Colony (2026): Concept Over Character
- Iwata Sam
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
At Cannes 2026, Colony was part of the Official Selection — Midnight Screenings.
It drew attention for its premise — a survival horror layered with allegories of AI, hive minds, and the erosion of individuality. Critics and jurors praised it as a “triumph of genre innovation and social commentary.”
As a big fan of Train to Busan, I was so looking forward to watching Colony. But when I watched it a few days ago, I was shocked.
The reason I was shocked was simple: the characters never came alive. In Train to Busan, every sacrifice cut deep because the people felt real — flawed, contradictory, human. In Colony, the survivors were already hollow, so when individuality was supposed to erode, there was nothing to lose.
That hollowness revealed itself in three ways:
Character emptiness — Kwon Se-Jeong, the academic lead, functions as exposition, not as a living presence.
Social metaphor lost — The infected may symbolize collective behavior, but the film never shows individuality breaking down in a way that resonates.
Spectacle over soul — The skyscraper chaos delivered scale, but not intimacy. Action swallowed character, leaving me detached.
The 2026 jurors saw a mirror of modern anxieties. I saw a polished surface, but shallow. The film wanted to speak about AI and conformity, yet without lived human struggle, those ideas dissolved into abstraction.
Again, it proves that cinema is not just allegory; it is flesh, breath, heartbeat - the humanity that gives ideas weight.
In the end, the lesson I took away was clear: if you want the BIG IDEA to stick, you need a great marketing team that knows how to implant it in people’s minds.
PS: I have to admit, the infected’s choreography looks so cool — the writhing, spasming, body‑popping sequences were awesome.
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