Colony

South Korean cinema no longer occupies a marginal position in global cinephilia. “Parasite” became the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2020, and the Hallyu (Korean Wave), where both television and film have been key components, has been in full force for at least a decade as a cultural export. Major Korean films from festival veterans Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”) to the artsy millhouse productions of Hong Sang-soo are simply major films. No regional asterisk is necessary. And four films in, the zombie films of Yeon Sang-ho have clearly claimed an essential and cozy spot in the Korean Wave. “Colony,” his latest undead feature, is in theaters now, and it’s one of the best films of the year.

Yeon is best known for 2016’s “Train to Busan,” one of the most internationally recognizable Korean films and a star-creating genre film. Set almost entirely on the KTX train from Seoul to Busan, the narrow corridors of the locomotive proved a perfect complement for the horde horror of zombies. He crafts the contexts of his films and then builds his zombies from those contexts; in “Train to Busan,” they can’t open doors or see in the dark—allowing for creative sequences when the train enters the darkness of a tunnel. 

The animated “Seoul Station” came out the same year and showed the origins from the perspective of the city’s homeless. Carrying forward the legacy of zombie maestro George Romero, the prequel flips the original social commentary of consumerism and capitalism on its head and leverages the way the housed look upon the unhoused, consciously or not. A sequel, in name if not in practice (there are no recurring characters or plot points), “Peninsula” (2020) is the weakest of the bunch and never finds an emotional core like the first two films, even if it’s still entertaining to watch the evolution from horror to action. 

“Colony” appears set in an outbreak unrelated to the earlier trilogy. As in “Train to Busan,” a company is at fault, a set-up that pins the entirety of societal collapse on corporate greed. This time the malefactor is the biotech company Chains Bio, and the entire film takes place within the Dongwoo-ri skyrise building in Seoul. Former employee and current bio-terrorist Seo Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan) exploits their research in cell regeneration to create hive-mind zombies that communicate new information across their shared singularity and evolve as the film advances. They start with crawling and end up talking. 

At the heart of the film is a relationship I’ve never seen before: an ex-wife and a current wife to the same husband. Biotechnology professor Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) is the ex-wife. She was attending the industry conference at Dongwoo-ri, where the pandemic starts. Her ex-husband Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo) is moving to the United States for a new teaching job and is trying to set his ex up with his old job, because apparently that’s something people do sometimes. The baggage between them is palpable and always uncomfortable but never venomous or vitriolic. 

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