Yeon Sang-ho is back in a building. The zombies can think now. And critics are mostly very happy about it.
The Film
Colony opened in US theaters August 28 via Well Go USA, running 122 minutes. Directed and co-written by Yeon Sang-ho alongside Choi Gyu-seok (Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula), the film follows Professor Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun/Gianna Jun), a biotechnology professor thrust into a nightmare when a rapidly mutating virus is unleashed during a biotech conference in a gleaming Seoul high-rise. Authorities immediately seal the building. Se-jeong and a small group of survivors must fight their way through horrific transformations and escalating danger, with no clear exit and no help coming.
The full cast includes Koo Kyo-hwan (Peninsula, Escape from Mogadishu), Ji Chang-wook, Kim Shin-rok, Shin Hyun-been, and Go Soo. The film carries a ₩17 billion budget (~$12 million) and grossed $24.9 million worldwide during its South Korean theatrical run. It had its world premiere in the Midnight Screenings section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on May 15, before opening in South Korea on May 21 and the US on August 28.
The Big Twist: Zombies That Learn
Colony introduces a genuinely fresh idea to the zombie genre. The infected in the film can communicate, mimicking voices, reading messages, even typing on computers. They share information across a collective, meaning each new victim makes the entire horde more dangerous. Professional contemporary dancers, actors, and stunt performers were brought together to design the creatures’ movements, with choreography inspired by popping and breakdancing, creating a distinctly unnatural physical quality that sets Colony’s infected apart from anything seen in the genre before.
What Critics Are Saying
The consensus is warm but calibrated. Rotten Tomatoes summarises it well, Colony “lacks the vivid characterisations that distinguish director Yeon Sang-ho’s best work but mostly reaffirms his mastery over zombie mayhem.” The Consensus also notes it “layers modern anxieties about technology onto a nightmarish outbreak.”
RogerEbert.com frames the central question neatly, “What if the zombies could talk to each other? What if they could learn?”, calling the premise ripe for acrobatic carnage in Sang-ho’s hands, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Train to Busan.
Flickering Myth is the most enthusiastic voice in the room, calling it “equally tense as it is disgusting, a blast, a reminder that the zombie genre can still be inventive,” and praising Jun Ji-hyun as excellent in the lead. Third Coast Review credits Sang-ho’s grasp of building geography, “we go from the sub-basement to the rooftop, which makes the stakes much clearer and the danger more palpable”, adding that he’s “simply one of the best” at managing dozens of characters, hundreds of extras, and more blood, slime, and vomit than any one biohazard container can hold.
Screen Daily offers the most measured take, calling it “fun, forgettable zombie horror”, enjoyable in the moment, unlikely to linger.
This is not Train to Busan. Critics are unanimous on that. But it is a well-crafted, inventive, and genuinely disgusting zombie film with a fresh central concept, and Jun Ji-hyun’s return to the big screen after 11 years is reason alone to see it. Colony is in theaters now.
