Yeon Sang-ho’s latest film “Colony”, which was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival before being released in South Korean theaters today, is another typical zombie movie which does not surprise me a lot. While it is fairly competent and entertaining on the whole, the movie does not go further than Yeon’s previous zombie movies “Train to Busan” (2016) and “Peninsula” (2020), and that is a bit disappointing in my humble opinion.

While “Train to Busan” puts zombies onto a speedy train, “Colony” puts them into a big building located in the downtown area of Seoul. Thanks to a very twisted lad who is also quite a skillful biotechnology scientist, a lot of people inside the building are quickly turned into zombies not long after the first infection of his very contagious fungus occurs, and then the building is swiftly quarantined by the police, who incidentally received a call from that crazy dude in advance.

As a result, a few survivors are helplessly trapped inside the building along with a detective who came for arresting that crazy dude right before the zombie outbreak was started inside the building. One of these survivors is Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), a biotechnology professor who happened to come to a big conference held inside the building along with her colleague/ex-husband Gyu-seong (Go Soo). Thanks to her professional knowledge, it does not take much time for her to understand what is going on around her and several other survivors, and they manage to find a temporary shelter where they can be safe at least for a while.

Because the police are understandably reluctant to go inside the building for rescuing them, Se-jeong and the other survivors must find any possible way out for themselves, and it turns out that there is actually a small chance for them. That twisted lad responsible for the zombie outbreak is still alive and well somewhere inside the building, and he must be captured alive as soon as possible because he notified to the police that he was injected with a vaccine for that dangerous fungus.

Therefore, all they will have to do is locating and then taking him to the very top of the building where the police are ready for rescue, but, of course, this turns out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected. While he does not seem to mind being handcuffed at all when he is finally found by Se-jeong and the other survivors, it is soon revealed that Yeong-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) has a few lethal tricks up his sleeve, and Se-jong and the other survivors consequently find themselves cornered more and more by not only Yeong-cheol and those countless zombies ready to attack and then infect them at any moment.

While they are as fast, bloody, and violent as you can expect, the zombies in the movie turn out to be a little less mindless than expected. As Se-jeong shrewdly observes, their infected minds are connected with each other in a sort of hive intelligence, and they are even capable of learning via their collective mind network, though this always requires a brief stationary moment equivalent to software upgrading.

Needless to say, there subsequently come a series of conflicts among the survivors, and that is where the screenplay by Yeon and his co-writer Choi Gyu-seok stumbles more than once. Because many of the main characters in the story are more or less than bland targets for those zombies, several melodramatic moments in the middle of the story are quite blatant and artificial to say the least, and we only come to observe the story and characters from the distance without much care.

In addition, the story comes to lose some of its narrative tension as occasionally paying attention to what is happening outside the building. It turns out that one of the scientists brought to the scene, Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-bin), has a personal connection with both Se-jeong and her ex-husband, and she becomes all the more determined to rescue the survivors once she finds a possible solution for the ongoing emergency. However, she only finds herself blocked more than once by those government officials not so willing to make any risky decision for them.

Anyway, the movie eventually unleashes more zombies onto the screen during its climactic part, and there is some nasty fun from how it utilizes some of those zombies for more thrill and excitement. You may enjoy a bunch of zombie soldiers wildly shooting at their opponents, and you will also probably like how the zombies get suddenly manipulated to our heroine’s advantage during the expected payoff moment.

Despite their thin characters, some of the main cast members in the film manage to overcome their thankless tasks. While Jun Ji-hyun gradually takes the center with her strong performance, Go Soo, Shin Hyun-been, Ji Chang-wook, and Kim Shin-rok dutifully fill their respective spot as much as required, and Koo Kyo-hwan is effectively loathsome and disturbing as the main villain of the story.

In conclusion, “Colony” is a well-made zombie flick, but it is less impressive compared to Danny Boyle’s recent zombie film “28 Years Later” (2025) and its recent sequel directed by Nia DaCosta. While these two good movies really try to break some new ground in their familiar genre territory, “Colony” simply stays inside its genre conventions and clichés to the end instead, and maybe you should watch the other two movies or “Train to Busan” instead.