{"id":672633,"date":"2026-05-16T04:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T04:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/672633\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T04:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T04:01:11","slug":"colony-director-yeon-sang-ho-on-ai-individuality-and-zombies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/672633\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Colony’ Director Yeon Sang-ho on AI, Individuality and Zombies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tYeon Sang-ho<\/a>\u2019s \u201cColony<\/a>\u201d premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at the Cannes Film Festival<\/a> on Friday, marking the \u201cTrain to Busan\u201d director\u2019s return to the zombie genre. This time, he infuses it a distinctly contemporary twist that reflects anxieties about artificial intelligence, collective behavior and the erosion of human individuality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll along my works, I always tried to express the fear or the horror of today\u2019s society,\u201d Yeon tells Variety. \u201cFor me, the greatest fear is the high-speed communication exchange. It\u2019s like a living organism and, in a way, it reduces our individualism, our individuality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat thematic concern drives \u201cColony,\u201d which follows biotechnology professor Se-jeong, played by Gianna Jun, as she attends a conference that spirals into catastrophe when a rapidly mutating virus is unleashed. With authorities sealing off the entire facility, survivors find themselves trapped with an ever-growing threat that behaves less like traditional zombies and more like a networked intelligence.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Yeon, the decision to revisit zombies wasn\u2019t about retreading familiar ground but finding the right vessel for exploring modern anxieties. He points to George A. Romero\u2019s enduring influence, noting that \u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d and subsequent zombie films remain beloved because Romero was able to express the potential fear of his time through the undead.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you see the history of those zombie movies, actually zombies represent the fear of that time, so it\u2019s really, really relevant,\u201d Yeon says. \u201cAnd zombies, even in my movies, they are called zombies because it\u2019s not a definition, but it\u2019s because they represent the potential fear of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat fear, in 2026, centers on how rapid information exchange and artificial intelligence are reshaping human thought into something collective and homogenized. \u201cIn a way, it\u2019s like a living organism,\u201d Yeon observes, \u201cand it reduces our individualism, our individuality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaker\u2019s research into viral colonies and group organisms revealed a fascinating parallel to human society. \u201cEach colony or each group, each virus \u2014 we can just assume that there\u2019s only one specificity \u2014 but actually, even if they appear to be the same, themselves they create a mutant,\u201d he explains. \u201cBecause if they are all the same, if something happens to this particular organism or this virus, it\u2019s a weak point because this weakness can lead to complete extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat biological imperative toward diversity informs Yeon\u2019s broader philosophy about protecting minority voices within collective structures. \u201cI think the human society can learn a lot about this because actually, it\u2019s also for us very important to protect the minority in front of the universality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYeon\u2019s concerns about collective behavior extend directly to artificial intelligence itself. \u201cWe have to look into what are the specificities of AI,\u201d he says. \u201cOf course, it\u2019s an artificial intelligence and it\u2019s the sum of all that is universal. So when we speak about universality, it also embraces errors or bugs which is, in a way, the point of view of the minority which is completely buried in it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tFor Yeon, AI\u2019s ability to rapidly find and synthesize universal opinions creates a fundamental problem: it eliminates the mutations and minority perspectives that biological systems \u2014 and human societies \u2014 need to survive. \u201cAI is appropriate for creating universal opinions, but it has limitations in creating mutations, which are characteristics of living organisms \u2014 minority opinions,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTrain to Busan\u201d trapped its characters in the horizontal space of a speeding train, but \u201cColony\u201d unfolds vertically within a sealed high-rise building. The shift isn\u2019t merely spatial but symbolic, representing what Yeon sees as the precariousness of human civilization itself.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you have vertical action, it also expresses that the civilization made by humans can also go back very quickly to the primitive, to the savageness that we all knew before,\u201d he says. The verticality also plays with audience expectations about escape and survival. \u201cHumans think that you better go up, upwards to survive, but actually in the movie, you know that it doesn\u2019t really help to go on the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe setting also allowed Yeon to explore a dimension absent from \u201cTrain to Busan\u201d \u2014 the perspective of those outside who view containment as necessary. \u201cThere are people outside who want people inside to be completely locked down, isolated,\u201d he notes. \u201cThat is the biggest difference compared to \u2018Train to Busan\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s an approach informed by the global experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cWe all experienced the coronavirus experience since then,\u201d Yeon observes. \u201cI think we all have a way of watching that completely changed because of that experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an era when visual effects can conjure virtually anything, Yeon made the deliberate choice to ground \u201cColony\u2019s\u201d horror in physical performance. He hired three teams of professional dancers to embody the infected, rejecting the notion that creatures sharing a collective consciousness should move identically.
