Hi everybody, John here with a quick programming note. We are originally going to release Blood of Gasly Horde this episode. However we've had to delay that by one week so instead and I watched a brand new zombie film for you. So please enjoy that and we'll see you next week for Blood of Gasly Horde.

Welcome to zombie strains. The podcast that watches all the zombie films. This week, it's director Yunsang Ho's new film, Colony from 2026.

You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures. What do they call them, zombies or something?

Zombie.

Zombie?

What's a zombie?

Well a zombie…there’s um... ...Mr. Bill there’s... ...the living dead.

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand!

The unburied dead are coming back to life and seeking human victims.

I’ve seen the dead rise.

Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul.

Welcome to zombies trains. I'm John.

And I'm Andy.

Hi, Andy.

Hey, John. We haven't done this in a while. We're doing a film that is by the time this is released, maybe two weeks old tops. So I'm very excited to do a modern film for the first time. I think our last one was the Gorge. I'd have to look. Last one was we bury the dead. We bury the dead. That's right. And we also did earlier. The Gorge. We did the Gorge, but we also did 28 years later the bone temple. Oh, of course. Yeah. That's right, episode. Cause we like that movie so much. All right, well, today we're going to do a Korean zombie film. This is the film, Colony, which just came out in America as a recording. I saw it last night. I don't know when you saw it, Andy, but I also saw it last night. Excellent. Sadly, I was kind of excited about this movie and it was a reminder about how maybe the thing you love. Everybody doesn't love because they're only, you know, Ann Abramishkin has a couple of cool theaters. And I used to feel like I could kind of see anything I wanted. But the only place I could see this, there were two screenings, one on Friday night and one on Saturday night at the cinema theater in Ann Arbor. So that was a little disappointing. However, when I went to my screening, there were like 10 people there. So I guess I've seen I guess I don't know how I have and when I love about that actually is it was what you guys like me sort of like middle-aged, um, clearly very nerdy guys hanging out together and then three groups of like teenage or young 20 females that were watching this watching the movie and giggling at the, at the delight of it. So it was, it was a pretty, it was a fun crowd. You know, I would have guessed that Ann Arbor would be the place to go to see foreign films and interesting niche film projects, but I swear Grand Rapids, which is a very boring city where I live, we get, I think we might get more interesting film stuff through here. I think you do sometimes. Now, we do get good stuff. So, for example, they did do a recently my, the Michigan Theater, our local theater did do a, oh, film screening of the colors trilogy blue white and red, which was pretty cool. And I got to see blue in the theater for the first time ever. That was great. That's amazing. And there is a great Korean studies department at the University of Michigan and they often will sponsor and host Korean films. So I was just a little disappointed that it didn't get a little better treatment. But maybe because it's a horror genre film and they don't want to and they don't think people want to see that. And maybe they're right, but they're not right about me. The white blue red trilogy really blew my mind in college. I does that hold up well to a review. You know, I went, they showed all three in the theater, but I could only make it to blue and absolutely. Like if you get a chance to see blue in a movie theater, take it. It is a gorgeous film and it holds up a hundred percent. All right. Well, we're not talking about that. We're talking about this movie Colony. I'm going to do a intro to the movie. Talk about the people behind the movie. We're going to talk about it for a little bit. We'll get into some basic questions of the film and then at one point we will flag spoilers and we're going to go full spoilers though. We are not going to do a beat by beat of the movie. So our spoilers may contain important things, but it's not going to be every single thing in the movie. So use your own judgment and we will clearly mark when we are doing spoilers. Sounds good. All right. Did I forget anything, Andy? I don't think so. Let's jump right in. All right. I would like to say one thing is normally we do cultural context for those listening to us for the first time doing a modern movie. We do not do cultural context for modern movies because we assume everybody is living in some culture right now and knows what's going on on some level. So And B, we haven't done trigger warnings in a while. I don't know that this film requires it though. It is very violent Not as violent as it could be though. It's violent, but not gory. Correct. Like people get mulled and killed by groups of zombies But you don't see like limbs flying around and guts and all that kind of stuff. So Let's talk about this film and how it got made. So this is the third live action feature from Yon Sang Ho. He is a director. He's most famous for the film Train to Busan. He actually started doing animated films and has done in the number of those. But what we're interested in is first of all, he did train to Busan in 2016. That was his original live action movie and his breakout hit. It appeared at the Con Film Festival in the Midnight Screening slot. as did this movie, as did his other live action movie called Peninsolo, which is a sequel. And I want to talk about these for one second. So there's four movies in this series. There's train to Busan, there's Peninsolo, which is a sequel, but like this movie is not about the same events, right? They're all sort of zombie movies together, but they could all stand alone. and then he did an animated prequel in 2020 to train to Busan called Soul Station. So those are the four movies that he's made on this topic. And they're sort of the the the the Linchpin of his career. His early movies were animated films targeted adults that had a lot of cultural commentary in them. So he's a pretty interesting fellow actually. And I think he's making cultural commentary here and in train to Busan. So Yeah, for sure. A little bit. So is this movie explicitly set in the world of train to Busan? So they don't mention it at all. And I watched trained to be son earlier this weekend, because I had never seen it. And so now I can speak plainly my shame as a zombie fan not having seen it. And now I've seen it. I know, like they seem totally unrelated. You know, trained to be son ends with a sort of vague sense that the characters are safe. But this starts as if nothing has ever happened like this in the world before, as far as I can tell. And are the zombies remind me it's been a few years since I've seen trained to be saw. The zombies in training to pass on are different than they're a whole different breed of zombie than the ones in this one, right? Yes, though they do look similar. They have the same sort of milky eyes and they have the same sort of jerky movements, but not to the extreme that they are in this film. Remind me again, does Trantibuson have what I think of as like an Asian zombie cinema thing, which is zombies with like shark teeth? No, they're fairly conventional looking. They just look gross and beat up and bloody and gory, but they're teeth are normal. They're infected humans just like in 28 years later, 28 days later. I might be thinking of the, I think it's a South Korean miniseries, uh, Kirk