'Colony' Review
- John Odette
- Aug 24
- 3 min read
Release Date: 08/28/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Action. Adventure. Crime. Fantasy. Horror.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Well Go USA Entertainment.
The Verdict: A Maybe
It’s been a decade since Yeon Sang-Ho’s Train to Busan permanently etched itself into the Mount Rushmore of premium zombie experiences with its focus on adrenaline, heart, and scares working so deliciously well. The underseen and underappreciated follow-up, Peninsula, expanded the scope, building on Train’s chaotic beauty by physically fleshing out the story in a larger setting. The director’s latest, Colony, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival at a midnight screening, attempts a not-so-new amplification of zombie lore: hive-mind communication. Like most cinematic undead ventures, the social commentary here is on-the-nose and obvious. But its delivery is too tepid and doesn’t bite down enough to convert me.
The zombie outbreak in Colony shifts from a moving train and into a Korean high-rise building, feeling more like Die Hard than Dawn of the Dead. In one of the ballrooms, a bioengineered mold capable of regenerating dead tissue is the focus of a presentation by a tech CEO, played by Kom Jeong-tae. His disgruntled partner, a mad scientist played with delightful smugness by Koo Hyo-hwan, organizes an outbreak of the mold, injects the only vaccine into himself, and stabs the CEO with the virus in the VIP suite. In minimal time, the building is overrun (and locked down) while a few scrappy survivors pool together to find a way out.
Colony walks a fine line, and stumbles more than strides. The remaining survivors, many of whom are caricatures or archetypes from much better zombie films, die too quickly just before they become interesting. The zombies experience collective seizures as they learn new information; the survivors must also adapt to survive around them. Jun Ji-hyu, playing an unemployed biotech professor, becomes the brains of the operation as she picks up on the evolving information exchange among the zombies. This leads to entertaining means for the group to distract or negotiate with the monsters, but the gimmick dries up fast, with many characters folding to zombie-movie tropes of poor decision-making.
The gradual decline of the survivors’ cool-headedness into self-destruction parallels the ever-growing hive intelligence, which will make the experience challenging to root for anyone except the smart lady professor. Many advances the heroes make turn around to bite them, or go entirely uncompensated, literally. A bright spot is the principal villain, Koo Hyo-hwan, who exudes an all-or-nothing, watch-the-world-burn sense of nihilism. Being the first inoculated (with the “vaccine”) grants him dominion over the hive, enabling him to tap the network to stay two moves ahead of the survivors, while he haughtily smiles in perpetuity.
There are exceptional chase scenes and action set-pieces that push Colony through its 2-hour runtime, including a zany ant circle in the film’s climax. Much of what is offered here is entertaining enough, even if it’s included in twenty other zombie films that preceded this one. The commentary on mob mentality, groupthink, and conformity reflects the lack of critical thought in our contemporary society. This motif, coupled with unrelenting undead horrors, works up to a point. But where the strengths of Colony dilate, the exposure of what’s missing percolates down. Where I thought I would feel catharsis, I only felt relief. As far as zombie movies go, one could do worse, but Colony leaves so much on the table.
