How Colony features a new kind of zombie to reflect modern fears
Director Yeon Sang-ho of Train to Busan fame explains how AI and social media anxiety inspired the zombies in his new horror film
Yeon Sang-ho sleeps soundly at night – no bad dreams, no night terrors, thank you very much. “When I get to bed, I’m just completely exhausted,” the 47-year-old South Korean director says with a grin. “When I sleep, the next step is just I wake up. So I never dream or have nightmares.”
Yet any thought that he is simply retreading old ground should be dismissed; Colony injects the genre with something fresh and frightening.
“The starting point of making this movie was not to make a zombie movie,” Yeon says. “It was about dealing with the potential fear of our time, and for me, it was about the high-speed exchange of information, which leads to collective consciousness.