Fictional horror remains our best way of coping with very real horror in this strange world we now exist in. Colony, the latest from Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho, is no different. Once again, Yeon crafts a tense film using zombies to comment on current society. He once again plays with the expectations of that particular monster. The issue with this film is that it’s too bloated and unfocused to really say anything effective.
One can’t watch any film about a pathogen, its effects on both infected and uninfected groups of people and not think Covid. Even Yeon’s Train to Busan feels like a Covid movie even though it was made four years before the pandemic. So surely it’s within Yeon’s power to make a film commenting on this moment in time using the tried and true metaphor of the zombie film?
The answer is yes and no. Here he has mad scientist Seo Young-cheol, played to cool sinister perfection by Koo Kyo-hwon, knowingly release a deadly biological agent in an office building as an experiment on humans. What this creates is brain dead humans that now operate in a hive mind and who act on a very primal level. Everyone left in the building is trying to avoid getting infected as they escape.
Yeon once again uses visual of fast moving, feral zombies against unprepared victims only these are a lot goopier. However with Colony, the writer-director invents the “smart zombie”. They move and communicate like insects between each other to hunt victims. Unsurprisingly it’s a great visual when they eerily stand still to upload information to each other via hive mind. Much of the film’s tension comes from the heroes trying to not give away information that can be relayed to the other zombies.
Given the heroines are scientists (played by Jun Ji-hyun and Shin Hyun-been) fighting a disease and how quickly things grow out of control, seeing this as a pandemic film feels like the most obvious metaphor. But when Seo becomes the head of the hive mind, it becomes an entirely different metaphor for our time. Seeing a self centered individual drive frothing masses (this might be the goopiest zombie film in ages) to do his petty bidding, certainly brings to mind many of our current fascist political leaders. There is something damning when the scientists declare these victims braindead and can’t be saved.
Political commentary such as this should make liking Colony an easy thing to do. Yet, there is too much going on here. The film follows too many characters in the opening half. Even when it kills off half of them midway through, it still doesn’t feel like enough died. Subplots like a paralyzed sister and her security guard brother and a high school bully and their victim go exactly how you think they will. When we get to these big emotional climaxes, everything fizzles
One could lay the same criticisms on Yeon Sang-ho’s earlier Train to Busan which also featured big emotions, lots of characters, and some cliched subplots. Yeon had more compelling actors and tighter writing in that film. Here he has neither to really carry the film. Which again is a shame because he clearly has something to say with Colony. There’s a trenchant political statement about leaders and followers with goopy monster visuals burdened by a copious dead weight of characters and trite emotions.
