Yeon Sang-ho attached the zombie genre to a car battery and brought it to life with Train to Busan. In Colonyit pushes for evolution and originality. Or The last of us plays with the fungal nightmare of a bio-zombie dystopia, Sang-ho’s vision of a similar narrative is driven by the intensity of 28 days later infected, who all go Dawn of the Dead encounter (RECORDING) 2 in a quarantined mall skyscraper. It’s a fast-paced version of acrobatic zeds with a hive-mind twist—Cirque du Soleil deaths– and yet it lacks the epic and dizzying punch of Train to Busan.
According to Sang-ho, he conceptualized Colony as his most “commercial” film, aiming for big, bad theatrical thrills. Mission accomplished in this department, even if the story transformation mechanisms put a damper on the momentum.
Jun Ji-hyun plays Kwon Se-jeong, a former biotechnology professor who finds himself trapped in Seoul’s (fictional) Dongwoori Building, amid a catastrophic bioterrorism outbreak. The fault lies with Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan), a shunned scientist who seeks revenge against his former company, Chains Bio. It’s during a conference in the Dongwoo-ri building, led by the CEO of Chain Bio, that Young-cheol releases a mutated mold virus that turns anyone compromised into a sprinting, heat-seeking zombie missile. Worse yet, those infected share a single consciousness and collectively adapt to become better predators. Se-jeong’s only hope is to rely on her knowledge and keep the colony guessing, lest she join the herd.
Sang-ho has no problem delivering intense action-horror set pieces (re: Train to Busan, Peninsula). In Colonythis full-throttle attitude results in claustrophobic train cars, sporting goods stores, and high-rise hallways. There’s not a lot of space, and yet Sang-ho keeps the tension high as the unbitten characters flee the athletic zombies with a no-holds-barred mentality. Mutants lunge at each other, contort themselves into incredible shapes, and display a rabid ferocity that heightens the chaos of the encounters. Stab and slash your way through one wave, and seven more crash through – desperate, heartbreaking, but still exciting.
The screenplay, written by Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok, fits into a harder-edged sci-fi concept about gun-toting yellow slime that thrives on the terrors of musty mind control. Corporate research follies mean cell regeneration technology is being transformed into a deadly scourge. The plot develops, pushing the subgenre’s treatment of zombie schemes, but representation is also uneven, as men of the mold continue to thwart Se-jeong’s escapes by processing new data. Colony it feels like video game levels that survivors must face, with new puzzles to solve each time, which disrupts the narrative rhythm. It feels like Sang-ho wants us to experience something different scene by scene, at the expense of throughlines.
Sang-ho also juggles many characters, most of whom are meant to have defining moments. The security guard (Ji Chang-wook) and his disabled sister (Kim Shin-rok); the grumpy counterterrorism agent (Lee Joong-ok); Se-jeong’s helicopter ex-husband (Go Soo); etc., etc. But as the group divides, so does the sense of motivation behind the actions. And while the weight of actions is questioned, while government agencies decide whether those infected can be saved with a miracle vaccine, the frantic humans locked inside Dongwoori struggle to overcome each blow. Colony is as unforgiving as it is action-packed, but the tragedies that befall humans as they run around like mall rats in George A. Romero’s nightmares can seem underdeveloped in the spotlight.
That said, Colony knows why you are here. Slime, maniacal monkeys, ant farms, and parkour moves all play important roles in the film’s mushroom antagonists. Sang-ho isn’t afraid to apply a milky paste to his entire production; a viscous nausea drips from Young-cheol’s ranks. The promise of a rapidly growing biological threat clashes with effects designs that turn Dongwoori into a petri dish for the damned. You’re looking for a roller coaster type watch that’s all about being a screaming machine, and yet Sang-ho doesn’t give up on style. For how clunky the character mapping can seem – not very Train to Busan in this way, there is a nice attention to tactile details that makes Colony more than just a T-virus scam.
Colony would make a wonderful companion watch to David Yarovesky’s The Hive. Yarovesky gives us a luminescent, low-budget take on a camping hive mind, with Sang-ho’s big-budget South Korean zombie flick as the mainstream blast. He’s a filmmaker who alters what he knows – fast-moving undead ruining innocent lives – with a laboratory twist. Not the reinvention I was hoping for, but still an exhilarating take on zombies that keeps butts in seats and smiles on faces.
Movie rating: 3.5/5