Kingdom, Uh, it's funny that you mentioned Kingdom Andy, but before I get there, let me please do my Korean name disclaimer. I did try to do a little practicing before this podcast on getting these names correct. This is not an area of expertise for me, so I apologize for the butchering that's about to happen to, uh, to Korean names. It's not out of disrespect, just out of familiarity. So, yes, that stars, or one of the characters in it is played by Junji Hyun, who is the star of this film. of Galilee. She was in Kingdom. This film also starts cook here Juan G. Chang Wook and Kim Shin Rock. Kim Shin Rock if we'll get to the movie as though it's the woman in a wheelchair. Oh, right, right. Yeah. But Junji Huan is a very famous woman in Korea. She started out as a model and a TV presenter. She actually is most famous and sort of broken to the mainstream, not by a movie or a TV show, but by doing a Samsung commercial, which is I guess surprising to me, but probably actually not. She's been in a lot of movies and TV shows. I won't go through all of them. She did. make up have a sort of breakout in America when she made kingdom and a couple of other things. She's an interesting character. She did take a hiatus for many years and her last feature film was another Korean film that I've seen and enjoyed called Assassination. Have you seen this one, Andy? No, I haven't. You would like it. It's about a group of Korean resistance fighters against the Japanese in the 1930s. So it's a high-action period drama. And she is the star of that film as well. So this is her first feature film. She's done TV and some other things since then since that will be in 2015. I think that's most of what I want to cover. We're not going to go into super detail on the rest of the actors, though they're all excellent. And we can talk about them as we go. What did you have in mind for sort of breaking this down, Andy? Well, I think, I actually think we probably won't go too far before sounding the spoiler horn, but I was thinking you could give us a spoiler free just overview or set up of the movie. Yes. And maybe in the course of doing that, you could talk. just what are the main points of conflict or the groups of people? What are they doing in the movie? Then we'll sound the spoiler horn and then I pulled out maybe four or five just interesting themes or stuff from the film that I thought we could talk about and that's the point where John and I will feel free to be talking about specific scenes within the movie, which is where you might get some spoilers. So do you want to give us kind of a spoiler free overview and then just tell us like tell us what the movies main beats are, maybe? Sure, so this is, it's, I wouldn't say it's high concepts, exactly. But like Trane to Busan, it is a bit of a location-based movie, right? Trane to Busan is a Zambu movie set on a train. The colony is a Zambu movie set in an enclosed building that is blocked off. So the general plot is it is a, it's set during a biotech conference. And the CEO of the biotech company, it starts by giving it, and this is at the very beginning of the film. a speech about how they can use biological tech to create beings that can communicate with each other in other ways than conventional technology. A bomb threat is called in by a man named SIO Yung Chul, and he used to work at this biotech company, and he says he's going to commit a cyber attack or a terrorist attack on this building. He says, I'm going to do a bioattack and I have injected the antidote to it or the vaccine to it into myself. So if you want the vaccine, you've got to take me. And what happens is there's a couple who have come to The conference, G. J. Jun, who is C. J. Young, and she's come there and met her ex-husband, and they are there when the Zambi outbreak happens. There's a security guard in his sister, who is wheelchair-bound, and a group of teenagers also. there's also a policeman and a couple of businessmen that are there when the outbreak happens. And then we'll be talking about how they deal with the outbreak, how the government and the and our heroes find out the source of the outbreak and how to stop it and their efforts to try to do that throughout the film, which we will get into when we get into this boy older section. Yeah, there's a sort of parallel storyline that we sometimes skip out to, following a researcher outside the building, trying to basically figure out what is going on scientifically with this virus. And what I found interesting is that, like for example, I haven't seen Peninsula, but now I want to. In train to Busan, that part of the tension is that they have no outside communication, right? It's all, it's all, it's, they get occasional communication, but it's unreliable and inconsistent. Here, that's not the case. They can talk to the government and the tension comes in a very different way, which I'm sure we'll get to. Anything else before we sound the horn? I don't think so. I guess before we go into spoilers, you know, John does this feel like a movie you want to recommend our listeners go and watch before they listen to the rest of this conversation or do you think of that conversation. Yeah, I give it a solid, yes. I don't know if it's the best movie I've ever seen, but it's like it's a what I would say is it's actually a solid thriller. Yeah, it has horrific elements. The zombies are gross and scary, but it does not have a bunch of like jump scares or the tension and it feels more like an action film or a thriller than a horror movie. So if you like good thrillers and don't mind some gross zombies, oh, you just love zombie movies that are in intense movies. I would give this one a recommendation for sure. Yeah, I think I'd say the same thing. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a bit of a zombie nerd. You probably will thank yourself for seeing this movie. That said, I don't think this is like an indispensable movie in the zombie canon. So I guess you've heard enough warnings and it's probably time to get into the spoiler parts. So starting now, complete spoilers in three, two, one. Okay, John, so I am taking the reins or the wheel here. Go for it. So I pulled out to five-ish things that I think would be profitable for us to talk about. And I'm going to start with a real simple one, but I realized, well, watching this movie that you and I have not had really had this conversation. And that is, so one of the big things this movie features is, good old fast zombies. Yes. And you and I don't think we have just talked about fast to zombies and what we think it brings to the genre or takes away from the genre. As listeners will know, in the regular run of this podcast, we're up into the early 70s. with a couple of exceptions, we really have not seen the modern fast zombie in any of our movies. We have seen a few movies where zombies could move at like they could run or move at human speed. But this movie has fast zombies in that 28 days later style, which is it's not just that they can move at human speed. It's just it's that when they see you, they sprint in a frenzy, And I am old enough to remember when 28 days later came out, I am old enough to remember whether this was sort of like a betrayal of what made, if this was a betrayal of the zombie film genre, or if this was something, that injected much needed life into the zombie genre, to make the zombies be able to chase after you and catch you. Do you have any general thoughts? And I have some specific ones about this film, but general thoughts, John, fast zombies, yay, you're nay. I am now pro fast zombies after sort of resisting it maybe for a little while and I think you can tell like a slow zombie