Review: Colony (2026)

Train to Busan was one of the standout zombie films of recent years, and so I was excited to see that the director Yeon Sang-ho had a new film coming called Colony.

Now it has arrived, and I experienced it on a 4K UltraHD Blu-Ray! It doesn't disappoint.

Written by Yeon Sang-ho with Choi Gyu-seok, the film charts a zombie outbreak in a shopping/hotel/conference building, and so has similar vibes to Train to Busan which places the protagonists and the zombies in a limited location from which they cannot escape.

We follow a small group who find themselves initially trapped in a shopping mall when the outbreak hits. The set up is perhaps just best stolen from the Wiki as it's complex:

Scientist Seo Yeong Chul (Koo Kyo-hwan) warns the police that he will launch a bio-terrorist attack at the Dongwoo-ri Building, then injects himself with the supposed vaccine to his mutated slime mold bioweapon. Meanwhile, Chains Bio is holding a presentation in the building, where CEO Kang Woo-chul demonstrates the slime mold's cell-regeneration capabilities. Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), an ostracised and unemployed professor, attends after being invited by the company, hoping to secure a job through her ex-husband Han Gyu-sung (Go Soo), who is preparing to emigrate overseas. Security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) is also at the building with his mobility-impaired older sister, Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok).

Thus Kang Woo-chul is infected by Seo Young-chul and the outbreak spreads rapidly. The infected initially are animalistic, running on all fours and attacking anything which seems human: including photographs and shop dummies. But they learn, and have a hive mind in that what one discovers is rapidly transmitted to all the other zombies, so they get clever, and track, and slowly our intrepid band of surviving humans is whittled down.  In this sort of film, even the nice people die!

What I liked about it, as with Train to Busan, is that the film is clever. It presents intelligent situations and the development of the zombie infection is well worked out. There are shocks and scares aplenty, and the performances are superb, both from the humans, to the infected. These films seem to have nailed the jerky infection progress and the physical element is just terrifying to watch.

If you're a fan of the zombie genre, then this film is not to be missed. It's exciting and well done, brilliantly performed, and most importantly original. A truly excellent entry in the zombie genre.

New Doctor Who Book Reviews (September 2026)

Another roundup of some Doctor Who titles recently published ... as usual there are a fair few coming through, and so without further ado ...

On top of the teetering pile is a paperback edition of The Adventures Before ... the idea here is to present short stories based before some popular Doctor Who stories ... and as discussed in my review of the hardback (https://howeswho.blogspot.com/2024/11/review-doctor-who-annual-whodle.html) I found the book disappointing overall. The paperback adds a new story to the mix, 'The Night of the Shreek' by Pete McTighe, in which Ruby and the 15th Doctor first meet a Shreek, preluding the events of 'Lucky Day'. The story was actually first published in the official 2026 Doctor Who Annual, released in 2025.

Another paperback edition with a new story included, is Time Lord Fairy Tales the hardback of which hails from 2015, and which was written by Justin Richards. I didn't review this at the time, but the content is as it says on the cover: various fairy stories are retold with Doctor Who monsters included ... they're nicely written, and as with all the BBC Children's Books fare, aimed at younger children. The new story is 'The Doctor and the Three Witches' by Janelle McCurdy and involves the three Carrionites from the story 'The Shakespeare Code' in a fairy tale interlude with Martha and a female Doctor (maybe the 13th? It's not specific), the UNIT Black Archive and Osgood ... a mixed bag!

Not a book, but a rather lovely magazine is next. Museum Guide Book: The Classic Doctor Who Collection is a publication from Neil Cole at the Museum of Classic Sci-Fi. Intended as a guide to the Doctor Who props, costumes and ephemera collected by Neil for his museum, the 48 page guide lavishly pictures the items, along with some text explaining the context and how the museum comes to have the items. I love this sort of publication, with items from the first four Doctors all rubbing shoulders. So there are some negatives and prints from 'The Keys of Marinus', a camera script from 'Planet of Giants' and a script from 'The Savages', alongside a Gundan Robot from 'Warriors' Gate' and Target cover roughs and BBC cover roughs from artist Andrew Skilleter. An impressive collection.

The idea is that visitors to the museum can buy the guidebook, so I'm not sure how available it is outside of actually visiting the museum, but if you are in the Hexam/Allendale area (postcode area NE47), then the Museum is well worth a visit.

Next up is an 'annual'-styled special from the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. Doctor Who 70-79 is a celebration of the seventies period of Doctor Who and also marks 50 years of the DWAS.

