3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Colony

2026, Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) -- download

Called Gunche in Korean. 

Yes, another zombie movie from the guy who did Train to Busan and its sequel, except this time he's riffing off the fungus among us idea from The Last of Us which I guess, I didn't write about. But, that's pretty much what I said for his first zombie movie, but that he was riffing on World War Z that time.

Despite its acclaim, I do recall saying that Train to Busan was not a very good movie. I also recall that I changed my viewpoint all from changing the subtitle track. It was a fun movie. Not great, but in the zombie sub-genre, what ever really is?

Again with the family. Part of me wonders whether other cultures family tropes stand out more clearly to me because they are slightly different from ours, more focus on some parts, less so on others. Almost every Hollywood movie is going to give you the divorced family trope, the family drama trope, the father doting on the daughter trope. They are background, familiar setup that we ignore as we get to know characters. But in other cultures, it is not an inherently known dynamic being displayed. to us from outside the culture. 

I mean, what's so amazing about the two family dynamics shown in this movie? Nothing really. A divorced couple, Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Hi-hyun, Blood: The Last Vampire) and her ex-husband Han Gyu-sung (Go Soo, The Flower in Prison) are amicable; he's even trying to find her a new job, despite her being difficult -- there's probably something cultural to unpack there; or it could just be general run-of-the-mill misogyny. And there is security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook, The Manipulated) and his disabled sister Hyun-hee (Kim Shin-rock, Hellbound). He dotes on her, she wants independence. Nothing spectacular going on here, but they are character highlights to the movie, dominating how things go.

What goes on is that a loony disgraced biologist (Koo Kyo-hwan, Parasyte: The Grey) calls in a biological terrorism threat and then shows up at tech conference hosted by a bio-tech conglomerate in a highrise that also happens to have a multi-level shopping mall. He injects himself with "the vaccine" while injecting the CEO of the company, who happened to have dismissed him for unethical experimentation, with The Virus. Instant white-goo vomiting zombie. And you know how it goes from there. One red dot becomes two, two becomes four, and so on. Between elevator floor trips, much of the conference floor is turned. 

Yeon takes a nod from Rec and quarantines the building, trapping everyone inside, while inept authorities outside try to figure out how to deal with the emerging threat. They all know if it gets out, South Korea is doomed. They also have a cop on the inside who is instructed to keep the loony biologist safe, as the only source of a vaccination. So, for the survivors, it becomes a struggle to find said loony, and escort him to the roof, where evacuation will be had. On the outside, scientists working for the government are trying desperately to understand what this is all about, and one happens to be the new wife of Han Gyu-sung. FYI, he doesn't last long, as is the first sacrificed to zombie tragedy, so now the two wives have to work together to solve the problem.

So, yeah the zombies themselves. The title of the movie implies everything. There is a fungus among us that controls ants, turning them into zombies, but this movie mashes it all up with natural ant behaviour, in that a colony all communicates with each other easily, all working as one, and the loony scientist believes the next stage of human evolution will be as one big colony of "perfect communication". The zombies spray their white fungus goo everywhere, it quickly growing, forming a vast network that allows the zombies to transmit data to each other, learning, evolving. And loony scientist gets himself bitten, putting himself (I guess, along with injected vaccine) at the centre of the network. What they see, he sees, what he knows, they know. Fun little functional piece.

Its a good little movie, nothing spectacular, with production values enough to make it compelling.