Interview: Discussing the Zombies of COLONY with Director / Co-Writer Yeon Sang-ho

Yeon Sang-ho is back with his latest zombie film, Colony. A decidedly different film from Train to Busan, Yeon Sang-ho is very interested in exploring the dangers of collective thinking and gives us one of the most refreshing takes on zombies I've seen in quite some time. Ahead of the film's release to theaters on August 28th, I caught up with Yeon Sang-ho to discuss the science behind his new zombies, the slimy practical effects on set, and more:

Colony has a really unique concept for its zombies. Can you talk about the inspiration and science behind it?

Yeon Sang-ho: The beginning was our discussion that I had with my writing colleague, Choi Gyu-seok, after we finished season two of Hellbound on Netflix. Hellbound showed a lot of the danger of people going toward this collectivity—the collective mindset—but we thought that there might be more ways to reveal this tendency of modern society.

We started discussing what could be done, and we realized [we could use zombies to explore] the extremely high-speed internet, the information exchange through social networking, as well as the emergence of the highly-developed AI. In the beginning, the AI models are rather primitive, but eventually, it mimics human behaviors and absorbs all the human knowledge, becoming more and more human-like. I thought that these [themes] can be used to warn the danger of collectivist thinking. When it comes to the actual design of zombies in Colony, I was thinking about how collective intelligence can be expressed through zombie movements.

Earlier, in Train to Busan, I hired break-dancers and stuntmen, but for this film, I also added contemporary dancers who are well-trained in group dancing—about three teams of them. I requested of them, "I don't want you guys to move as one entity. Imagine when you play a piano, just like one piano, but you are using 10 fingers, and all 10 fingers touch and play different keys. Please have that image in mind and create the zombies for Colony." That's what I asked them.

I really enjoyed that the visuals of this mucus-driven, slimy zombie "colony"? Can you speak to the goopy, slimy practical effects and your experience on set?

Yeon Sang-ho: When I started writing the script, I did a lot of research on collective intelligence. I learned about ants' behavior moving collectively... that ant mill concept. It was introduced by a scientist, William Morton Wheeler. He first observed these bizarre behavior of ants. They just spin mindlessly until they die. Then also learned that ants communicate with each other through pheromone, so I thought, "How can I visualize this pheromone communication?"

What really also struck me and I found very, very bizarre and scary was Alien by Ridley Scott. You see that the android actually had pretended to be a human. In one scene, it was revealed that the android was actually not a human. Then, instead of the red blood that humans have, the android started bleeding this white liquid and then it was squirting out of its body, and that was really scary.

It occurred to me that I can show the visualized pheromone of ants through this white liquid. It also creates this beautiful contrast between the white liquid of the zombie's pheromones and human blood after the zombies bite humans. I thought that that was a pretty good visual contrast.

Much like the state of George A. Romero's zombie films, the world of Colony seems like it could certainly continue. Is there interest in following up this story with a movie or TV series?

Yeon Sang-ho: Even from the beginning of making Colony, I thought, "Perhaps I can create a sequel to this film as a game." That way, Smilegate, a Korean game company, also participated in the production of Colony. The problem with games is it takes a long time to complete the final product. At the moment, a graphic novel version of Colony is actually about to be published in a couple of weeks in Korea. Then the game version of Colony as a sequel or something... It may or may not be materialized, but I think there's a possibility of making one film. I'm mulling over the possibility.

---

"Horror master Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) directs a new Korean zombie thriller starring Gianna Jun and Koo Kyo-hwan. Professor Se-jeong (Ji-hyun) is thrust into a bloody nightmare when a rapidly mutating virus is released during a biotech conference causing authorities to seal the facility. Trapped inside with no escape, Se-jeong along with a small group of survivors must fight to stay alive while the infected undergo horrific transformations."

DIRECTOR: Yeon Sang-ho

WRITERS: Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok

CAST: Gianna Jun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-been, Kim Shin-rock, and GO Soo