We have interviews with Caroline John and Mary Tamm alongside many pieces exploring different aspects of the series. Contributors include Dale Smith, Matt Hills, Simon Guerrier, Tony Jordan, Jeremy Bentham, Paul Scoones, Jon Preddle, Keith Barnfather and Dez Skinn. Edited by Bruce Nicholson and designed by Paul M C Smith, the book is full of colour photographs and is very pleasing to the eye. Unlike the official BBC fare, it also majors on the written content, rather than the photographs, and thus is more suited for the older fan. The book is available from Lulu, priced at a very reasonable £16.00. https://www.lulu.com/shop/paul-smith-and-bruce-nicholson/doctor-who-70-79/hardcover/product-m2evrqj.html

From BBC Books comes the regular Doctor Who Annual for 2027. As there is no Doctor Who on television at this time, the publisher and editor (Paul Lang) have decided to make this a sort of 'best of'. I guess they have pared down on original material by reprinting material from past annuals, but this cost saving means they can increase the page count, so it's 126 pages long. This approach actually works really well, and the book provides a whistlestop tour of the last 20 years or so of Doctor Who. The earlier Doctors get a brief look in too, and all told it's a bright and lively race through the show, and something that would be sure to keep a youngster occupied for Christmas Day ... I like the inclusion of a 'Where's the Doctor' spread, the short stories and comic strips ... all keeping it exciting and interesting for someone new to the series.

With the uncertainty over the future of high street chains like W H Smith/T G Jones at the moment, one does wonder if the end of the Annual may be upon us. I hope they can find a format which continues to excite, and more importantly sell copies, for next year and beyond.

Finally, a vast doorstep of a book from Wonderful Books. This is Screen Printed, a 550 page updated print version of a previously free PDF book looking in detail at the old Target Doctor Who novelisations. Unlike my own The Target Book which focussed more on the behind the scenes development of the range, as well as looking at the cover art, this is focussing on the books themselves, seeking to pin down all the reprints, cover variants and so on through the years, using what information is available. It's a fascinating piece of work and is really invaluable to collectors of the books. Especially of interest are all the associated uses of the artwork, and details of where it has been displayed over the years.

I assume that author Paul M C Smith has decided to make this available at this time, as BBC Audiobooks have just completed their run of audios of all the original Target books, making this a good place to position it. It's also up to date to the 2026 set of books (Aliens of London, The Satan Pit and The Time of Angels).

Hopefully any future additions will be made available as add-on PDFs, as the book is too expensive to keep buying updated copies of!

The book costs £36.87 and is available from Lulu (https://www.lulu.com/shop/paul-mc-smith/screen-printed/hardcover/product-dy4w549.html)

Review: Harbinger (2026)

Low budget filmmaking can produce some impressive results, and there's a lot about this new horror from Shogun films to enjoy.

Released on blu-ray by 101 Films, Harbinger is one of those 'group of people get slaughtered in a house' type films, but they have added an original twist that the killings are being carried out by a possessed arcade machine called 'Harbinger', a variation on the Zoltar seaside 'tell your fortune' machines. 

Thus a group of documentary film makers descend on the house in which Julia (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) lived and was attacked five years previously by a serial killer Henry Decker (Peter Woodward). They bring Julia with them and intend to make a new episode of their series Spectre Investigates, fronted by Mike Craggs (Gary Webster). There to capture the proceedings are the sound girl April (Maisey Gee), her boyfriend cameraman Barney (Joseph Emms), make-up girl Kathryn (Anna Arthur), who Barney has been sleeping with and who has got pregnant, a supernatural expert Chris (Johnny Palmiero), and psychic Neil (Tony Sands). However the Harbinger machine doles out some tarot-like cards to each of them, and soon they realise that the figure in the machine is out to get them!

The film has a lot going for it. There's some smashing cinematograpy and drone work, some great colour palates inside the house (very inspired by Italian Giallo, and Dario Argento's film Suspiria in particular), and some great performances from the majority of the cast.

Where the film is let down is in the choice of the leading lady, and the script. Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott is sadly weak in the role. Her scenes fall flat and it's a struggle to believe in her as Julia. This is just thrown into contrast by the rest of the cast who are universally excellent, and I wished one of them had ended up as being the 'final girl' here rather than Julia.

On the script front, the biggest issue for me was that the tarot cards given by the machine should have been predictors of how these people would meet their ends ... but while some hint at it, others seem to have no bearing at all. In a film of this type, where the whole 'point' is the killings, they should have been far more imaginative and clever ... far more like the sort of deaths presented in the Italian Giallos which this film tries (and mostly succeeds) in matching for visual style and flair. It's a shame that the stalking Harbinger figure seems to just resort to mostly strangling people and killing them with a knife.

There's some material in here which doesn't make a lot of sense. For example, if this house belonged to Julia, then why leave a valuable painting on the wall? She takes the 'job' with the film crew to earn some much-needed money to help her aged mother (an excellent scene with veteran actress Carole Ann Ford holding her own) - but why do that if there was money tied up in the old house which she obviously doesn't live in any more. I was also puzzled by the whole sequence of the young girl in the bath with the mask on ... it seemed out of place. The film also drags in places, which with six killings to execute (sorry) and only 90 minutes to do it all in, is something of an issue.

Overall Harbinger was enjoyable, but sadly the choice of lead makes it a harder watch and a lot less fun and action packed than it could have been.