movie today I just think people are so used to fast zombies. It would seem strange though. We bury the dead. They are normal speed. You know, they're not hyper fast Yeah, but I just don't think it would sell now there is I hope that that when we get further along people are playing with the tension between fast and slow zombies because there's a different kind of tension you can deliver with fat with slow zombies that are not on their own as threatening as the group and that creates a different series of choices and tension. Yeah, I think you nailed it in that there's different kinds of tensions that fast and slow zombies can create and a good filmmaker chooses the right one for the type of tension they want to create. Fast zombies do capture that sort of primal fear you have. Like, have you ever had like a dog that you didn't know start sprinting straight at you? Yes, right? And It triggers a sort of deep-seated lizard-brain fear instinct and I think a good fast zombie movie captures that that just primal fear, like you don't have time to strategize or to think or to reason or to make a plan. Something is running at you and it's not just trying to catch you, it looks like it's just going to barrel into you, right? Yes. Which these guys do. So the best action scenes in this movie are scenes where zombies are just creating across a room at heroes who don't have any time to think and what you get is this desperate scrambling action scene where you have to improvise every step of the way just to keep out of reach of these fast moving zombies. That is a special kind of fear. I do think several scenes in this movie really nail that like frenetic tension. He also goes the other way, because in both here in train to Busan, there is something there's some mechanism by which the zombies are temporarily stalled or paused or can't see you. Like in train to Busan when it's dark, the zombies can't perceive people, and they're able to sort of sneak by in a way that feels like a slow zombie kind of situation. And the same thing here, the zombies when they're I want to talk about these zombies because they're pretty great in several ways but the zombies have these moments where they're like all connecting and they freeze and they don't know how long they're going to be frozen for but it's like an opportunity to act so yeah that I mean that it's the speed it's the speed and and viciousness of them that makes those teens scenes tense but they also feel like an old like hey we're trying to sneak through slow walking zombies Yeah, with slow. The thing you get with slow walking zombies that I love is that a slow zombie by itself is not really a threat and you get complacent. Yes. And then in a good slow zombie movie, our heroes are so accustomed to just dispatching these slow moving zombies that they just get careless and then they realize their boxed in or their trapped. And I enjoy the thrill of that. That's a real horror moment, yes, more than a fear moment, and I appreciate that, but and being sort of more action oriented in this movie, one-on-one actually our characters are able to take out zombies. There are fights between humans and zombies, whereas in 28 days later like with one exception, I don't think people expect to live, you know, anywhere is here. People initiate contact and go fight with the zombies to solve problems and are successful on a small scale. did you get stressed out in the scene in this movie where at a certain point character realizes that they can fight the zombies. They have a knife and they realize they can actually fight and defeat zombies one on one and he starts slaughtering a bunch of them and he gets blood all over his face. I was like, are you about to turn into a zombie? Exactly. We're a thing. it makes for a great shot on the screen, but I'm like, wipe that off your face, buddy, it's going in your mouth. I know, I know. And so in this movie and in train to Busan, apparently it's the bite, not just the blood. Okay, so I just wanted to get that fast zombies out of the way just because I don't think you and I have ever had that conversation. So it sounds like we're both pro-fast zombies when it makes for a good zombie movie and we're pro-slow when that makes for a good zombie movie. Okay, so John, let's talk about this movie's big zombie gimmick, which is this movie has evolving fungus zombies. So just in brief this movie, the zombies in this movie, When you get bit, you do a gross, you know, you, you barf all over the place, you jerk around for a little while, and then you become part of a zombie hive mind with all the other zombies. Right. And the gimmick here, and part of the villain's evil plan. And we need to talk about that. There's a villain, which is a villain. There is a villain in the zombie movie. So this movie has a zombie master. So put a pin in that, because I want to come back and talk to that. So, when you're in the zombie hive mind, when parts of your zombie hive mind network are choir new information, this can be trans, this can be conveyed to the rest of the hive mind through periodic upgrades. And John mentioned it in this movie, when the hive mind is sort of absorbing new information, all of the zombies go into sort of a catectonic state for a couple minutes. They stand straight up. And the miles are wide open, they're sort of looking It's very creepy, especially the first time or two you see it and you don't understand what's happening. Yeah. It's very creepy looking on the screen. And so the entire group can sort of evolve both physically and mentally to adapt. So for example, when the zombies first appear in this film, they are scrambling around on all fours like animals. and at a certain point after observing their human victims, the high of mind upgrades to learn how to move around on two feet. Yeah, so at first, like the humans are able to trick them with like attaching some cardboard cutouts to a motorized wheelchair and drawing the zombies away. And then after a few, a couple times the zombies upgrade and they're not fooled by that anymore. Yeah, it reminded me of fighting the Borg and Star Trek, where you can do, you can trick the Borg with some solution once and then the Borg updates and that will never work again. So in this movie, you know, they upgrade to move around on two feet like John DeSed, they can upgrade to better clarify their definition of human prey. with like smell or misdirection or or something. It will work once and then the high of mind updates and it won't work again, which is a great. I love it. It's like it's a great narrative thing. Can I say one thing about these zombies really quick? Please listen to the side. You may say more than one thing about them. So sometimes I watch a movie and I think and sometimes I think I'll film fans do this. Like what is a part I would like to play or a movie I would like to be and like my one is like like I would love to have been Tim Curry in the clue movie because he has all the funny lines and he runs around like a maniac. Yeah, it's just such an energetic crazy performance. But in this case, like I wouldn't mind being a zombie extra movie. I don't think I don't think I could do it because they they might almost be dancers or contours or something. Yeah, I mean some of it is CGI right, but they definitely like standard weird angles and like when their heads move they don't just turn they like flip over like their next they're breaking and all this. There's all these cracks and stuff but there's there's a several zombies that show up multiple times and I'm like I would have been kind of cool to be one of those zombie extras in this movie because they seem to be having a ball agreed by the end of this