Colony

OVERVIEW

Ten years after Train to Busan, Yeon Sang-ho returns to the genre that made his name for the third time, this time inside a sealed Seoul high-rise and working with a different set of zombies. Colony opens at a biotech conference where a fired researcher (Koo Kyo-hwan) injects a mutating virus into the company’s CEO, and the building goes into lockdown before anyone fully understands what has been released. Inside, a small group of survivors led by a biotech professor (Jun Ji-hyun) realizes that the infected share a single intelligence, and that every failed attack only teaches the colony how to do better next time.

BACKGROUND

This is Yeon Sang-ho’s fourth Cannes invitation and his third zombie film, and the festival has deliberately framed it as a homecoming. Train to Busan premiered in the Midnight Screenings section in 2016, Peninsula landed in the Official Selection during the pandemic in 2020, and Colony is back in the same Midnight slot exactly ten years after the film that made his global name. Yeon publicly called it the most commercial film he has made, with a ₩17 billion budget that is modest by Hollywood standards but high-end for a Korean genre film, especially in a recession year.

THE REVIEW

Colony lands squarely as a confident, well-built zombie film that goes through all the beats we’ve seen before, never challenging the urgency and precision of Train to Busan, while still providing effortless fun. The film knows exactly what it is, and Yeon is too good a craftsman for it to be anything less than competent on a scene-by-scene level.

The premise of a frustrated scientist fired for his ambitions has been done to death, and the early stretch plays like a generic outbreak setup, better suited for a straight-to-streaming release. The villain Seo Young-cheol, played by Koo Kyo-hwan, is the film’s weakest aspect, draining the energy and urgency whenever he appears. He turns into a kind of supernatural conductor of the colony, robbing the spotlight from the actual zombies, who are far more frightening. It would have been far more interesting had the film focused entirely on their colonized adaptive trait, without a personified leader.

Three things make the film worthwhile and better than the usual zombie fare. First is Yeon’s effortless handling of the setpieces, where the survivors’ attempts to outsmart the colony make your palms sweat with the precise construction of the scenes.

The second, and most surprising, is the personality of the main group’s characters. They are not as instantly engaging as Train to Busan‘s roster, and for the most part, respect their obligations and death order. Yet they are written and performed as characters from regular movies, and for the most part, feel like human beings, to the point that more than once, you feel shocked that a few of them turn into food, and how ruthlessly it happens. Kwon Se-jeong, the biotech professor played by Jun Ji-hyun in her first screen appearance in eleven years, follows the usual arc of finding strength as she goes on, growing stronger as the group collapses. There is a sincerity in Jun’s earlier scenes that makes you root for her even as you know exactly where the character is headed.

Finally, the zombies themselves have a new trait that, according to Yeon, is modeled on AI, with the colony sharing a connection that lets them learn and rapidly evolve. The shared-consciousness mechanic has obvious overlap with Apple TV’s Pluribus premise. The choreography by Jeon Young, who handled the zombies in Peninsula and Hellbound, delivers the colony’s defining visual: dozens of infected move in synchronized waves, snapping into the same posture at the same instant, producing a genuinely eerie effect that gives the film its most distinctive (and funnier) moments.

As a piece of genre commentary on AI, the film never actually delivers on the thesis, and Yeon’s Variety interviews about minority opinions and universal synthesis are more interesting than anything the film puts on screen. As a wrinkle on the zombie formula, though, it works. A welcome change for a genre that usually loses steam after the initial outbreak.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Colony won’t knock your socks off, and it won’t surprise you with its storytelling, but it does provide the good time it sets out to provide. It is the equivalent of an above-average slasher, or easy-going romcom: it might be the 100th time you’re watching similar beats, but its simplicity is so effortlessly entertaining that it justifies why 100 of them keep getting made.

At a glance

3/5

“ENTERTAINING”

#23 of 34 in Cannes 2026 Movies RankedSee the ranking →

• #105 of 219 in 2026 Movies Ranked →

Where to watch

🎟️Rent or buy at Apple TV Store, Amazon Video

Where to watch

📅Coming soon

Trailer

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