\u201cI\u2019m not struggling to avoid any CGI, but here it was the case because we have actual real living organisms,\u201d Yeon explains. \u201cOf course, they have all the specificities of AI, those zombies, but those living organisms, I wanted them to be real.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe metaphor he used with the dancers was telling: \u201cTen fingers of one hand playing a piano. So each of them, they are in one hand, so they are a body, but each of them have their specific role.\u201d It\u2019s a choreographic approach that mirrors the film\u2019s thematic interest in how individuals function within collectives while maintaining distinct identities.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cColony\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tShowbox<\/p>\n

\n\tBalancing blockbuster spectacle with philosophical inquiry comes naturally to Yeon, but he\u2019s quick to credit the infrastructure created by Korea\u2019s previous generation of filmmakers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think everything is really due to the industry of South Korean cinema,\u201d he says. \u201cYou see recently all those famous directors like Lee Chang-dong, Bong Joon Ho, Park Chan-wook \u2014 we really owe them a lot because they are the ones who made the basic frame of doing movies that are at the same time commercial but also very auteur.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat framework, Yeon says, distinguishes Korean commercial cinema from other markets. \u201cIt\u2019s like a really cornerstone \u2014 so we all try to not only make pure commercial films, but commercial films which also embrace auteur side. So that, I think, is one of the greatest strengths of Korean cinema.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe international success of Korean genre filmmaking has opened new collaborative opportunities for Yeon. His Netflix thriller \u201cRevelations\u201d featured Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n as producer, while his Netflix Japan series \u201cHuman Vapor,\u201d directed by Katayama Shinzo, launches July 2. The series, inspired by a 1960s film and Okuda Hideo\u2019s novel \u201cOlympic Ransom,\u201d allowed Yeon to work in unfamiliar cultural terrain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe subject takes place in a country that I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s not my usual surroundings, so it was great to collaborate on that project,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeon is completing post-production on \u201cParadise Lost,\u201d a darker, more intimate project that extends themes from his 2025 film \u201cThe Ugly.\u201d Inspired by low-budget works from Asian masters like Edward Yang and Kurosawa Kiyoshi, \u201cParadise Lost\u201d tells the story of a mother who uses AI services to virtually resurrect her dead young son, only to have her actual son return nine years later.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a very dark movie and it\u2019s really completely different to the big movies that I usually make,\u201d Yeon says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t want to focus on only one kind of movie; I really want to have a parallel, to make both independent low-budget movies and also all those commercial movies together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking further ahead, Yeon hints at an international project that will take him outside Korean-language cinema entirely, though he\u2019s staying tight-lipped on details.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor now, his focus remains on \u201cColony\u2019s\u201d Cannes debut, where he and his cast \u2014 including Jun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-been, and Kim Shin-rock \u2014 walked the red carpet Friday night. It\u2019s a moment that encapsulates how far Korean genre cinema has traveled on the global stage, and how filmmakers like Yeon continue to find fresh resonance in familiar forms.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think that I\u2019m really lucky to be a director working today,\u201d Yeon reflects, comparing the current debates about streaming platforms, AI, and cinema\u2019s identity to the artistic ferment that followed Marcel Duchamp\u2019s Dadaism. \u201cAll those debates actually enriched art at that time. So I think today it\u2019s the same for cinema because of the platforms, because of the quest of identity, everything enriches cinema today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yeon Sang-ho\u2019s \u201cColony\u201d premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday, marking the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,5328,200714,75,337,77714],"class_list":["post-672633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-colony","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-yeon-sang-ho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}