movie These zombies have upgraded to being able to crudely use fire arms which was frankly hilarious. It was a delightful scene think of like a zombie what flailing around and wanting its arms but managing to pull the trigger and just do a random spray of bullets like that's yes, that's how sophisticated they get which I just found absolutely amazing so john in the zombie strains podcast I do not believe we have scene much in the way of a zombie hive mind now maybe in like films like the Omega man and stuff hint at something like a hive mind but it's not a real hive mind maybe invisible invaders a little bit but not really yeah have we seen eat so thinking beyond what we've covered in the podcast have we seen a zombie hive minds and or b zombies that can I think the last of us would qualify for that, right? Because they don't upgrade as quickly, but we do get like hunters and giant fungus guys. And so in that show, they do evolve and they do, um, I think they can communicate with each other in some way. Yeah, I think so in that one I recall, you know, if you step on part of the fungus, right, like that can be can it can someone help from elsewhere. And I did like in that show the idea that the the fungus that created these zombies was like birthing kind of specialized zombie variants to deal with particular human threats, which I liked a lot. Yeah, so yeah, fungus zombies. I feel like when we talked about maybe girl with all the gifts, way back at the beginning of this podcast, I think in like the 2010s there was this uptick of interest in a fungus zombies, and the idea that fungus brings with it, which is that idea of a hive mind or being able to communicate quickly across a network. That's pretty interesting. I feel we've gotten several last of us famously had this. girl though the gifts had this this had this I don't think you know we've played this out yet I think there's I think there's interesting space to go with the fungus on behind because I was left guessing like here what they do is they say it's a fungus but what it makes them do is evolve from a base creature into a more sophisticated creature so they use the analogy of an ant It's also fungus related, but that is a significant part of the movie is the way they hive mind is more like insects than fungus. agreed. And when when we get a little further on, I want to talk a little bit about the cool scene at the end. Yeah. That that tip that taps into this. But I was going to say so. That said, this movie stops before this evolving zombie concept can become as interesting as it could be. Oh, my opinion. What do you think? Why do you say that? So. All right. I want to talk about our villain here a little bit. Yeah. This isn't necessarily a critique of the film. Just something I, I'm still thinking through. So the villain of this film, we have a zombie master in this movie. And he is due to a modeling backstory and some other stuff. He is frustrated at the harm that can come when humans like miscommunicate to each other. Yes, our inability to connect it actually, you know, to remind me of pleuribus, it's like, it's like the, it's like the gnarly version of pleuribus, he wants to be all the humans connected except they'll be flesh eating zombies and not nice people like and exactly well, so that's my question. So while I was watching this, I kept thinking. Pluribus did this more interestingly, yes, because, so anyway, so this guy created the zombie hive mind virus that you can spread because when you're in the hive mind, there's no miscommunication can happen, right? You can't mislead another person, you can't misunderstand what they're saying. It's all just out in the open, you know what everyone is thinking. However, his, his utopian hive mind comes at such a ludicrous cost. Yes. That I could not swallow it as a success. Right. Like, why does he think this is successful? Yeah. Because so he has turned humans into ferole animals that don't have brains. Yes. That's so, so again, like I said, not a critique, Is this movie going to show those zombies upgrade themselves until they are thinking empathetic creatures right that can talk and think and communicate, you know, are we seeing the like really rough. but necessary like larval stage of something that will be actually glorious, a real hive mind like you get in pluribus right where you have a hive mind and it's a word of bait in that show like yeah should we just join it I mean it seems to be going pretty well like like the piece that is generated from that hive mind makes a case for there is a case to be steel man in that show where you're like maybe in order to make exactly. Yes. And so in this movie, the zombies maybe they're just not around long enough for us to see the version of this that you could make a case for, right? Because there's no making a case for the zombie hive mind we see in this movie. It's just a negative all around. But maybe given a week, These things would be a pleurabistile hive mind where you're like, you know what? What actually is the case against joining this hive mind? At one point, and this is a spoiler, but we've blown this spoiler horn. There's a handicap woman who cannot walk and her brother or in this movie. And he is bent on protecting her and she gets turned into a zombie and shows up later and she can walk, but not in a good way. like when she walks, her like ankles break and it's like really horrifying, and the villain seems to be like, yes, isn't this a horror show? So, unless, you know, I mean, it just, I think one thing that is interesting about this movie, and I found it interesting and trained to boost on, is that there are some, characters who are just so morally simplistic and evil and driven to do bad things that it does strain credibility a little bit like it's delightful in some ways at one point in this movie the police the policeman who whose job it is to get the zombie master out so they can make a vaccine from his blood He says to the businessman, run that way. And then he shoots him in the legs and he falls down. That was great. And then the zombies assault him. And like, and there's a character like that in train to Busan, too, who's just a corporate COO, and he's just, he just throws people in front of, you know, throws small children in front of everyone's zombies and that kind of thing. And it's like the villainy of it seems like it's not bad. It's just like, okay. like it's very cinematic it's very cinematic and yes i don't there's no case that can be made that this guy's anything but a complete psycho right yeah unlike i like say and i hate to bring it up but like marvel like in uh in infinity war like he wants to like it's kind of a dumb plan to kill half of all the people but like you could say okay maybe that will stop overcrowding or something you know i mean i don't really buy it but but there's not even that in this movie You heard it. John is all on board with Thanos' plan, so no agreed and that extends to, so that's certainly true of the supervillain, the zombie master in this movie. It extends to the secondary villains like that jerk cop. And then there also is like a jerk teenage bully who, and like there's just, again, not a critique of the movie exactly, but there's no subtlety. They're just bad people and they're going to always do what they're bad instincts tell For a movie like this, I think that is actually just fine. And I think it works great in this movie, but you're right, there is no, there is no positive outcome to what he's presenting in any way. It's only his vision. Only he thinks this is a good idea. Nobody else wrotely convinced. If he could make it less slimy, it would be more compelling for people. If people stood up, their bodies didn't crack and all their angles twist and their heads turn around like the exercises. It might be more compelling. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. He's got a ways to go. This is a fine. This is like the alpha stage. Yeah. There were not even debate attesting this. Yeah. Okay, so on my next point, I want to pick up on the zombie hive mine thing in here. So whenever you have a movie that has something like this, like a zombie hive find, so this movie is a parable of group think and conformity, or so I am about to a ledge. versus messy individuality, right? So you have a hive mind that coordinates efficiently, but at this ghastly cost, right? Versus the humans who coordinate with great inefficiency, there's this movie is full of infighting, squabbling, and drama, and backstabbing amongst the human survivors. And in fact, the lead actress, Gjun Hyun, She made her career by being like a troublemaker. Her biggest film, her break-up film, was this one that's English translated to my Sassy girl. And it just is about somebody who breaks social norms, which I think, you know, in a more deaf and I am not an expert on Korean culture, so don't kill me. But like in a society that we consider more deferential, you know, a little more community-based than our own society, being that sort of individual rebel. Like in this movie, she is clearly framed as somebody who is just so stubborn, that you can't even reason with her in order to hand which is again, not differential. And so I think that it's important that she is this character, you know what I mean? Because she is the sort of ultimate representation of stubborn individualism. agreed. I mean, so every character in the survivor group, we should we should probably talk about the survivor group at some point. Yeah, but every character in survivor group has like a defining personal characteristic and hers is that she doesn't go along easily with everyone else. Like that's her characteristic. And it's uh it's presented early on it's presented as a pretty bad like right her she's talking she's having a a moving moment with her ex husband where she's saying why did you marry me in the first place and he's saying basically i just can't deal with you you don't you don't go along with stuff you're too stubborn right right but by the end of the movie she's the only and the movie is not subtle in saying, hey, it's your stubbornness, your individuality, your willingness to do the tough thing or to stick up for what you think is right. That's what got you through this and that's what's saved literally saved to the world. So what do you think? Did you find this to be an interesting exploration of those themes, John? I think I did, I liked it, and I liked it. I liked it because, I mean, you said it was super clear. It was clear, but also not super heavy handed. Like if you passed over that, you could still enjoy this movie as a thriller, you know? True, yes. So I did like that. But yeah, I think that's what it's saying. And all of the people, there's another outside of the zombies. At one point, the government people are all unified in making the wrong decision. And the tough individualist, which are her ex-husband's new wife. This is one of the kind of loaded things in the movie. Yeah, it's their willingness to go against the group think of the government who's just going to let this thing blow up. You know, they're afraid to make decisions and be decisive and get away from their group think and it's her. It's them. It's those two is heroes that make the movie. You know what I mean? Yeah. Agreed. I have a little... I have a little gripe, you know, I'll just do it now, although I have more points I want to pull about this movie. This movie has like a last second. uh... gotcha uh... i'm all for that in horror movies when it makes sense but when it undercuts the entire narrative uh... arc of the film don't do it yet just resist the urge and i feel like we've been doing it for so long we complain about this in zax nighters movie that's twenty two years before this movie you know like We get it, your arch, nothing good can happen. That's fine. I think he made the world a terrible end of place to give us a little breather room to say, at least we fixed it at the end and he doesn't, and that's a little frustrating. Yeah. I would agree with your assessment there. I think this is a pretty interesting component of the film. Um, let's talk about the survivor group just real quick because I love the way, uh, in our, the course of our normal podcasts, I love the way we are moving towards the survivor group archetypes that are just, they're just delicious to me. I just love them. And we've got a really good one in this movie, a good survivor group. Can you tell us like, who do we have in the survivor group? And what's their thing? Like, because this is a good example of people put together with character types that are going to create drama. So the first survivors that they don't last very long is this ex-husband and wife. She survives throughout the movie, spoiler. He dies in the first sort of assault trying to save somebody. And I think that was a good screen death because I felt he was clearly being set up as the action hero of this film. Yeah. And this movie pulled a game of thrones on us where it dangles a person who you're sure is going to be the hero and he's one of the first to get off. Yeah. Absolutely. It was a good moment. Yeah, so that's the first tension we talked about them a little bit then the next pairing is the there's a security guard who works at the building and his sister who is who cannot walk. She cannot use her legs and she has a motorized wheelchair. There's actually a very fun moment where she's riding around and he is a security guard is like. It's like balancing himself on the back of her chair, and they're like zooming around during his work time, you know, which is kind of fun. And he loves her and they love each other very much and they're making plans to go camping. So his thing is like, he will stop at nothing to save his sister. Yes. And her thing is she's just determined, right? Like the world does not, and she makes this comment very early on. Like the like the the regular things of the world that I can't do do not stop me. I will go camping as a and so and she's incredibly smart she's the smartest one in terms of technology like when they have the she actually gave me a Barbara Gordon moment do you remember this oh interesting yes yeah so if for those who don't know spoiler for Batman from dozens of years ago you know one point Barbara Gordon gets shot by the Joker in the killing joke written by Alan Moore and she loses the ability to walk and that's Batgirl so she went from Batgirls I think her new name is Oracle But essentially, she sits behind a computer and can access all the CCTV cameras and computers in the world and helps guide the heroes in that way. And in this movie, she serves that role. They get once they get to sort of a command center. She's the only person who can really do it really well. So that's her thing. Then there's a cop whose goal is to Not it first he says I'm not going to kill these people because they're patients, but his goal in his mission is to get the guy because when the guy calls in, the villain, he says I'm the vaccine. So the cops one job is to get him and he make it clear that he'll do anything to get that out and doesn't really care about everybody else, nor does the government. then we have a group of teens, a guy and two girls is that right? Yes. And the guy and one of the girls are complete jerks. And there's another girl there who's very quiet. She's the quiet one, but she's also the one that has, she's the toughest one. I mean, she's constantly telling the others like, pull it together. You know what I mean? Yeah. The guy dies early, but the next dynamic is the girl who survives is the bully of the quiet, Capable girl, and so there's this bullying dynamic between them that gets resolved in a very satisfying way Yes, yeah, and then there's a businessman who just is an obnoxious business man. Oh, my god. I have it You got to have like the cheesy crypto. