With the global craving for Korean genre entertainments showing no sign of abating, it can’t be easy to be a filmmaker tasked with feeding the beast with ever bigger, better, bonecrunching-er novelties. And that must go double for a director like Yeon Sang-ho who, with 2016’s “Train to Busan,” previously gnawed into the throat of the fast-zombie subgenre and instantly infected it with new, ravenous energy. Ten years, an animated prequel (“Seoul Station”) and a disappointing live-action sequel (“Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula”) later, Yeon returns to action-horror with “Colony” an entertaining if empty-headed exercise in familiarity, with a few neat new tricks up its bloodstained, gore-flecked sleeve.
Firstly though, let’s quickly dispense with the perennial argument over whether we can call these particular post-human cannibalistic freaks “zombies” given that they’re technically infected rather than dead — because yes, we can. And frankly, that kind of pedantry will not serve you well if you’re seeking to enjoy a movie as determinedly resistant to close-read intellectual analysis as “Colony,” where things happen just because they do, destruction occurs just because it can and people get horribly chomped-and-changed because, as crunchily choreographed (by “Train to Busan” zombie-transformation maven Jeon Young) and as impressively performed by a highly contortionist troupe of writhing, spasming, body-popping dancers, it is very good fun to watch.
