Ten years after Train to Busan, Yeon Sang-ho returns to the zombie movie genre with slimy infected individuals in a Seoul skyscraper. The problem is that the film seems like a Netflix algorithm that binged World War Z, [REC], and three seasons of The Walking Dead.
There was a time when Korean Yeon Sang-ho was hailed as the savior of zombie movies. In 2016, Train to Busan injected new life into a genre that was spinning its wheels like a hamster on a wheel: fast-paced, popular emotion, effective social commentary, top-notch actors, and most importantly, the brilliant idea of turning a Korean train into a zombie centrifuge. Since then? It’s complicated…
After the animated prequel Seoul Station, which was smart, followed by Peninsula, an unlikely Mad Max-inspired sequel that felt like a video game cutscene, we now have Colony. This time, it’s a high-tech skyscraper in Seoul after a biological attack. A mutant virus gradually transforms residents into huge slimy creatures that crawl, run, and eventually organize collectively to devour everything that still breathes. Basically, ant-like zombies, but with minimal bloodshed.
INSIGHTS AND DIGITAL SABOTAGE
The concept isn’t bad. Trapping survivors in a vertical infected space allows for some creative staging ideas: sealed floors, trapped elevators, corridors turned into corridors of horror FPS. However, almost every scene feels like it has been seen elsewhere, often done better. One thinks of [REC] for the infected building, World War Z for the digital waves of frenzied creatures, The Last of Us for the mutant mushroom side… Even the zombies seem tired of their own existence. They drool, growl, grunt professionally, but one can sense that they too have seen too many episodes of The Walking Dead. The most frustrating part is the total lack of madness. Korean genre cinema had a unique ability to blend melodrama, political satire, and hysterical burlesque in the same frame. Here, everything feels tailored for a platform: interchangeable characters, obligatory family trauma, mute child witnessing the apocalypse with big teary eyes, heroic sacrifices… It’s like ticking boxes on a Red Bull-fueled producer’s spreadsheet. Furthermore, the nice gore effect is sabotaged by the all-digital approach. By trying to enhance its monsters with CGI, the film loses all physical sensation. In Train to Busan, one could feel the sweat, the panic, the crashing bodies. Here, everything floats in a vaguely slimy digital mess.
Despite this, there are still some bright spots. A chase in a fire escape. Two or three gritty mutations. A midnight screening energy that sometimes rescues the entire film from an industrial coma. The underlying issue is that after reinventing the Korean zombie, Yeon Sang-ho now seems to be chasing his own shadows. Colony is watchable, then immediately evaporates from memory like a bland episode of a post-apocalyptic series airing on a rainy Sunday night.
Gourmet zombies, yes. But canned cinema.
Colony by Yeon Sang-ho
Theatrical release on May 27
By Marc Godin
