Producers: Yang Yoomin Hailey and Sung Joon-ho Director: Yeon Sang-ho Screenplay: Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok Cast: Gianna Jun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-been, Kim Shin-rok, Go Soo, Kim Jong-Tae, Kim Jae-rok, Lee Dam-hee, Chae Seo-eun, Hwang Jae-yeol, Lee Kang Wook, Lee Hyun Kyun, Lee Joong Ok, Kim Hyung Mook, Oh Kyung Hwa and Choi Kwang Distributor: Well Go USA Entertainment
Grade: B-
Yeon Sang-ho, whose “Train to Busan” (2016) was one of the best received zombie movies of recent years, revisits familiar turf with “Colony,” though technically the ravenous creatures this time around aren’t the recently dead but the recently infected. And their condition isn’t accidental.
The deadly mold is the work of the proverbial mad scientist, Seo Young-chui (Koo Kyo-hwan), who blames Kang Woo-chul (Kim Jong-Tae) the head of biotech firm Chains Bio, not only for firing him but for stealing his research on biological connectivity. After informing the authorities that he intends to unleash a slime mold in the building that houses the firm’s headquarters. Young-chui listens to a presentation by Woo-chul about a breakthrough in cell regeneration based on his work, and afterwards confronts the CEO and infects him with the mold, turning him into a zombie-like creature that will attack others and infect them as well.
The twist here is that the mold creates a hive mentality among the infected, with Young-chui in control of their knowledge and decisions. He has, moreover, injected himself with a vaccine, making him not only the perpetrator of the outbreak but the sole possible antidote for it.
Everyone in the building, which houses not only offices and laboratories but shopping areas, is in danger. The script focuses on a group of potential victims eventually led by Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun), a professor who’s lost her job for her principled stands and been brought to the presentation with her ex-husband Han Gyu-song (Go Soo); he intends to introduce her to Woo-chui as a possible hire. Accompanying them is building security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook), who’s intent on protecting his wheelchair-bound sister Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), who had been visiting him in the building.
There are, of course, a score of others, like a man in his sixties (Kim Jae-rok), an athlete who puts his life on the line to rescue people, in contrast to a rich man (Hwang Jae-yeol) who’s willing to sacrifice others to save himself; and two high school girls (Chae Seo-eun and Lee Dam-hee) who continue their petty antagonisms. Weakness and strength, cynicism and courage, are common contrasting threads.
Meanwhile counter-terrorism head Lee Bong-seok (Lee Joong-ok) arrives on the scene with his squad, but when the building goes into lockdown, they too are trapped. Elsewhere, Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), Gyu-song’s new wife and a biotech specialist herself, joins counter-terrorism soldiers to investigate Young-chui’s lab for clues about how his weaponized mold operates, and conveys what she finds to Se-Jeong.
The script is cleverly constructed, allowing for gradual revelations about how the swarm mentality can, on the one hand, be used by Young-chui to advance his plan and, on the other, be employed by Se-jeong to counteract it: the infected can learn from Young-chui’s observations of Se-jeong’s tactics and she, in turn, can devise new ones to mislead them. This add a further dimension to the plot while allowing for plenty of action as the transformed hordes repeatedly attack those unfortunate enough to be trapped in the building and other misfortunes occur—as when caged monkeys in Young-chui’s lab escape and target Seol-bee’s squad. The result is rather repetitive as attacks explode again and again and individuals are picked off in the process, but Sang-ho and co-writer Choi Gyu-seok are quite adept at adding swerves and grace notes to the proceedings.
The characters, as usual in such fare, are mere sketches; even Se-jeong, though portrayed by Jun as a brusque, imperious sort, doesn’t get much beyond caricature, and Young-chui falls firmly within that of a Frankenstein with a malicious streak, though Kyo-hwan gives him a smoothly creepy veneer. Everyone else is here simply to suggest how different types will react under conditions of extreme stress before being gobbled up.
And yet, though “Colony” is little more than a genre exercise, it’s a cannily conceived and imaginatively realized one. Lee Mok-won’s production design might not make the building’s interior topography ideally clear, but the stunt work and choreography of the action scenes is pretty spectacular, and Sang-ho, cinematographer Byun Bong-sun, and editor Han Mee-yeon give them dazzling punch. The visual effects team headed by Sagar Shrinath and the makeup crew directed by Kim Hyun-jung are also working at a high level, while the score by Chai Min-joo and sound design by Kim Sok-won, including some piercing screams, add to the excitement.
The last act of “Colony” revels in further twists and revelations until the infection spills out into the city and threatens the entire populace with zombification. But while Se-jeong ultimately thwarts Young-chui and it appears that the infected have been stymied by the very hive mentality he had designed, rest assured that the ending is not without a final turn suggesting that the menace has not been eradicated.
That’s one twist too many for a movie that’s already overloaded with them, but it doesn’t alter the fact that “Colony,” while overstuffed with incident and at two full hours overlong, is a mostly inventive and enjoyable horror thriller.