, he also sees, and vice versa. In a sense, Seo is like the film’s Hans Gruber from Die Hard, terrorizing a building for his own gain.
Only imagine, if you will, Hans Gruber controlling and communicating with a building’s worth of zombies, simply by orchestrating a single thought. The concepts make for some compelling sequences that give the horror some life. The film’s only setback is that it may have chosen the wrong main character for viewer engagement.
Colony is imperfect but provides zombie thrills
As a film, Colony excels in its supporting characters. One older character gets a brief moment to shine because he was a competitive track runner in the past, allowing him to dodge and outrun the infected to complete a task for the survivors.
The film also creatively pays off some of the setup for smaller roles. However, the movie offers few reasons to connect emotionally with Professor Kwon as a main character. She endures some tragedy while trying to survive, but her biggest emotional hook is quickly over and never discussed at length again.
The spectacle might have been more emotionally satisfying if the security guard and his sister with a disability were the film’s emotional anchor. When the story pivots to them and their connection, the narrative finds a pulse. Arguably, they also share some of the best moments of the entire experience.
As a return to the zombie genre for Yeon Sang-Ho, I don’t think Colony matches the intensity of Train to Busan. Some sequences already feel dated, such as a scene featuring angry CGI lab monkeys. But for a zombie flick, there are plenty of fresh ideas here to sink one’s teeth into for horror- and action-packed escapism.
It’s far from perfect, but I can’t deny well-executed zombie thrills when I see them. For those seeking Colony this weekend, it will satisfy that flesh-eating itch.
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