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's these pairings that Create a lot of motivation in it and they're often they're negative or positive. So for example the security guard and the in the sister turns from positive. He's going to save her to negative when they allow her to die later in the movie. He's like, I'm going to kill you all. Yeah. And then the bully is kind of the same way. The bully is depending on the skill for survival. And then the girl, the the comedy girl gets turned into a zombie and kills her in a very satisfying way. Yeah. She's a bully. So a lot of these like they take these sort of known dynamics and they flip them, which is kind of interesting. I think one of my favorite points in the film and I actually wish this plotline had not been resolved as quickly as it was, is when the brother, so the rest of the group has callously decided to let the sister die, rather than in danger of the group. Yeah, she's in the command center in the basement. It's a long story, but in any case, she's guiding them through the building using the technology and the command center. And the villain is able to communicate with the zombies and he sends all the zombies after her and they have a big argument out should we go rescue her and their every one sort of like no except for the security guard. Yeah, and there's a great moment since they're all on the same text group chat. Yes. Once the sister dies, the brother goes out to try and save her. He fails in what I think is a pretty good and moving. That's a wonderful scene. She's been directing them around the building and she directs him to an elevator and he's like, hold on, this isn't the right elevator. I can't get to you in this elevator and she's like, I know, go upstairs and rejoin the group. Forget about me. I thought that was incredible. That was the most moving part of the movie. Agreed. Yes, agreed. And then after he mourns her death, he then starts texting the group chat saying, I'm going to kill you. My sister dead and none of you are going to leave this building because I'm going to kill you. It's just, What a wonderful like from the perspective of the survivors like you know what we don't need. We don't need this We don't need that another person driven mad who's gonna try to exactly. Yeah, so okay Yeah, so that was my last point. I just wanted to call out that I think this is a particularly good collection of survivors Yeah, I think so too. Oh, yeah, so okay. Here's the last thing I want to talk about John. It's kind of a big Thematic thing so you've mentioned this earlier, but I want to talk about the difference between zombie horror and a zombie thriller, you say. Yeah, because so this movie starts out like your night of the living dead knockoff film. You have collection of like kind of scattered randos, jose and james, stuck in, stuck in a mall, trying to survive in this crazy new reality of zombies. But as the movie and the first 45 minutes of this movie is pure survival horror. It is, it is an existential crisis to get across the shopping malls, get get across to the other side of the food court is an enormously tense life or death struggle. But at certain point, as the movie goes on, it starts to add stuff and the tone starts to shift. And you start to think, I think this movie has a hero who might just save the day. Yes. So this movie, as it goes on, it starts to add stuff to that original, very simple survival horror scenario. Yep. It starts to add all the stuff that comes with a good thriller, So we get twists, we get reveals, we get complicated back story revelations. It feels a lot like diehard actually. It does, yes. And we start to learn that these characters aren't just kind of a random collection of survivors, but in fact, they are all they are tied to each other in different narratively satisfying or complicated ways. So on one level, this stuff enriches the story by adding a lot of additional depth to our original very stark simple scenario. However, for me, and this is where I switch into Andy's personal preferences mode. I think this stuff also can sort of cheapen a rock solid or just whittle away at a rock solid premise. Because in the zombie movies, because at a certain point in this movie, you kind of realize that the movie is not playing fair narratively, and that the deck is stacked in favor of the people it wants to survive. the main character. By halfway through the movie, she has kind of that cinematic immunohiro immunity to a real danger. Like at the beginning, like I said, they're trying, there's it's a life or death struggle to get across the food court. By midway through the movie, this group of survivors is doing these like surgical strikes on different parts of the bad guys And I'm not saying there's no tension or anything, but it's a different type of tension. And so I don't, I don't know, maybe this is controversial to say for me, this movie's best in most tense moments came from that first 45 minutes where people are desperately like improvising to survive. Um, what do you think, John? Yeah, if I were to compare it to say trained to Busan, which I was earlier in the day, in that sense, trained to Busan as a much more pure horror movie, yeah, up until the end, um, suppose we're trained to Busan, but like, uh, actually the hero we've been following along dies at the end of trained to Busan and his daughter and a pregnant woman, they've met along the way, survive. And almost get killed by soldiers, but don't. And there's none of this thriller stuff. It's survival from beginning to end. And it's a more tense movie and a better horror movie than this movie is certainly. This is definitely become sort of a political thriller and the horror edge is rubbed off when that happens. Yeah, this movie has a strong dose of like pandemic thriller and that corrupt but cowardly government on one side and the truth telling heroes on the other. Yeah, because when the side plot of the scientists trying to work with and against the government officials about how to maintain in the crisis situation, that's where I started to go like, huh, we're shifting here. So zombie strains. We are a zombie movie podcast. We are not a zombie horror movie podcast. So we're going to. I guess I assumed that the vast majority of movies we're watching are going to be horror movies. This is something more like a horror-tinged action thriller. Yes, and so for example, there aren't any really jump scares in this movie. In fact, every scare that would be a jump scare is kind of telegraphed. more in an action movie style than in a horror movie style. You know what I mean? Yeah, there are gross things. They see the zombies and the zombies turn and look at them and they look terrible and they snarl at them. But they're not. the grossest zombies have ever seen. Yeah. You know, and when zombies get killed, when there's violence, it tends to, like, so if someone is gonna messily slash a zombies throat, the zombie will be facing away from you, the viewer. Yes. And we will see from behind, so we won't see any of the gore you would get if this were, you know, and I honestly don't know if that's a cultural thing or not. There's not a lot of gore. It could be in