‘Colony’ Review: The Hive Mind Takes Over the Zombie Genre

In the recent series Pluribus, the alien invaders conquer Earth through a hive-mind strategy. Once they take over humans, everyone becomes part of a single consciousness: they all know what everyone else is thinking, speak as one, and function as a collective intelligence. That same concept drives the latest film from Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho. While unrelated to his breakout zombie franchise, Colony imagines a different kind of undead threat: an army of infected that thinks, evolves, and acts as a single organism.

Set in present-day South Korea, the film opens with Seo Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan), a disgruntled biotech employee who threatens to unleash a deadly virus while injecting himself with the only known vaccine. After kidnapping the company’s CEO—whom he accuses of stealing his research—he infects him inside the firm’s headquarters, a towering office complex built above a sprawling shopping mall. Before long, the virus spreads through the building.

Among those trapped inside are Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), a scientist interviewing for a job at the company; her ex-husband Han Gyu-sung (Go Soo); security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook); his wheelchair-bound sister Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok); and a handful of other survivors. Forced to barricade themselves inside a retail store, they soon discover that these are no ordinary zombies.

That’s where the hive-mind concept comes into play. The infected initially crawl on all fours like feral animals, but periodically seem to receive some kind of signal that triggers another stage of evolution. They gradually stand upright, become more discerning in their behavior, and start displaying increasingly complex intentions. Who—or what—is directing them? And is there any way to stop the swarm? Outside, authorities struggle to contain the outbreak while wondering whether finding Seo Young-chul could somehow bring the entire collective down.

Like Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Yeon uses a shopping mall as his primary battleground before expanding the action throughout the surrounding office tower. As in most zombie stories, the greatest obstacles often come not from the infected but from the people trying to survive. Structurally, Colony follows the familiar beats of a zombie thriller, with its central twist being the unusual nature of the virus itself. At two hours, the film overstays its welcome, padding the running time with unnecessary arguments and interpersonal conflicts, but it still delivers most of what fans of the endlessly adaptable zombie subgenre expect.

Like virtually every film about the undead, Colony invites metaphorical readings. It obviously evokes the pandemic, but it also recalls the collective behavior fostered by social media, bots, and recommendation algorithms, turning people into aggressive, synchronized mobs that feel uncomfortably familiar. It can just as easily be read as a cautionary tale about scientific overreach or the anxieties surrounding artificial intelligence, itself a kind of hive mind governed by opaque code. Those interpretations are left to the viewer. On a more immediate level, Yeon has crafted another fast-paced zombie spectacle that may not match the originality or impact of Train to Busan, but still finds a reasonably fresh angle within an overcrowded genre.