REVIEW: ‘Colony’ Is Just Thrilling Enough

Yeon Sang-ho returns to the zombie genre with his latest thriller, Colony (Gunche), reminding us he still has it when it comes to building tension. Merging scientific principles regarding ant colonies and the “hive or group mind,” the zombie that emerges is uniquely terrifying at the start. If it were not for the threadbare characters and the lack of subtlety with its premise and theming, Colony could have delivered another wopping, infection-driven gutpunch from the director.

The anxiety gets set right out the gate when biologist Seo Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan) calls the police, letting them know that he will commit an act of bioterrorism at a multilevel complex. As timing would have it, this is also where a biotech conference is taking place, where Professor Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) and her ex-husband, Professor Han Gyu-sung (Go Soo), are watching CEO Kang Woo-chul (Kim Jong-tae) reveal the slime mold capable of cellular regeneration that hopefully will have nothing to do with the events of Colony. 

Unfortunately, for everyone, the slime mold does have something to do with what will happen. Young-chul is the original creator of said mold, and he’s injected himself with the only vaccine against it. A confrontation between Young-chul and Woo-chul, revealed to be Young-chul’s former boss, kicks off Young-chul’s plan and the rapid escalation of events that lead to the building everyone’s in being locked down.

As its occupants get knocked off in quick succession, the rapidly dwindling group of survivors have to figure out a way to get out unscathed. The problem is Young-chul may be the key to making it out alive, and he has no intention of taking any survivors with him. 

Jun Ji-hyun makes her cinematic return with a fairly one-dimensional protagonist.

Yeon Sang-ho finds new ways to add new ick factors to zombies in Colony. At first, they scramble and crawl across all floors, chasing their prey with a vicious ferocity that borders on animalism. As they gather new information, these zombies sync up in a truly eerie way, evoking a seizure in physicality. In the process, they spawn a gross, mucus-like substance that makes one shudder at the imagined physical sensory implications.

As the zombies learn, they evolve with some terrifying results brought to life by the dancers brought on to capture these erratic movements. These evolutions help sustain most of the suspense and tension in Colony. Despite the best efforts of Se-jeong, who, through dialogue, is shown to have some understanding of the science behind what’s going on, the remaining survivors are constantly forced to pivot and evolve in their own way if they want to survive these constantly adapting zombies. 

While the zombies are enough to drive tension, the building’s many floors and tight corridors put the survivors in precarious situations as they (mostly) move about blind. The survivors themselves all have notable physical and mental weaknesses, making each one vulnerable to being picked off at any moment.

That said, the characters are thinly developed, with little to go on beyond surface-level moments. It’s telling, however, that the most heart-tugging characters are the brother-sister pairing rather than the protagonist, Se-jeong, and it’s unclear whether this is due to the direction, performance limitations, or a combination of these factors. 

Koo Kyo-hwan perfectly plays the villain of Colony.

Perhaps that is the point given how unsubtly Se-jeong is painted as a loner in key dialogue exchanges. Despite being arguably the most intelligent one in a room of survivors, how she comes across on the page sets her apart from the “colony” of survivors. And when face-to-face with the villain, played oh-so-captivatingly by Koo Kyo-hwan despite the character’s own one-dimensional nature, the clear separation between those who lead and those who follow looms into focus. Se-jeong is just not the best choice of character for what marks Jun Ji-hyun’s return to cinema.

Colony flounders most when the story moves outside the building, interrupting the steady thrum of anxiety-inducing tension. There’s a method to the ebb and flow of the thrill, and while ideally you don’t want the pedal to be put to the metal the entire time, the abrupt shifts in the script here take one out of the carefully curated fist-gripping space too suddenly for the momentum to truly take steady hold again. Even when separate storylines find their natural point of convergence.

With this being his fourth foray into the zombie genre, Yeon Sang-ho gave himself a daunting task to try to capture the same thrills that put his name on the map all those years ago. With Colony, he proves he still has the juice to craft an entertaining nail-biter, but without a memorable group of survivors to hold the audience, it doesn’t do enough to stand out in an already crowded genre space. Even still, it’s worth the watch. 

Colony releases in theaters on August 28, 2026.