train to Busan, but there is more than this, maybe. you know what this movie does do really well though i feel like movies have gotten better at uh it and i'm i'm shifting from a serious topic to a very stupid frivolous you know what this movie does really well uh people throw up uh convincingly in this movie yeah when you get when you get infected you barf gross fungus uh stuff all over the place In past decades, you know, like the actor might spit out a mouthful of, you know, of some liquid or something like that, but you know, we, we get some good, so the grossness in this movie, it, this movie is kind of a gross movie, but it's like, it's like the slimy, it's like slimy grossness, not like your, your arm got cut off and, and then do something, then, right, right, yeah, just kind of gross. So I had a couple of the thoughts, but I want to kind of fast-forward here because I think we need to wrap up this conversation, John. I want to talk about the zombie master, but I think we already touched on the zombie master. The only thing I would add is that at in 2026 having a zombie master control, the zombies and give them orders is kind of a throwback to zombies earliest decades, right? And I feel very strange that we had a villain, right? There was somebody not only who brought about the apocalypse, or is trying to bring about the apocalypse, is doing so only for their own ends and has a superpower where they are sort of one of the zombies and can communicate with them. Yeah. And like all good zombie masters, he sort of gets hoisted on his by his own guitar, but yeah. Yeah, that was really interesting to me. I'm like, hold on, there's a villain. This is not like I was surprised. in the year of our Lord 2026 that we had a villainous zombie master. And I think that that is that is not separable from this movie's thriller vibe because a good thriller needs a villain. Yes. A good horror movie could have a villain, but it doesn't actually need no right trained to boost on does not have a villain. It's got a villainous CCOO who's a jerk, but he's not like the mastermind. He's just a Yeah. Now, I get a little wary of zombie masters that controls zombies because you just have to be careful. You don't eradicate what's unique about the zombie as a threat. Right. Like, you don't want them to just start feeling like, well, these might as well be robots or storm troopers or something, right? There is something scary about zombies that specifically do not have a controlling master that are governed by base primal instincts or maybe instincts you don't Once they're being controlled by a zombie master, then you're kind of dealing with something you understand a person, right, a bad person, but that's it's not a scary when you understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. Yeah, and in fact, when you said like that the all the best scenes are in the beginning, I think you could make a case that as soon as the zombie master starts controlling the zombies, that's when the tension changes, because they could just as well be a terrorist with radios at that point. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yep. And the last thing I wanted to bring up, John, I don't think we need a big discussion about this, but it is always interesting to me. where your goal is to get inside a safe place and hide in it while the zombies are outside. This is a movie where you are actually stuck in the dangerous place with the zombies. And those are both very tense situations. They're a different kind of tension. Did you have anything you wanted to say about that? And so just to clarify, in this movie, you know, until the last 10 or 15 minutes of this movie, the entire uh... bulk of the movie takes place inside a quarantine building where the here are heroes are trapped in there with the zombies what do you think about that young but i think it's interesting and i think that's part of why they had to They're not my goffins, but they had to introduce more plot to have the characters do something other than survive. Otherwise, this is a very short movie, I think. You know what I mean? Like there's only so many ways you can watch somebody survive at this point. And they could have done it differently by like having introducing new complications or something, but the new complications are... That you have to do action movie things instead of survival things. Yeah, make sense. Yeah. Well, you know, the risk of any any time you have survivors who find safety your job as the as the movie maker is to find a reason to get them to leave safety. right or or find complications like said or zombies found a way in or something right exactly and so like you know the walking dead show has this has this down to a science right they find a safe place you get a couple episodes in the safe place but we all know they will leave the safe place either because the safe place gets compromised or because they make some dumb stupid decision to leave the safe place this movie you know realized you know we can't just have them find whole up inside this restaurant in the food court which they have pretty well fortified yeah we have to it this we won't have a good movie if they don't get out there uh in danger so then they introduce this like oh well you've got to go find the villain because he's the only one in the vaccine or you know things like that so it's just it's just it's just interesting I don't really have any takeaways and I don't But it does make the movie feel a little different whether you're in there with the zombies or they're outside trying to get in where you are. Having again, just watch as earlier movie train to Busan. I like that better because it's a more pure distillation of survival horror, but it still has a gimmick, right? You're still, they're trapped on this train to get anywhere they have to do trains, right? Where this building, where this is a building, and they could just escape the building. And so, Yeah, I'm not sure. I think I crave zombie movies that aren't just straight up survival zombie movies. So I think I enjoyed this, I enjoyed having a thriller in my zombie movie. But maybe that's just as I watched somebody's zombie movies. I'm not sure. Yeah. Well, hey, John, that's all the points I wanted to pull out. I have, I do propose we finished the episode here by going through our usual list of questions about the movie. Yeah. But was there anything we didn't touch on that you just wanted to call out or you found No, I'm surprised having watched just now a few Korean movies back to back, and I'm not sure all Korean movies are like this, but it's certainly in this case, the emphasis on melodrama and the sort of starkness, like we have in American movies in competent government people. I just watched Reacher, which is the most perfect distillation of a procedural TV show, right? There's a good guy, and then everybody else is an incompetent evil person, right? But it was more, just black and white, then I thought it would be, except for our characters are the ones bridging that gap. They say, you know, we've broken society's rules. We're going to break them and we're going to be in trouble, but that's okay. We're going to handle it. And I did like that because it was actually a kind of complex choice, maybe more complex than was needed, but I liked it. You know, she basically had to say, because at the end of the movie, right, they've got the vaccine, the guy who's And, and the conversation they have is we've got to do this even that it's the right thing even though everyone's gonna hate us, and I kind of liked that choice in this movie. So I just wanted to point that out that that actually added something emotionally, but