A decade after the film that brought him international acclaim, Train to Busan,  director Yeon Sang-ho returns to the zombie genre with his latest attention grabbing feature Colony. Where the innovator of the genre, George A. Romero, excelled at social commentary in his film and began to directly correlate his emotions and opinions on the current events of the time, Sang-ho excels more at getting his audiences to invest strongly in his characters. This lends him the ability to create impactful scenes not only with scripting and staging, but with the characters involved, something a lot of his contemporaries struggle with.

Invited to the Chains Bio conference by her ex-husband Han Kyu-seong (Go Soo), Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun) arrives late with a mysterious note added to her invitation. Han introduces Kyu-seong and Se-jeong to CEO Kang Woo-choel (Kim Jong-tae), but Woo-choel quickly excuses himself to take a call from the police. Turns out former employee Seo Yeong-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) has called in a bioterrorist threat against the building. After infecting Woo-cheol, Yeong-cheol watches as the zombie-like virus spreads rapidly, engulfing the entire building and forcing an entire lockdown of the skyrise. 

Se-joeng bands with a small group of survivors, including a police officer, a group of teens where one is actively bullied by the other two, and a Security Guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) with his wheelchair bound older sister Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok). With their help, hedesperately looks for a way out. Meanwhile, after hearing the fate of her husband Kyu-seong via Se-jeong, Gong Seol-hee, (Shin Hyun-been) his current wife, and a scientist herself is called in to aid the investigation from the outside. As chaos ensues and the body count rises, Se-jeong discovers that her presence at the conference was no mere coincidence.

Colony is a prime example of a film that doesn’t necessarily focus its attention on trying to re-invent a genre. But instead, it tweaks it into a vision of their own that’s executes a focused and well-executed version of a film familiar to audiences. There are a few very familiar sequences and setups that we’ve seen before, but those set pieces are so well done that they work anyways. Colony‘s undead feature a different wrinkle in that they share information through a hive mind, but while they are receiving and downloading information they are frozen in place. This sets up the motivation behind some of the film’s best set pieces. The undead also feature a slime producing component which slowly transforms the hallways into catacombs, allows them to team up into a bundle of many of them, and makes everything slippery. This directly leads to one of my favorite sequences as the military infiltration starts and they turn the corner for a nasty surprise.

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Films like Colony don’t work without a strong likeable character to root for and get behind. Colony manages to produce 3, and they are all female. Gianna Jun, who after a decade of television work returns with her first feature since 2015’s Assassination, delivers a strong and dependable anchor lead character that’s both believable and undeniable. She’s our lead inside, but her performance gets even better with the added wrinkle of having to rely on Shin Hyun-been’s wife of her ex-husband for information and help. Hyun-been’s performance is strong on her own, fierce and determined to do the right thing despite the cowardice of the military surrounding her. 

But the heart of the film belongs to Kim Shin-rok. She plays Choi Hyun-hee with a deep level of sweetness and vulnerability that when her outcome is finally decided it’s the most heart wrenching of the entire film. Where Train to Busan broke Don Lee internationally, I could see Colony breaking Gianna Jun or Kim Shin-rok in the same way.

The effects work, unsurprisingly, are phenomenal here, but after Train to Busan, that could almost be considered expected. Yeon Sang-ho may be developing into this generation’s Romero, with his inherent ability to craft newer versions of the zombie genre that manage to hit just as hard each time. Colony would be best watching in a loud, enthusiastic  theater crowd that’s ready to scream, gasp and applaud along with everything. But for fans of zombie films, no matter how you see it, Colony should be essential viewing.