A decade after redefining modern zombie cinema with Train to Busan, filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho returns to familiar infected territory with Colony, a frenetic, blood-soaked thriller that trades speeding trains for a towering Seoul skyscraper. While it never quite reaches the emotional highs or cultural impact of its predecessor, it remains an entertaining and inventive genre ride packed with memorable action and grotesque creature work.
The setup is deceptively simple. A disgruntled scientist unleashes a bioengineered virus inside a massive corporate complex, transforming employees, shoppers and executives into ravenous monsters. With the building locked down and the outbreak rapidly escalating, a small group of survivors must navigate floor after floor of chaos while pursuing the one man who may hold the key to stopping the infection.
What immediately separates Colony from countless other zombie films is its vertical playground. Yeon makes excellent use of the skyscraper setting, transforming shopping centres, laboratories, offices, maintenance tunnels and elevator shafts into battlegrounds. The result feels like a collision between a zombie apocalypse and a high-rise action film, with each level presenting a fresh challenge.
The infected themselves are among the film’s biggest strengths. Rather than simply shambling from point A to point B, these creatures evolve, communicate and adapt. Their hive-like behaviour gives the outbreaks an unsettling unpredictability, while the physical performances from the stunt team and creature actors are genuinely impressive. Bodies twist, crawl and contort in ways that feel unnervingly unnatural, creating some of the film’s most effective horror moments.
Visually, Colony rarely disappoints. Yeon’s background as an animator continues to influence his live-action filmmaking, and the film frequently delivers striking compositions amid the carnage. Better still, much of the horror relies on practical effects rather than digital shortcuts, allowing the gore and creature transformations to land with satisfying impact.
Leading the charge is Jun Ji-hyun as biotech professor Kwon Se-jeong. She anchors the film with a commanding performance, balancing intelligence, vulnerability and action-hero resilience. Her chemistry with Go Soo – as her ex-husband – provides an emotional throughline that helps ground the increasingly outrageous proceedings.
Where Colony occasionally stumbles is in its storytelling. The narrative introduces intriguing ideas surrounding corporate power, surveillance, misinformation and collective behaviour, but rarely explores them beyond surface level. Likewise, many of the supporting characters feel underdeveloped, existing primarily to become zombie fodder or create additional obstacles for the main group. At over two hours, the film occasionally loses momentum whenever it pauses the mayhem to explain its mythology.
Still, when Colony focuses on what it does best – inventive action, gruesome set pieces and relentless suspense – it becomes enormously entertaining. Yeon Sang-ho understands exactly what audiences come to a film like this for, and he delivers enough thrills, bloodshed and crowd-pleasing chaos to make the journey worthwhile.
It may not be the genre game-changer that Train to Busan was, but Colony proves Yeon still knows how to orchestrate a spectacular outbreak. For horror fans craving smartly staged action and inventive zombie carnage, this high-rise nightmare is well worth checking into.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Colony is now screening in Australian theatres.
