Yeon Sang-ho Details COLONY’s Hive-Minded Zombies and Stunt Work

COLONY director Yeon Sang-ho has explained how the film’s unusual zombies were developed, including their hive mind, distinctive movements, and coordinated behavior. The movie, now in release from Well Go USA, stars Gianna Jun as a professor whose visit to a high-rise scientific conference coincides with the spread of a new zombie contagion. Speaking with Rue Morgue, Yeon said the film grew out of conversations with screenwriter Choi Gyu-seok, his co-creator on the HELLBOUND series. After working on that project’s second season, the pair discussed collective thinking and how social networks enable information to move rapidly through society. Yeon said the development of artificial intelligence also contributed to the ideas behind COLONY’s infected characters. In the film, the zombies initially crawl before pursuing victims with acrobatic movements. They also share information through a hive mind, causing them to stop together at certain moments. Yeon said this collective intelligence required a different approach from the zombie movement seen in TRAIN TO BUSAN, for which the production used breakdancers and stunt performers. For COLONY, he contacted three contemporary dance companies, with an emphasis on avant-garde styles, to develop the choreography. His central idea was that the zombies should move as one without necessarily traveling in the same direction or performing identical actions. He compared the concept to the fingers of a pianist: each moves independently while contributing to a single piece of music. Yeon also said finding performers was easier than it had been a decade earlier. The popularity of the zombie genre in Korea after TRAIN TO BUSAN helped create a larger pool of actors with specialized experience. Through performer networks, the production located dancers and a stunt team before holding auditions. Although COLONY has an expansive visual scale, Yeon said its budget was not high. Most scenes were filmed on a shopping-mall set, while some inserts used real buildings. A large street setting seen during a climactic sequence was also constructed as an open set, with the surrounding buildings added through CGI. The production used a separate stunt driver for the vehicle sequences involving Jun’s character and others. Cars were equipped with two steering wheels so the actors could sit on one side while stunt drivers controlled the vehicles from the other. Yeon described those scenes as risky and nerve-wracking, but said the actors and drivers completed the work without injury.