Train to Busan Director Yeon Sang-ho on Colony and the Fear of Community

At first glance, the new movie Colony seems to cover a lot of the same ground that South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho explored in his 2016 breakout Train to Busan. In Colony, people transform into rabid killers and invade a public space, this time a shopping mall instead of a commuter train. But where the monsters of Train to Busan remained mindless beasts, Colony features creatures who evolve and learn to communicate and become a single community. And that’s truly scary to Director Yeon.

“For me, zombies illustrate the peril of collectivity,” Director Yeon tells Den of Geek. “They can illustrate artistic ides, but they can also represent the hidden fears of a given time.”

Colony stars Jun Ji-hyun as Kwon Se-jeong, a biology professor known for her brilliance and for her anti-social tendancies. Along with her ex-husband Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo) Kwon is invited to a tech conference at the prestigious Dongwoo-ri Building, where disgruntled scientist Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) has unleashed a biological weapon. The victims become part of a hive-mind, communicating perfectly with one another and moving as a collective, even as they evolve. To survive, Kwon must work with a motly crew that includes security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook), his wheelchair-bound sister Choi Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rok), and Han’s current wife, Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), who monitors the action from outside the Dongwoo-ri Building.

For Director Yeon, the juxtaposition of the makeshift community created by the survivors and the hive-mind of the colony allows him to use horror to explore pressing issues. “In Colony, the zombies represent the outcome of society’s tendency toward collective thinking. It’s made possible by the rapid exchange of information, through social networks and now AI issues,” he points out.

“In the early processes of AI development, the program just mimics being human. Colony symbolizes all of these trends.”

But the threat of Colony isn’t all technological, as Seo uses material from fungi, making the movie’s zombies cousins to the cordyceps seen in The Last of Us. “There are natural organisms existing that show these traits,” observes Director Yeon. “As they develop, they all have the same ideas, and start to exist as one entity.

“However, those organisms also understand the danger of being such a creature. If it gets taken over by some threat, they can all perish at once,” he notes. “I realized that human society also has this mind. You know, it’s nice that we can have consensus on things, and we can think alike sometimes. That’s beautiful. However, if you don’t respect minority opinions, then society cannot be healthy. If society wants to keep functioning in a healthy way, we have to make that balance.”

Thus, while the monsters in Colony represent society at its unhealthiest, the diverse group of survivors represents a healthier society, as do the surprising familial relations on display in the film. The latter points to a theme that Director Yeon has explored throughout his filmography, including the central father/daughter relationship in Train to Busan.

“Family is the minimum unit of society, but not all family relationships are healthy,” he says. “In Train to Busan, especially at the ending scene [in which a now-orphaned young girl (Kim Su-an) bonds with a widowed woman (Jung Yu-mi)], we see that people without blood relations can form a sort of family.

We see something similar in the friendship formed between Kwon and Gong Seol-hee, who only have their connection with Han Gyu-seong in common. “They form this solidarity and make connections. It wasn’t easy for them to do so, but they become friends and collaborators.

“That’s sharply contrasted toward the zombies. They form a collective entity, but without any empathy toward each other,” he continues. “Because in Colony, I use Kwon Se-jeong to show someone who isn’t afraid of being an outsider. She shows that it’s dangerous to join into crowds without making your own contribution just because you’re afraid of being alone. In order to maintain our humanity, we have to be individual and think independently.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Director Yeon opposes all forms of outside influence, as demonstrated by the debt to horror master George Romero, which he acknowledges.

“When George Romero made Night of the Living Dead, he didn’t call the creatures in the film ‘zombies.’ That only came later,” he explains. “Still, I think the zombie film itself represents the underlying and hidden fears of contemporary society, whatever society you’re living in. Zombies help visualize and specify that fear, so you see what it is.”

In other words, as long as society keeps dabbling in dangerous behaviors, zombie movies will be important, and Director Yeon will be there to bring those fears to life.

Colony opens in theaters in the US on August 28, 2026.