Yeon Sang-ho's 'Colony' challenges AI era with hive-mind zombie film

Director Yeon Sang-ho debuted "Colony" in the Midnight Screening section of the Cannes Film Festival this week, presenting a 20-billion-won zombie thriller in which the infected share a single collective mind modeled on how artificial intelligence aggregates human thought.

The film arrives in South Korean theaters May 22, representing a 100-fold production-scale leap from Yeon's 2024 hit "The Ugly" — and the most ambitious chapter yet in the career of the director who introduced the world to Korean zombie cinema with "Train to Busan" in 2016.

"The starting point of this film was my interest in how AI works," Yeon said Wednesday after the Seoul premiere, according to The Korea Times. "AI felt like the total sum of very common and generalized human thinking."

The director extended that observation into a broader social critique. "In today's world where collective intelligence dominates everything, I thought true humanity might lie in individuality," he said.

In "Colony," a biologist injects a corporate chief executive with a syringe, triggering immediate transformation and rapid infection throughout a single building. The infected don't simply attack — they share cognitive functions, moving as one networked mind rather than as individuals. The creature design reflects Yeon's anxiety about how AI-driven consensus flattens diverse thought.

The film's protagonist, Se-jeong, is built around resistance to that pull. "Se-jeong is different because she can disagree with the crowd," Yeon said. "Near the end, she teams up with Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), showing a clear contrast to the shared mind of the infected."

"Colony" carries a production budget of 20 billion won — roughly 100 times the 200-million-won cost of "The Ugly," whose 2024 run surpassed 1 million tickets. Yeon's feature debut came with the animated "The King of Pigs" in 2011; "Train to Busan" in 2016 and "Peninsula" in 2020 followed, each broadening his international reach.

International audiences at Cannes received "Colony" positively, the Korea Times reported, suggesting the film may carry the export potential that made Yeon's earlier zombie entries global successes.

"Colony" opens nationwide in South Korea on May 22. Yeon's wager — that audiences in the age of AI will recognize the horror of lost individuality — drew early endorsement from international critics and filmgoers assembled on the Croisette.