COLONY movie poster | ©2026 Well Go USA Entertainment

Rating: R
Stars: Gianna Jun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-been, Kim Shin-rock, Go Soo, Kim Jong-tae
Writers: Yeon Sang-ho & Choi Gyu-seok
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Distributor: Well Go USA Entertainment
Release Date: August 28, 2026

The Korean horror film COLONY (GUNCHE) is technically not a zombie movie, in the way that the 28 DAYS/YEARS movies aren’t – the virus doesn’t actually kill the victims.

However, in most movies of this type, how it all started is either unknown or irrelevant. In COLONY, it’s the plot engine.

Directed by Yeon Sang-ho (of TRAIN TO BUSAN fame) and written by Yeon & Choi Gyu-seok, COLONY is set primarily inside the massive Doongwoori Building in downtown Seoul, Korea. The lower floors house an indoor shopping mall, with all sorts of spaces on the upper levels.

Suh Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan) calls 911 to report that he’s about to commit an act of bioterrorism here.

It takes us (or at least this reviewer) a while to figure out why Suh announces his intentions to the authorities rather than just proceeding, but there’s method to his madness.

Suh then injects himself with an unknown substance and says he is the only living antidote.

We then get the onscreen statement: “COLONY: Organisms of the same species that, for a certain time, live in the same place.”

There’s an auditorium (among other things) on the mall’s third floor, where Chains Biotech is holding a conference. Personably CEO Kang Woo-cheol (Kim Jong-tae) gives a lecture about organic semiconductors and the collective intelligence found in ants and in biological slime (who knew?), where various physically unconnected bits can communicate and grow together in the direction of food.

The makers of COLONY are genuinely interested in this, with scientist characters not only piecing together what’s happening, but how they may interfere with the evolutionary process in order to save themselves and others.

Among the attendees at the lecture are prickly scientist Professor Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun) and her caring, mellow ex-husband Professor Han Kyu-seong (Go Soo). They become trapped inside the Doongwoori Building with fellow conference-goers and an assortment of vendors and customers from the mall when the place is locked down until the infection can be identified and contained.

Outside, the police and military coordinate with a scientific team led by Professor Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been). They are tasked not only with exploring the biohazard mystery but also with a variety of tactical and ethical decisions.

Director Yeon clearly has a blast creating a plethora of zombie tableaus as the hive mind pauses repeatedly, leaving its subjects motionless in similar positions to one another for moments. The coordinated movements threaten to tip over into full-on THRILLER choreography in places, but the horror iconography is captivating.

Kwon is introduced as such a surly, self-absorbed individual that it takes us a moment to accept her transition to group leader, but Jun adeptly handles the different aspects of her role. Koo excels at Suh’s deadpan smugness, to the extent that we actively root for his painful demise.

COLONY has plenty of bravura action sequences to go with those images of the infected freezing in place, then jerk back into motion. With its toggling back and forth between groups, COLONY doesn’t have the raw momentum of TRAIN TO BUSAN, but it’s thought-provoking. Certainly, it makes us look at expanding slime in a whole new way.

In Korean, with English subtitles.

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