The horde has a new look in ‘Colony’

Yeon Sang-ho, the filmmaker behind ‘Train to Busan,’ returns with a gruesome new spin on the genre.

By James Verniere/Boston Movie News

Once upon a time, we had the occasional zombie movie. After George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) became a worldwide sensation, zombie films were more frequent. Now, it’s zombie movies and television 24/7. What iteration of “The Walking Dead” are we at?

South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho might be the zombie auteur of the moment after directing the animated zombie film “Seoul Station” (2016), the live-action, smash-hit follow-up “Train to Busan” (2016), and then the zombie-caper film mash-up “Peninsula” (2020). Now, Yeon brings us a spin-off in the series, the notably “Day of the Dead”-like, zombie-ish, horror film “Colony.”

In his latest tale of humans transformed into something nasty, Yeon, who co-wrote the film with Choi Kyu-seok (“Hellbound”), gives us people who are infected by a pathogen that causes them to spew white foam and turn into demon-faced, insect-like monsters who share a hive mind, act in unison and are driven to spread their plague by attacking and biting the uninfected.

A la George Romero’s classic “Dawn of the Dead” (1978) and John McTiernan’s “Die-Hard “ (1988), “Colony” is set for the most part inside a fictional, sealed-by-the-(highly ineffectual) government building with a shopping mall, where a convention featuring a speaker named Kang Woo-chul (Kim Jong-tae, CEO of the corporation Chains Bio, addresses an audience. But then, in a VIP room inside the building, Kang is infected with a mutated slime mold contagion created by a scientist who accuses him of stealing his work. The contagion quickly spreads via bites, and the uninfected flee and hide.

Among the film’s characters is Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), a biotechnology professor who attends the convention hoping to land a new job with the help of her ex-husband (Go Soo) and can decipher the infected’s actions and observe their evolution. Choi Yun-seok (a likable Ji Chang-wook) is a member of the building’s security team, and his wheelchair-using older sister (Kim Shin-rok) visits him at work. As Seo Young-cheol, the hateful bio-scientist responsible for the outbreak and who can see through the eyes of the infected, Koo Kyo-hwan is a standout.

The infected are covered in gooey, thread-like mycelium, which they spread over everything around them. This is how they communicate with one another. At first, they can only crawl, albeit very fast. Soon, they learn to stand and run. When they communicate en masse through their hive mind, they suddenly stiffen and turn their blood-and-mycelium-coated faces upward in unison. The uninfected learn to use perfume and antifreeze to confuse and trick the infected. In a bit of fraternal devotion, Choi straps a chair-like, folding seat to his back so that he can carry his sister and keep her near at all times. They become a sort of jerry-rigged, dual-being, fighting machine.

Meanwhile, on the outside, another biotechnologist (Shin Hyun-been) helps government forces find Seo’s laboratory, where they encounter something disturbing: a horde of angry, infected (and badly CG’d) rhesus monkeys. As his switch from animation to live-action with “Seoul Station” to “Train to Busan” demonstrates, Yeon has an animator’s eye for visuals and action. His zombies and pathogen-infected humans move (and in a final image, freeze) in ways that suggest an even crazier brand of Looney Tunes.

Yeong also has a degree in Western painting, and one wonders if he was influenced by Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya. A living wall of writhing, barking infected is not an image one will forget anytime soon. One is reminded of a scene in the animated “Seoul Station” in which the escort-girl protagonist joins a group of uninfected people hiding in a locked cell. Imagine being surrounded by dozens of writhing arms striving to reach you. Yeon’s hordes of zombies and hive-minded infected creatures might allegorically depict ordinary people going about their (mindless, soulless) business until they drop.

Yeon has just completed eight episodes of the Toho-produced, Netflix series “Human Vapor” based on the cult favorite 1960 film “The Human Vapor” by the legendary Ishiro Honda (“Godzilla”). A nightmare purveyor, Yeon is as driven as his monsters.

‘Colony’

Rating: R for bloody, violent content and some language.

Cast: Koo Kyoo-hwan, Jun Ji-hyun, Ji Chang-wook

Director: Yeon Sang-ho

Writers: Yeon, Choi Kyu-seok

Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes

Where to watch: In theaters

Grade: A-