A normal day at a shopping mall turns into chaos as a scientist launches a bioterrorist attack. Horror has seen its fair share of subgenres, and one of the big ones that is rarely done well is the zombie genre. We have our bright spots such as 28 Days Later – along with two of its sequels 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (1978 and 2004), Shaun of the Dead, and Train to Busan. Ten years following the release of Train to Busan, South Korean filmmaker, Yeon Sang-ho, attempts to recreate what made that film a massive success that its 2020 sequel, Peninsula, could not for audiences with Colony. 

Much like many zombie movies, Colony starts off depicting a normal day for everyone inside a shopping mall, until things spiral out of control once an outbreak begins. It’s caused intentionally within the first few minutes of the movie by a scientist named Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan), planning a bioterrorist attack because he believes this is the next step in human evolution. He first infects a CEO of a biology company that is holding a conference in one of the rooms inside the 32-floor shopping mall. This outbreak causes a lockdown by the South Korean government to prevent spreading throughout the city of Seoul. 

A group of survivors band together that include ostracized biologist professor Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun), her ex-husband, a security guard and his mobility impaired sister, three high school students, a retired track and field coach, a businessman, and a cop brought in before the lockdown to find Seo before the attacks could begin. Kwon Se-jeong becomes the de facto leader of the surviving group as she is noticing the evolution patterns in the behavior of the infected. 

This is where Colony has some intriguing concepts that help the entertainment value of the film. The infected are developing a swarm intelligence with each other, thus creating the titular colony. Through a combination of a sticky, milky looking saliva and a fungus called mycelium, they are able to share sensory data through a chant – a very solid sound design. The infected also move incredibly fast, much like the infected in 28 Days Later but are also unable to attack when there is no light on, similar to Train to Busan. The eyes of the infected also look a little too similar to the zombies in Train to Busan. The setting of the mall offers up some creative ideas for how to fight the zombies in some parts. However, once the fungus and saliva dry up it looks like a knocked-down version of the upside down from Stranger Things.  

There are some pretty fun and thrilling sequences involving the zombies. One particular moment involves the characters using Choi Hyun-hee’s (Kim Shin-rok) wheelchair and attaching cardboard cutouts from the store to distract the zombies and make them think they are the people to attack so that a few people can get from one side of the mall to the other. Another clever trick is putting perfume on mannequins while they use antifreeze as a way to smell differently than humans typically would. However, there are also some repeating beats that Yeon Sang-ho uses better in Train to Busan, such as a character accidentally stepping on a soda can while trying to get across a place quietly. 

Where Colony suffers the most is the lack of interesting characters. Even if they were basic archetypes of the zombie survivor movie, there really isn’t any emotional feeling when anyone from the group bites the dust. Yeon, who also writes the screenplay with Choi Gyu-seok, attempts to do something between Kwon Se-jeong and Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been) – a scientist investigating outside of the building to see how to stop the spread. However, they save the reveal of the real identity of Gong Seol-hee for a big reveal for no obvious reason. This is very disappointing because when you look at Train to Busan, the characters in that film are also not the most complex, but you are still interested in them getting out and surviving because we know what is emotionally at stake for them. Or in the case of one character in that film, we hope he dies because of how selfish he is. The performances alone are fine for what they need to do but there just are no real strong personalities to make any of them stand out. Seo Young-cheol as a villain is also quite dull. When all of his reasons for why he wants the outbreak to take place, I found myself asking “huh? You’re willing to cause this type of outbreak because of this?” The script as a whole is uninspired.

Colony also relies very heavily on convenience from a writing standpoint. Of course, having a cop and a security guard in the group makes sense. However, outside of those obvious inclusions, you just happen to have a former track and field coach who was a professional runner so he can outrun the zombies during one of their plans if it goes wrong? Oh, the security guard’s sister works in IT so she can work the security cameras since she can’t walk? Kwon Se-jeong is there by convenience as well, but at the very least, despite still being flawed, it’s written in a way that isn’t as cringe-worthy as the other characters that just happen to be in this group. While there is an appreciation for the fact that the cell phones do work here, unlike other zombie movies, they do make a text chain. However, that text chain does not solve a lot of the characters’ problems as the movie goes along once more revelations are made. 

Colony wants to be, at its core, about communication. Unfortunately, no one communicated to Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok that the characters and the story needed to work in order for the strong effects of the zombies to stand. For as entertaining as certain moments are, at the end of the day, I found myself shrugging as the credits rolled, not feeling the apparently grave consequences of this story.

Well Go USA will release Colony in theaters nationwide on August 28.

OSCAR POTENTIAL:

• Could potentially make the shortlist for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, but its prospects are slim.