COLONY
(Check out Chris Reed’s Colony, it’s in theaters now. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
In the video game and TV series The Last of Us, humans are infected by the Cordyceps fungus and thereby become the walking dead. Now, in Colony, South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho’s latest take on the zombie apocalypse, it’s the turn of slime mold. The net result is not all that different from what we’ve seen before—there’s a lot of rabid biting and even a hive mind—but with a twist: here, the afflicted all answer to one master, the man who started the contagion. He is, quite literally, out for blood.
Yeon (Train to Busan) begins the story at an academic conference. As a college professor, myself, I have always been aware that the tiniest of stakes often result in the biggest of battles—a Hunger Games where desperate educators fight for the few scraps of funding thrown their way—but in Colony, the wager is on life vs. death, or rather, a living death. Our villain may claim noble intentions, but he just wants to control the world.
Thrown into the mix is a once-married duo, the ex-husband, Han Gyu-sung (Go Soo)—now with a new wife, Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been, The Ugly), who will factor into the plot later—trying to do a solid by his former partner, Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), by setting her up with a job before he decamps for the States. They’re all scientists, with various areas of specialization that touch upon the biological world. Professors Han and Kwon have come to hear the keynote address from the CEO of Chains Bio, who is touting his “organic semiconductors,” made from … slime mold!
Enter Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan, Peninsula), a disgruntled biologist who holds Chains Bio—and, it turns out, Kwon —responsible for his failures in life. He may be unstable, but he is also quite intelligent, with a plan to create a new future for our species in which all communication will happen instantaneously through a collective consciousness. Sure, we’ll also be foaming at the mouth and screaming incoherently, but progress requires sacrifice.
So Seo injects the big boss with the mold, and things quickly devolve from there, survivors hiding out in a high-rise mall building while the police, some of whom are now zombies, try to figure out whether killing or containment is the best strategy. Kwon, it turns out, is made of tough stuff, and even as the members of the plucky band with whom she holes up are picked off one by one, she perseveres. So does Gong (Han’s current wife), who is part of a governmental response team. If ever we needed a movie about toxic masculinity being defeated by smart women, that time is now.
Colony is not a masterpiece, but it is a good time. Even when the plot feel derivative, the action proves exciting. I didn’t love the little tag at the end in case the producers want a sequel (it makes no sense beyond that), but otherwise there’s plenty to recommend, and a strong central character for whom to root. Go get ‘em!
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
