Colony – Review

A decade after sending audiences sprinting onto trains and nervously eyeing public transport, South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho returns to the kind of undead chaos that made his name. Years spent building out the wider Train to Busan (2016) universe through Seoul Station (2016) and Peninsula (2020) clearly hasn’t dulled his appetite for carnage as the fast-moving infected, screaming crowds, and ordinary people making terrible decisions still remain very much in his wheelhouse.

Colony wastes almost no time getting down to business. Separate from the wider Train to Busan continuity, events unfold across a single day and almost entirely within Seoul’s towering Doongwoori Building, transforming an ordinary office block into a vertical obstacle course of blood, panic, and bad luck. Confined spaces have always been fertile ground for zombie horror, and Yeon squeezes every ounce of tension from stairwells, elevators, office floors and narrow corridors where danger can arrive from literally any direction. Escape constantly feels one floor away… at least until another snarling body comes crashing through a doorway.

Storytelling takes a back seat to momentum, which feels entirely intentional. Disgruntled former biotech employee Young-chul, played by Koo Kyo-hwan (Kingdom: Ashin of the North), unleashes a virus that transforms people into twitching, contorting man-eaters after his research ideas are stolen, but motivations barely matter once bodies start dropping. Bites spread infection, bodily fluids make everything worse, and Young-chul claims antibodies injected into his own body hold the key to stopping the outbreak. With authorities locking down the building and rescue hanging by a thread, survivors including professor Se-jeong (Gianna Jun, My Love from the Star), security guard Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook, The Empress Ki), and his wheelchair-bound IT genius sister Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok, Hellbound) are forced into a race against both time and increasingly unpleasant odds. 

Characterisation largely survives on broad strokes with Se-jeong often functioning as the person tasked with explaining bad news while a group of teenagers enthusiastically continue the proud zombie-horror tradition of making catastrophically stupid f***ing decisions at exactly the wrong moment. Hyun-seok and Hyun-hee emerge as the strongest presence among the survivors, largely because their sibling dynamic injects a little humanity amid all the flying limbs and infected chaos. Early encounters almost lull survivors into a false sense of security as these creatures initially stagger around like confused predators, distracted easily and operating on instinct alone but before long, Yeon Sang-ho upgrades his monsters into faster, nastier hunters capable of communicating and coordinating with unsettling efficiency.

Much like Train to Busan where danger comes from restricting movement and trapping people, Yeon and cinematographer Byun Bong-sun (Space Sweepers) squeeze every ounce of tension from the high-rise setting in Colony, moving between gleaming shopping areas, cramped offices, security rooms, lifts and darkened basements with a visual confidence that keeps every floor feeling distinct. Early sequences unfolding inside the polished mall spaces evoke memories of Dawn of the Dead (1978), though Yeon quickly turns the building into his own playground of escalating panic. Having started his career in adult animation (The King of Pigs, The Fake), his eye for visual rhythm remains obvious throughout – movement, colour and composition all work together to make even simple chase sequences feel tightly orchestrated.

Zombies quickly become the real stars of the production, crawling across floors like broken animals, twisting into shapes that barely seem human, or piling together into writhing masses of limbs and bodies, these creatures dominate nearly every frame they enter. Their hive-mind behaviour adds unpredictability as information spreads among them with disturbing efficiency – one infected learns where survivors are hiding and suddenly all of them know; one discovers a new way to move and suddenly the entire horde evolves. Watching these monsters slowly become smarter feels like seeing a cheat code activate halfway through the film, recalling the escalating terror of something like HBO’s The Last of Us (2023 – present).

Credit belongs equally to every performer buried beneath fake blood, prosthetics and contorted body movements. Every infected extra attacks with a kind of unnerving physical commitment that often feels closer to dance choreography, requiring athletic precision and a complete abandonment of dignity. Bodies twitch, bend and move in increasingly unnatural synchronisation as the infection spreads, giving the horde a strangely hypnotic quality. Beyond the building walls sit police barricades, scientists, and all the expected disaster-movie furniture, but outside noise exists mostly to remind audiences how completely things have gone off the rails indoors.

As pure zombie entertainment, Colony tears through its 123-minute running time with blood-soaked confidence and Yeon’s understanding of physical space, eruptive action, sticky practical textures and the rhythm between silence and complete mayhem keeps everything moving with gleeful energy. Sure, a few convenient shortcuts creep into the story but worrying about logic during a movie where hyper-evolved zombies are piling themselves into snarling human towers feels a little like fact-checking a fever dream. Sometimes all a zombie movie needs to do is lock audiences inside a building and let absolute carnage take care of the rest. On that front, Colony bites hard.

Colony is in cinemas now.

Natalie

Natalie is a big fan of anything related to movies, TV shows, and anime — you name it. When she’s not reading or being a dedicated cinephile, she’s probably playing gacha and tabletop games, or daydreaming of Caleb from Love and Deepspace.