‘Colony’: Ferocious, Terrifying, and a New Zombie Classic [Cannes Review]

Hard as it might be to believe, it’s been ten years since Yeon Sang-ho stunned the world—and resurrected an entire undead subgenre—with Train to Busan. Quentin Tarantino ranks it among his favorites of the century, and it’s entered the Romero canon as one of the best zombie movies ever made. Genre fans expected a surge of shambling corpses afterward, but save for some indie offerings (e.g., Virus-32, MadS), and the occasional legacy sequel, the big, theatrical revival never happened. Yeon Sang-ho is trying his damnedest with Colony, a standalone zombie epic that nonetheless feels in conversation with Train to Busan and Peninsula (his maligned sequel). Colony is big, audacious, and like Train to Busan, the best zombie movie in years.

Colony is Train to Busan by way of Resident Evil, Capcom’s celebrated and long-running horror multiverse. Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) and her ex-husband, Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo), are in attendance for a Biotechnology conference hosted at the Doongwoori Building, a massive complex over 30 stories tall, encompassing event spaces and retail hubs in the heart of the city. Early exposition and previews of our forthcoming ragtag survivors across the high-rise—including security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook), his wheelchair-bound older sister, Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), and a trio of students— unravel quickly into chaos as a new virus spreads across the conference, turning those infected into the jittery, charging undead we love so much.

The mission-based structure is predicated on Koo Kyo-hwan’s Seo Young-cheol, the scientist responsible for the outbreak and the alleged vaccine (erm, MacGuffin). Presumably, if the survivors can capture Seo Young-cheol and deliver him to the rescue team, they’ll all be saved. There’s just an entire building full of erratic infected to deal with first.