I went to the opening night of this year's NYAFF and it was a crazy night with speeches and such as the North American premiere of Yeon Sang-ho's COLONY hit the screen two months before it hits American theaters.
The audience ate it up. The people around me were audibly reacting and talking to the screen. I was trying to figure out how few horror films they had seen because this was nothing we hadn't seen before, elsewhere and better.
The plot of the film has a madman getting multiple levels of revenege on those who wronged him by using a drug that turns people into mindless, fast moving beasts that act as being with a hive mind like insects or certain forms of fungi. He thinks that this will make the world a better place since it will make every one unable to say the wrong thing and miscommunicate. What it really does is turn everyone into crazed monsters who move together in an ooze.
I walked out out of Lincoln Center saying very bad things about the film. I stand by every criticism I said. Hell, a lot of what I said makes up this piece. At the same time I kind of do retract calling it a turdball and one of the the worst films of the year. It isn't. As my brother said, its not a bad film, so much as one with nothing we really haven't seen before. There are sequences such as the monkeys, that are wonderful, except they are tied together by a cliche filled script that makes no sense. We've basically seen this most of this before before, or if not before, it's only because the turns are so contrived that no competent screenwriter would actually try to use them. By Yeong's amazing standard, this film a mess. Frankly, it's his least film.
The problems here are many. There are so many that I just sat there getting pulled out of the film again and again.
The issues begin with the infected. They attack and bite people and cause the disease to spread but they don't do anything else. Its not like they are hungry, they just attack and infect. They don't, in movie zombie fashion, eat people. They actually don't do anything they shamble around until they are required to run fast. And they spew this mucus crap that covers everything to a ridiculous degree... But we never really see them spew it, we just see them covered in it. Even if its a result of the vomiting, they can only vomit so much and the stuff is everywhere and fungi needs something to feed on so how does it get everywhere? And I do mean everywhere. The monsters twist and turn in this herky jery motion but why? It looks good but... why? They say the infected can use the infection like nerves, but what the bodies do would break them. The film also is full of pronouncements that are just pulled out of people's asses. For example the infection has just started and a scientist says that the infection kills the brain but no one has time to do an autopsy. If the people are going to be a hive mind why do they go animalistic? Why go homicidal? Granted there is no real time to explain anything but there pronouncements that it must be so, so we believe... they would have been so much better not saying anything.
I know its a movie but there is only so much you can ask me to believe. Raymond Chandler said that you can only ask an audience to believe one thing that doesn't make sense, perhaps two. If you do more than that the narrative collapses. Here everything makes you wonder what were they thinking. Everything is designed to look good or produce an audience reaction, but the truth is if you stop to think about any of them they make zero sense. Even things like the speed of infection, its instantaneous, no disease moves that fast through the body.
The absolute biggest problem with the infection is why does the disease turn everyone but the infected bad guy into mindless beast? There is zero explanation - and there should be - that is the absolute one thing that needed to be explained. Its infered that he has/or is an antidote (that's another whole level of illogic I'll not get into), but if thats the case how does he join/take over the hive mind since the film says it has to be the first person who is infected? If he wants to make humanity better why is he making people animalistic, especially since he has to control them and because he wants people to understand each other? We never find out because any Bond villain like ranting takes the ideas farther and farther in to and out of left field.
Every god damn thing is foreshadowed to a ridicuolus degree. If it isn't foreshadowed then there will be a cliched turn. I don't think I didn't see early on every major turn, that wan't out of left field, when it was set up at the start. The only things that aren't foreshadowed are some turns they need to make the film work, the most obvious being the resent of the hive mind so that they could be defeated. Why does it happen? No clue, but if it didn't happen exactly then the infected couldn't be defeated because they couldn't push the big bad into the fire. The one foreshadowing thing that didn't payoff and probably will if there is a sequel, is the retention of self which we see when the broken sister turns to look at her dead/turned brother and has an emotion.
But there are other things that make no sense. The people trapped in the restruant manage to survive by just sitting in the dark and then out of nowhere the sign pops on- why not turn it off? (more to the point-how did it get turned on?) Inretrospect you have to wonder how it is that the the woman's ex, who knows the CEO and who says that he wants to meet her, would end up really delivering the invitation from the mad man when it should have been coming from the CEO. Why are the two women who solve everything the wife and ex of one of the characters? Its ridiculous to the nth degree.
One of the other things I never saw coming and which I NEVER FREAKING BELIEVED FOR A MOMENT is the most amazingly stupid move I have ever seen in any horror film ever - almost no one ever picks up a weapon. Two or three people pick up things but the 14 other people don't. You're being hunted by monsters and you are in a camping store- or anywhere and you pick up nothing to protect yourself. Really? THESE PEOPLE DESERVE TO DIE. Even stupid kids in slaher films will pick something up if they can... not these people. They go through rooms and rooms of places and they never pick up anything----even if you argue that they don't see anything to use to fight back, THEY GO INTO A KITCHEN AND THE DON'T PICK UP KNIVES!?! What in the holy hell!?! And the cop, who has a gun, never does anything with it until he wants to shoot someone in the leg as a decoy.
This isn't to say that there aren't some great moments, there are, there are great bits, again the monkeys, the infected blocking the passage, some of the attacks. But moments can't make a feature when they are tied together by a plot that just has things happen to keep things going until the run time happens.
Yeon Sang-ho's films are not always perfect but he's never made a film that feels like some one was apeing his style and those of other filmmakers. Never before has he made film where you knew exactly what was going to happen and where every twist is spelled out before being thrown back at us if the most amazing thing ever. Worse this is his first film where we don't get people on screen but simply pieces to move around and kill. This is the first time I ever watched one of his films or series and thought of fifteen other filmmakers who would have done it better
Frankly if this wasn't Sang-ho's film and just some Hollywood hack I'd be impressed but this beneath him. It feels like a money grab and move to set up a (badly thought out) new franchise (the infected moves at the end) away from the Busan series (This isn't the Busan/Peninsula/Seoul Station world). I'm glad my planned interview fell through because I would have had to ask him about his poor and lazy choices.
I am glad I saw it because it means there is no reason to see it again.
a huge disappointment
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