Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
What if zombies could organize themselves like members of a colony to communicate, co-ordinate and attack humans?
Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho delivers a fresh spin on the zombie-horror genre with his 2026 film Colony, which follows Professor Se Jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) as she attends a biotech conference where rogue researcher Koo Kyo-hwan (Seo Yeong Cheol) unleashes a rapidly mutating virus in a bioterrorist attack, turning people into flesh-eating creatures. The building, which also houses a shopping mall, is immediately placed under lockdown, leaving a group of survivors fighting to escape while also trying to capture Kyo-hwan, the only person who has a cure.
Now, I’m not going to research the science of it all. This is a zombie movie, please! But the fact that this is a deliberate bioterrorist attack, with a clear patient zero and an antagonist, makes Colony stand apart from the hordes of undead stories that skip the whole origin story and don’t feature a vendetta plot. And despite having very little screen time, Seo Yeong Cheol as Koo Kyo-hwan stands out as a twisted psycho intent on taking on the world. From his evil smirk to the vicious, satisfied gaze with which he watches the virus wreak havoc, he’s an ideal horror villain.
Director Yeon Sang-ho, who also delivered a gritty Korean spin-off of the Parasyte manga, slips in a very clear nod to his now-iconic Train to Busan zombie trope, where the undead don’t bother humans if they can’t see or hear them. But the infected in Colony overcome some of the usual zombie limitations because they’re meant to function as a colony that can communicate. For instance, they can learn to mimic humans and pass new information to one another. Each time they do, a creepy-as-hell sound plays, almost like a death knell, sending them all into a brief trance as they assimilate whatever they’ve learnt, such as the scent of a target.
Jun Ji-hyun’s Se Jeong is an experienced biotechnology professor and the quickest to observe and understand the behaviour of the infected. She guides a ragtag group of survivors, including her ex-husband Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo), security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook), his wheelchair-bound sister Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), and a bunch of annoying high-school students. A small parallel subplot follows the investigation into Kyo-hwan’s research facility as authorities try to figure out how to contain the outbreak.
Since the setting is largely limited to the locked-down building, the ground zero of the outbreak, there’s little scope for elaborate survival antics. But this also lends Colony a claustrophobic, unsettling atmosphere. The survivors have two primary goals: get out of the building alive and secure psycho Kyo-hwan, their ticket to freedom. And since they’re all strangers, there’s the usual dose of bickering, fighting, screaming, scheming and backstabbing. What’s a zombie apocalypse if it doesn’t bring out the worst in people, while a heroic few rise to save even the most undeserving scum of the world?
The group work against the zombies is pretty impressive for most part, but the individual personalities of the survivors don’t really leave a lasting impression over the two-hour runtime. Basically, even if everybody died, you wouldn’t feel particularly bad. And that’s the biggest weakness of Colony: it doesn’t feature survivors worth rooting for. But overall, it’s an entertaining entry in the genre, with a dramatic, satisfying climax. You know, the sort where the creators wink at the viewers and let them draw their own conclusions, without being too ambiguous.
Rating: 7.5 on 10. You can rent ‘Colony’ on Prime Video.
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