We caught Colony early at Fantasia 2026, where it played as the Canadian premiere, and we walked out buzzing. This is Yeon Sang-ho back in zombie mode, the Train to Busan director doing something we did not see coming.
Arthur summed up the scale before we even got into it: “it’s a fucking huge movie.” It already tore through South Korea and picked up a 7-minute standing ovation at its Cannes Midnight premiere, so the hype landed well before we did. It hits North American theaters on August 28.
Here is our quick headline take. We both liked it, Arthur a little more than Meaghan (zombies are his genre, not hers), and we both think it does something new.
I loved it, I absolutely loved it.
Arthur said. Meaghan landed a step behind him but still firmly on board. More on where we each landed in a minute.
The Twist That Grabbed Us: Hive-Mind Zombies That Evolve
The thing that hooked us right away is how these zombies work. They share a hive mind. When one learns something, they all learn it, and they get smarter fast.
At the start, they scramble on all fours like animals, then they stand up, then they figure out their senses, then they start using strategy against you. We have not seen zombies do this, and it flips every rule you walk in with.
The infection leans on spores and fungi, which gave Arthur a real case of the creeps.
It’s absolutely wild. I don’t even wanna think about it, it’s so scary.
He said, and he meant it. The whole thing turns gooey and sticky as it spreads, coating the building in gunk.
If you like a gooey film, you are in for a treat.
Meaghan warned. That is the honest pitch right there.
Smart Survivors and a Setting That Actually Works
Our favorite kind of horror is the kind where people make good decisions, and Colony mostly delivers. “I cannot be angry at the screen,” Arthur said, which is about the highest praise he gives.
When characters are dumb, he checks out. Here they think, they adapt, and they improvise, because the evolving horde means no single plan keeps you alive for long.
The setting does a lot of the work. It all goes down inside one sealed mixed-use tower, mall on the bottom, offices up top, with the whole place locked down once things go bad. We love a contained setting, and this one uses every floor instead of grinding through them like video game levels. There is always a real reason to move.
The duct tape moment cracked us up too. It sent us straight back to our chat with Ry Barrett, who plays Johnny in In a Violent Nature and once told us his apocalypse plan was making duct tape suits so nobody gets bitten. “That’s actually pretty smart. That’s fucking smart,” Meaghan said back then, and Colony basically runs the experiment.
One more thing we loved: the people cleaning up this mess are mostly the women. Meaghan joked the real subtitle should be “the women have to fix everything,” and honestly, she has a point.
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Where We Landed: Our Digs
So how much did we dig it? Meaghan sat at a strong 7.5. Arthur went to an eight. Not far apart, and both of us flagged the same thing. This is not a perfect zombie movie, but it swings at something fresh and mostly connects.
We stacked it against a couple of other recent zombie films to keep ourselves honest. We Bury the Dead was fine, with a few plot choices that got under Meaghan’s skin. This Is Not a Test felt generic. Colony did not, and that is the whole point for us right now. “I love zombies in any kind of form and take,” Arthur said, so he was always an easy sell. Meaghan is pickier, and it still won her over.
That fed the question we chewed on all episode: is the zombie subgenre tapped out? Our answer landed in the middle.
The plain shuffling-bite-and-spread version, yeah, we have seen it to death. But the twists people are bringing now keep it breathing, and Colony is proof. It does not move zombies up Meaghan’s list of favorite subgenres, but it keeps her buying tickets, and that counts for a lot.
Beyond Our Take: The Early Buzz
We are not the only ones fired up about this one. Colony pulled a long standing ovation from a packed house at its Cannes Midnight premiere, then went on to become one of the biggest local releases of the year in South Korea. For a zombie movie arriving ten years after Train to Busan reset the whole genre, that is a serious return.
The fan reactions rolling in match a lot of what we felt. Over on Reddit, one viewer nailed the pace:
Everything unleashes rapidly and doesn’t stop until the very end.
Another kept it short on the craft, saying that:
Special effects and visual design are excellent.
And one commenter liked that the film commits to a nonstop approach instead of juggling every kind of horror at once, making the case that the genre works best when a movie has a clear identity and just grabs you.
That is our read too. Colony knows exactly what it is, and it does not let up.