Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Yeon Sang-ho
Starring: Jun Ji-hyun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Kim Shin-rok, Shin Hyun-been, Go Soo
A decade ago Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho sparked life back into the zombie genre with Train to Busan. Now, just when it seemed the sub-genre had nowhere left to go, Sang-ho has done it again. Like Train to Busan, Colony benefits from packing its zombies and survivors into a single location, in this case a multi-purpose building several storeys tall. The initial setup is similar to Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake (the building hosts a shopping mall), but where Snyder's survivors were content to wait it out, there is an immediacy here, with the narrative playing out over a single day and night.
Technically, Colony isn't actually a zombie movie. Nobody rises from the dead here. Rather it is another rage virus thriller, a distinction that has grown increasingly blurry in the decades since 28 Days Later. The virus in question here is unleashed by vengeful scientist Seo (Koo Kyo-hwan), who infects the biotech CEO he accuses of stealing his work. This unleashes the virus in the multi-storey Dongwoo-ri building, where said CEO was leading a conference. With the CEO and everyone he attacks turning into homicidal maniacs, the authorities lock down the building.
In classic disaster movie fashion, Colony sees a disparate bunch of survivors thrown together, with maverick boffin Kwon (Jun Ji-hyun) emerging as the likeliest heroine due to her scientific smarts and quick wits. It's always satisfying when a horror movie features protagonists who use their brains yet still find themselves out of depth (John Carpenter's The Thing being the prime example of such), and that's exactly what we get here. Kwon sciences the shit out of the scenario, using her noggin to figure out how best to survive. At no point does she strip down to a white vest and start hacking into zombies with a sword, as you might expect from a Hollywood version of this tale.
The most interesting aspect of Colony is how the zombies behave as a hive mind. It's not the first zombie movie to explore this idea, but I can't think of another that has exploited this concept so fully. Initially the zoms are a mindless bunch, so dumb that they can't distinguish between mannequins, cardboard standees and real life humans, but they quickly learn from their mistakes. Sang-ho visualises this by having the ghouls suddenly freeze in an upright position, their eyes clouding over as they process new data. A couple of suspenseful sequences are built around the survivors using this opportunity to make a break or execute a plan. Having injected himself with the only antidote, Seo controls the hive, with whom he is able to communicate psychically. Figuring this out, the survivors are forced to use a group chat to converse, lest they give away any information that Seo could use against them.
I'm generally a fan of the shambling zombie over the fast zombie, but Colony employs the latter to good effect. Sang-ho has hired dancers and contortionists to play the horde, and it is highly impressive how they twist and pop their bodies like demonic K-Pop breakdancers. Their level of viciousness also lessens the odds that everyone is going to make it out alive. You might think you know which characters are safe, but Colony lets us know early on that anyone is fair game by slyly subverting an expected trope. The characters aren't particularly developed, but we care about some of them just enough for their deaths to have a surprising level of pathos.
Zombies have long been deployed as a metaphor to represent whatever societal concerns the audience might have at the time of their release. It's difficult not to view Colony as a commentary on AI, with the zombies here "learning" from humans as they observe us. The imitation proves grotesque, a reminder that millennia of human evolution can't be replicated in minutes by some unfeeling hive.
Colony is in UK/ROI cinemas from August 28th.
