'Colony' review: Ji Chang Wook, Koo Kyo Hwan excite in popcorn zombie flick
MANILA, Philippines — A decade after wowing the world with "Train to Busan," director Yeon Sang-ho is back with his zombies for his newest movie "Colony."
The film takes place in a corporate building in Seoul, where a spreading virus is causing infected people to become monstrous creatures chasing all that moves or makes a sound.
Biotechnology professor Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun, marking her first film in a decade) finds herself in a group that includes security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) and his disabled sister Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), who band together in order to survive.
At the center of the outbreak is scorned scientist Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan), who claims to be immune from the virus, but in fact has more knowledge about the threat he unleashed.
"Train to Busan" was such a revelation for both the zombie sub-genre and Korean films as a whole that it set a bar too high that even Sang-ho's sequel, "Peninsula," (which also starred Kyo-hwan) struggled to reach its phenomenal performance at the tills.
One cannot blame Sang-ho for returning to movies about the undead, though it does spark yet another round of hope of emulating past success.
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At its core, "Colony" is a capable zombie film that harkens to themes seen in "Dawn of the Dead" and "The Last of Us," attempting to tap into its own scientific explanations and simple criticism of bureaucracy.
Originality is far from the priority for the most part, so is character development, though Kyo-hwan and Chang-wook do much of the performance heavy-lifting a flick that focuses more on exhilarating action sequnces.
Credit should also go to the actors portraying the zombies, getting on all fours and contorting their bodies to demonstrate the movements envisioned by choreographer Jeon Young — a past collaborator of Sang-ho in "Train to Busan," "Peninsula," and the series "Hellbound."
"Colony," for the most part, sticks to its direction of making quarantined survivors figure their way out as the creatures hunting them quickly evolve and "work together," throwing curveballs in segments to move the story along.
Perhaps "Train to Busan" really set too remarkable a standard that capped off the heyday of zombie-related projects, but audiences will never turn down an opportunity to just sit back and enjoy watching people being chased by brainless beings before time runs out.
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