A decade after Yeon Sang-ho’s international breakout with the science-fiction sensation Train to Busan, the director has spent much of his career circling back in an attempt to rediscover the magic and formula that banked him a handful of genre pictures in the first place. The returns have mostly been diminishing for one reason or another, whether it’s Peninsula boiling down the original into a derivative sequel, or 2023’s JUNG_E retaining the science-fiction sheen while replacing hordes of monsters with robots, for the worse. Colony is probably his closest work yet to getting back on track, but it has too many gears turning when the best and most fun parts of the movie are standing painfully obvious right in front of the screen.
Or should I say crawling around on screen, at least to start. The monsters here are less your stereotypical zombies and more like a mutating, upgrading version of an undead horde. A self-proclaimed under-respected biomedical scientist launches a terrorist plot inside a mall during a biotech conference, and it quickly descends into chaos as the first infected begin rampaging around on all fours, biting and infecting anyone unlucky enough to get in their way until only about a dozen survivors remain.
Among them are Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun) and her ex-husband Han Gyu-sung (Go Soo), the latter having recommended her for a potential job opportunity as he prepares to emigrate to the United States. Those plans obviously don’t last long once a rapidly expanding virus turns the mall into a survival zone, leaving the remaining survivors to figure out how to stay alive while trying to understand exactly what these things are becoming.
Yeon makes great use of the mall setting, particularly during the first third, which is easily the strongest leg of Colony. The two groups of survivors are trapped on opposite sides of the mall’s walkways, and watching them combine their wits to maneuver around these early-stage monsters brings out some really solid procedural direction from Yeon. There’s a tactile quality to the geography of the space and how the characters interact with it that makes the early survival sequences genuinely tense.
The initial intrigue of watching these monsters evolve also gives Yeon a new wrinkle on the familiar tropes he’s been working with since Train to Busan. The problem is that the further Colony moves along, the more it gets bogged down in the biological nonsense surrounding how the survivors begin to understand their undead counterparts. There’s a hefty amount of ant-mill and pheromone world-building here that mostly brushed right off me, especially when the movie’s leaner and more primal scares are so much more effective.
It doesn’t help that the antagonist gets progressively less interesting the more time he spends on screen. The survivors eventually have to hunt him down after he injects himself with the virus’ only vaccine, which gives the movie a MacGuffin to chase even if it never feels particularly necessary. The further the story moves away from the simple premise of people trapped in a mall trying to survive an increasingly dangerous monster, the less compelling it becomes.
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There is something in here that I think could’ve worked really well. Colony is arguably Yeon Sang-ho’s best movie in a decade, and the carnage is amped all the way up. He directs undead choreography about as well as anyone currently working, and whenever the movie stops explaining itself and just lets these creatures loose, it becomes a hell of a lot of fun. Some of the longer action sequences are absolutely worth your attention.
But the plot keeps pulling the movie into the weeds, and the biological mythology eventually becomes more cumbersome than compelling. I like what Yeon is reaching for here, and there’s enough good in Colony to make me hopeful that he’s finally found a direction worth pursuing again. It’s just a shame that the movie itself doesn’t quite trust its best ideas enough to let them breathe. Still, murky results aside, this is the closest Yeon Sang-ho has gotten to finding his way back in a long time.
Score: 6/10
Colony (2026)
- Cast: Gianna Jun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Kim Shin-rock, Shin Hyun-been, Go Soo
- Director: Yeon Sang-ho
- Genre: Action, Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller
- Runtime: 123 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: August 28, 2026
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