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.