Yeon Sang-ho has returned to zombie territory with Colony, a new South Korean horror thriller that traps its survivors inside a sealed Seoul high-rise and introduces a nasty little complication: the infected are evolving. Fast. Ahead of the film’s Australian cinema release on June 11, we chatted with the Train to Busan filmmaker about the modern anxieties behind the film, the zombie cinema that influenced him, and why the genre still has so much bite left. You can watch the interview in full above and read our article below.

Following the global success of Train to Busan and that film’s sequel, Peninsula, Yeon Sang-ho is once again exploring the zombie genre with Colony. This time, however, the threat is not just a fast-moving outbreak. It is something that learns, adapts, and appears to share information across the horde.

The film is set in a high-rise building in downtown Seoul, where a mass outbreak of an unknown infection forces the building into lockdown. Those trapped inside must make their way upwards towards a rescue team waiting on the roof, even as the infected evolve from crawling, beast-like figures into coordinated attackers capable of identifying survivors. The birth of a new species. Great news for nobody inside.

Yeon Sang-ho on the Modern Anxiety Behind Colony

Speaking with Screen Realm, Yeon explained that Colony grew out of a very modern sense of uncertainty, particularly the speed at which society now changes through the exchange of information. “Through this incredibly fast exchange of information, society is changing at an enormous speed,” he said. “That gave me a real sense of anxiety.”

For Yeon, that instability is tied to the difficulty of reading even the near future. Where society might once have settled into a shape for “ten or twenty years,” the pace of change now feels far less predictable. “Now, it is difficult to predict what things will look like even five years from now,” he said. “That uncertainty about the future was where the story began.”

Colony‘s Zombies Learn, Adapt, Evolve

The infected in Colony are not presented as an immediately unstoppable threat. At least, not at first. Yeon described wanting them to appear primitive enough that the survivors might underestimate them: “At first, they appear in a very primitive form. In a way, I wanted that primitive form to not seem like such a major threat.”

That early impression does not last. As the infected begin upgrading in ways the characters do not fully grasp, the horror comes from not knowing what the threat is becoming. “If the characters don’t understand how that upgrade is happening, they don’t know what kind of enemy they are fighting,” Yeon said.

The film also plays with the idea that this evolution is not clean, logical or predictable. “The way they upgrade is different from how humans would imagine it,” he added. “Sometimes they receive the wrong information and upgrade from that.”

The High-Rise Setting Gives Colony Its Pressure-Cooker Energy

The high-rise setting is more than just a contained location for the outbreak. For Yeon, the building allowed him to explore the strange similarities between the infected and the humans trying to survive them. “The zombies move through collective intelligence,” he explained. “Humans also try to use collective intelligence, like by creating group chats.”

That parallel extends to the way each side gathers and shares information. The infected appear to share what they see from different locations, while the humans rely on CCTV footage and communication tools to track the chaos around them. From there, Colony turns the building into a pressure cooker where both sides are changing, just not in the same direction.

“The zombies start primitive and rapidly upgrade, while humans begin civilised and quickly regress into savagery,” Yeon said.

It is one of Colony’s more brutal ideas: while the monsters are becoming more organised, the humans are being pushed in the opposite direction.

Dawn of the Dead, The Raid and Invasion of the Body Snatchers Influenced Colony

During our conversation, Yeon spoke about the films that helped shape Colony. Given his place in modern zombie cinema, it is no surprise that George A. Romero’s work came up, along with Zack Snyder’s own take on the same landmark title. “I’m a huge fan of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead,” he said. “They are zombie films, but they also carry a lot of social meaning.”

He also responded to a mention of Gareth Evans’ The Raid, the hard-hitting action film set largely inside an apartment building, as a comparison point for the way combat can drive a story forward. “The Raid is, in a way, a very direct action film,” he noted. “Everything that film wants to say, it tries to express through direct action.”

Another major influence was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, particularly the collective behaviour of its alien threat and the way they identify humans.

Why Yeon Sang-ho Keeps Returning to the Zombie Genre

Yeon has already helped deliver one of the defining zombie films of the modern era with Train to Busan, but Colony shows that he still sees plenty of room to explore within the genre. For him, the appeal lies partly in how loosely defined zombies can be. “I think zombies, as creatures within the genre, have almost endless possibilities,” he said. “They are not defined too precisely.”

That flexibility is exactly what makes zombies so useful as a storytelling device. They can shift with the times, reflecting whatever fears happen to be sitting beneath the surface of a particular era. “As times change, zombies have symbolised the hidden fears of different eras,” Yeon said.

He also explained how Train to Busan and Colony use the genre differently. In Train to Busan, the zombies were more traditional, while the train itself carried the metaphorical weight. “With Train to Busan, the zombies were fairly classic, and the train with a final destination was a metaphor for capitalism in Korean society,” he said.

With Colony, Yeon sees the infected carrying that meaning more directly. “With this film, the difference is that the zombies themselves can become the metaphor,” he said.

K-Movie Entertainment unleashes Colony in Australian cinemas on June 11.

More Horror Coverage:

‘Backrooms’ Review: Kane Parsons Turns Internet Horror Into an A24 Nightmare

‘Obsession’ Review: A Love Spell Goes Horribly Wrong in Curry Barker’s Standout Horror Film