Colony Cannes Review: A Disappointing Return to Zombie Horror for Train to Busan Director Yeon Sang-ho

Yeon Sang-ho burst onto the international stage with Train to Busan, which many (this critic included) believe to be one of the best modern zombie movies ever made. But in the time since, he has really struggled to recapture that quality in the other genres he has worked in. He returns to zombie movies with Colony, which sounds like a home-run on paper but largely does not live up to its potential.

What is Colony about?

Colony follows a group of survivors who are stuck in a facility that is attacked by a bio-terrorist, turning victims into bloodthirsty zombies with group intelligence and the ability to mutate and transform as they learn. While that is an intriguing concept on paper, the execution falls short. The mall setting is reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead. The mutating zombies remind you of 28 Years Later. It feels, unfortunately, like any aspect of this film that was meant to be original ends up feeling like an imitation of something better.

Colony Review

One of the most frustrating aspects of Colony is its character development. Virtually every character in the movie, except for the protagonist, is disposable. The most sympathetic character is axed in the first act, but almost everyone gets a pretty unceremonious death. And unfortunately, one of the biggest killers of any zombie movie is when you’re actually rooting for the zombies to win and kill everyone because you just don’t care about the humans.

But unfortunately, Colony does not deliver on that front. The first thirty minutes or so are intense, as you are left wondering where the movie is going to go. Unfortunately, once you figure out the evolutionary path that the zombies — and therefore the film — are going to take, it’s easy to get one or two steps ahead of the script and end up feeling bored.

Ultimately, this failure comes down to the film’s lack of a defining set piece. The finale has one particularly cool image, which is teased throughout most of its runtime, but that is a two-minute payoff for a two-hour movie. There is simply not enough inventiveness to the zombie action to justify the film’s existence in a crowded genre.

Another thing that makes it quite difficult to connect with Colony is the unfocused nature of its themes. The conflict is spurred by a bioterrorism attack, which would make you think the movie would be highly political in nature, but it’s not. It’s not even the “be careful playing god” theme one might expect. There is some vague commentary on the “hive mind” phenomenon that comes along with screen cultures, but this exits the picture almost as soon as it enters.

And because the characters are so underdeveloped, Colony does not serve as the acting showcase that Yeon’s movies tend to be. The only person who really gets anything to do is Koo Kyo-hwan, who plays the villain in an over-the-top yet menacing way that makes it feel like he is the only one to have understood the assignment. Actress Jun Ji-hyun shows some potential, but again, doesn’t have a lot to work with.

Then, there are the incredibly weird tonal inconsistencies in the film. Frankly, it’s hard to take a horror movie seriously and find its monsters scary when they are constantly taking breaks to look up and scream while covered in a suspicious white goo. So in the end, we are left with a zombie movie that’s not very scary, not very action-packed, and altogether not very fun.

Is Colony worth watching?

Colony should be a return-to-form for Yeon Sang-ho in the zombie genre, but it frustratingly lacks any of the things that made his other two zombie films so great. It lacks the emotional intimacy of Train to Busan as well as the epic scale of Peninsula, instead settling for a mash-up of other genre tropes that is neither a reinvention nor even a worthy mutation.

Colony premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 12-23.

Colony Cannes Review: A Disappointing Return to Zombie Horror for Train to Busan Director Yeon Sang-ho