Colony

Giving zombies a shared brain is a sensible way to make them frightening again. In Colony, director Yeon Sang-ho uses that change to make a high-rise outbreak harder to contain. It is a decent, uneven horror film, with enough physical invention to interest those who already enjoy the genre. The infected choreography is its strongest asset. Too much of the 123-minute running time goes on explaining an idea the action can make clear.

The infected dancers move with a coordination that makes the familiar horde harder to dismiss as so many bodies waiting to be knocked down. We were unnerved by their contortions, which make human movement look painfully wrong. Byun Bong-sun’s cinematography gives this choreography the attention it deserves, allowing the performers to provide much of the horror. The practical effects add a physical unpleasantness that the computer-generated imagery, used too freely elsewhere, cannot reliably match.

Lee Mok-won’s production design provides the confined high-rise setting, and the restriction suits a story about an enemy that can coordinate its attacks. The building keeps the horror close, with the action at its most effective when the survivors have to respond to the horde’s developing capabilities. Han Mi-yeon’s editing gives individual encounters momentum, but the suspense does not hold steadily between them. The script repeatedly interrupts the danger to discuss the infection.

Choi Gyu-seok and Yeon Sang-ho have given the infected a more distinctive identity than the survivors. Gianna Jun plays Kwon Se-jeong, but the ensemble’s thin characterisation leaves too much of the concern for their survival to the circumstances alone. We understand the danger, but rarely feel much attachment to the people in it. Koo Kyo-hwan fares better as the scientist Seo Young-cheol, bringing an unnerving presence to a familiar villainous role. His performance makes the human scenes less predictable.

Chae Min-ju supplies the score, which makes less impression than the sounds accompanying the zombies’ contortions. Those noises help the choreography hurt: these are recognisably human bodies doing things human bodies should not do. It is effective horror, and a reminder of how much the film can communicate without explanation. The repeated discussions of collective intelligence become harder to excuse when the performers have already made it frightening.

Yeon’s interest in outcasts and free-thinkers gives the hive mind a possible purpose beyond making the attacks more difficult to survive. The suggestions about conformity and consumerism are broad, though, and the script spends more care on how the infection works than on what these people believe. For siege horror to sustain this much explanation, the people under threat need to be worth spending time with. Here, their lack of development makes the pauses feel longer.

There is enough physical invention here to reward a committed zombie watcher, provided expectations of the survivors remain modest. Anyone coming chiefly for a tense human story should choose something else. We would have preferred less instruction on how the horde operates and more reason to fear for its targets. Go for the infected dancers; bring some patience for the people explaining them.