Colony
Once married, Professor Kwon se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun, "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan") and Professor Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo) are still colleagues, Han still worrying about his ex's lack of friends and propensity to 'make people hate her' because of her uncompromising personality. After listening to Chains Bio CEO Kang Woo-Cheol (Kim Jong-tae) give a talk on collective intelligence, Han encourages Kwon to give her business card to the man, but when she ventures towards his office she witnesses Seo Yeong-Cheoi (Koo Kyo-hwan) enter and hears the scuffle that results in a highly contagious zombie-like outbreak whose victims form a mental "Colony."
Laura's Review: B
After the somewhat disappointing "Peninsula," a lesser "Train to Busan" rehash, cowriter (with Choi Kyu-seok)/director Yeon Sang-ho is back with a fresh genre twist and re-energized filmmaking. After setting up characters to care about, Yeon impresses with his incredibly choreographed stunt infected, all acting in unison with individual displays of jaw dropping contortionism.
After opening with a foreboding call to an emergency response center, Yeon steps back to set up his main characters, including Han's current wife Professor Gong Seoi-hee (Shin Hyun-been, "Beasts Clawing at Straws"), who he says has sympathy for Se-jeong, calling from home with their kids, and a building security guard, Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) with his wheelchair bound sister Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok) on the main floor's shopping area. Back in Kang's office, biologist Seo, who claims Kang stole his work, announces that he will be changing mankind by making them able to understand each other's thoughts, injecting Kang with a syringe and declaring himself the only antidote. Kang falls to the floor, veins bulging, eyes turning white, foaming at the mouth, limbs thrashing, before scurrying off to spread the infection. Just as Kwon and Han are about to reach the door, a rush of people covered in mucus tumbling over each other on all fours rounds the corner, leaping onto people and biting into them.
The two professors run, Se-jeong stopping to assist Hyun-seok, whose chair is overturned in the melee, then hole up in a store with several others. Kwon begins to observe the infected behavior, first shutting off the lights so they will no longer be targeted behind the glass, noting that they respond to mannequins and ads that look like humans. When the infected begin to batter the glass protecting a group of teenagers across the way, the group puts cardboard cutouts in Hyun-Seok's chair and sends it off down the corridor to draw away the infected, who follow giving the kids a chance to join them. But one (Shin Hyun-Bin, "Monstrous") hangs back and when Han goes out to save her, he loses his life doing so and Se-jeong must make a terrible phone call.
Yeon and Choi take a page from "Die Hard," turning the building itself into a maze of safe and hazardous places, while allowing their infected to learn as Kwon uses her scientific knowledge to stay one step ahead of them. Meanwhile, Han's wife arrives at the emergency response center and leads a team into Seo's research lab, full of the monkeys which were his first trial. When they bash through the glass and descend upon her team, Gong kills the one which attacks her and all the others freeze in place, leading her to a theory which she relays to the response chief (Kim Hyung-mook, "No Other Choice"), a bureaucrat who refuses to send in a rescue team until the antidote, Seo, is secured. This becomes Se-jeong's mission.
Yeon milks his premise a bit too far with Seo being captured and escaping multiple times, several betrayals among the survivors and people making the requisite stupid decisions in order to keep the action going, but his film is so full of incredible set pieces it's easy to forgive. He's assembled an impressive ensemble, Koo Kyo-hwan a snarkily suave villain, Go Soo remembered well after his early departure. One of Yeon and Choi's best gambits is to turn Han's ex and current wives into a team for the film's wild climax, Gong leading Kwon remotely as Kwon takes on a brewing infected apocalypse.
"Colony" isn't likely to attain the classic status of Yeon's "Train to Busan," but it's a very entertaining, worthy follow-up that should please any fan of the genre.
Well Go USA releases "Colony" in theaters on 8/28/26.