yes, there was a lot of melodrama of people like, oh no, and like reaching out hands and barely touching fingers and music and, you know, like the whole thing, but I was okay. Again, it was a change of pace for what I'm used to, so. Yeah, there's it can feel a little it can make emotional moments feel a little cheaper unarmed at when it when it isn't quite working you'll get a emotional scene that you're not really feeling because you've it like they didn't put in the legwork when it's working though it's sort of can skip the boring parts of it you can cut right to the the meat of like a Like when the ex husband is killed, that was a really tense, impactful scene because they had such a good job crafting that relationship. Same with the sister when the zombies burst into the control room, you're like... it's not like you think she's going to survive you're just filled with dread because you like her so much you know yeah so i was i didn't know if they would have the guts to kill her by the way i i mean i's yeah as they went on i was like okay i think she is gonna die for real but i kept waiting for someone to burst in and save her but yeah and i will say this for the movie i appreciate their willingness to do the game of thrones thing this is when the game of thrones thing works Yes. Like, eventually in game of thrones, you're like, oh, when will they die? You know what I mean? Whereas, whereas in both of these, in train to Busan, you do not expect the main character to get bit and he does. And in this movie, you do not expect, and in fact, I was half expecting the the woman who's in charge, the lead woman, to get turned at some point. She ends up being the only one who survives. Yeah. But this movie's not afraid to kill people you like. but they do it in a economic way and they don't overdo it, so it feels real. So yeah, and they kill the people you don't like in satisfying ways, which is equally important. Right. John, let's wrap up this with our traditional questions here. Okay. John, in colony, is there a hero party? There is a very good one, as you pointed out. And it's a mix of heroes and villains. It's a survivor party that has to depend on each other, even though they don't like each other. Yeah, and how do they do? How many survived? Just just our girl the scientist played by Junji Hion or Sejong his her name, but she's the only one. Yeah, this is a a really high Definitely for mortality rate for a survivor part. Yes. What type of zombie strain are we dealing with here, John? We are dealing with, now this is interesting, they act like fungal zombies, but it is an injected toxin, right? So it is a, yes, it is a science zombie, it is a science-made fungal zombie, is what it is. Yeah, it might go with all the gifts where it's just a fungus that figures out how to invest, you know how to take over humans. This is an intentional mad scientist plot featuring four zombies. a mad scientist had to step into a natural process and make it worse. Right. Great. These zombies. Yeah. All right. How fast are these zombies, John? Super fast. And they sometimes join together and create sort of abominations that stumble towards you, but they once they learn to walk, they're very fast, but they also do it in Like, I'm just thinking of the rigor, the actors and the, like, you're not just pulling people off the street. They had to be physically gifted people because they've got a run with like one shoulder tucked behind their back and like, so it was really, really pretty impressive actually how they train these people to do this. I'm sure some of it's CGI, but I'm sure not all of it is either. Yeah, setting aside a few things that were obviously CGI, the physicality of these zombies is top notch. Just top notch. You know what was funny at the end and maybe this is just a budgetary thing. Like, there's fires at the end, the actors are around. Yeah. I saw this in another movie. I think it was in a reacher episode and I'm like, that is so obviously a CGI fire. I feel like we're not even trying anymore. You know what I mean like right right we could do that better at this point with CGI But I think they're just like I just throw a CGI fire and they're really quick Because everybody on the what's fake because we don't really that actors unlike unlike that one we had we're So actors were standing right next to an active flamethrower Yeah, I don't really do that anymore. I was thinking specifically of that you know was funny. I was listening to the flop house and they were talking about gremlins and there's a point where we're one of the gremlins is using a chain saw and I think a baseball bat and they were like yeah the the lead actor is actually they're running a train saw right in front of his face like you would never do that today in a million years so yeah all right John we've heard from John he likes Thanos' plan and he wants actor safety laws uh actual safety laws are for the week All right, can the zombies in this movie return to being human? No, they make a big point that they can't. And that's part of the plot, is that, you know, there's a debate about whether they should try to get the vaccine or kill this guy and they realize, even with the vaccine, they may protect everybody else, but they're not bringing these people back. Yep. Is there a zombie hoard in this movie? Yes, pretty good one. Yeah, I'm very sorry of slimy joint cracking unsettling one though. It's not as unsettling as it could have been I keep thinking like yeah like I I'm thinking I'm looking ahead to Zach Craig or is it an evil and just from the trailer like you see this zombie running across the snowy field. I'm like that's terrifying. You know what I mean? Like yeah, so yeah, these these zombies aren't terrifying, but yeah. So this movie does a thing. I get it's a trope, but this movie does this trope about 20 times. I don't, maybe you can help me figure out where is what is the ground zero film with this. It's where the coolness and lack of care strides through a chaotic battle scene. Yeah. So several points in this movie, a zombie hoard is unleashing and is total chaos and people are fighting and shooting them. And the villain is just confidently striding through. That always bugs me because even if you were in total command of the battlefield, you would be on the lookout for like flying objects and like getting jostled, right? At one point his own zombies run at the people who have captured him shooting guns and they're flailing wild, and I'm like, how did he not get shot right there? Yeah, you know what I mean? It's decent at snipers. There's still zombies with basic tool using abilities. I did enjoy actually the one thing he did that was cool. is like they capture him and he's in an elevator going to the roof and he does this cool move where he punches the floor nine button and the door opens and he jumps out that was pretty cool that was a great that was a not a jump scare but that was one of this movie's better surprises yeah thank you absolutely okay almost on with the questions john how are zombies destroyed are killed You can it's a little unclear you can shoot them, but they and they seem dead, but they do seem to come back So so you have to destroy the that leader of the hive mind to freeze the zombies You can you can maybe disable them as a threat by just Inflicting normal damage on them right but permanently shutting them down requires killing the zombie master So last question is the world threatened by the zombies in in colony Yes, and at the end, they start to break out. Though they don't make that big a deal about it, but yes, they do. So, let's talk about what you want to talk about at the end. Well, at the end, so they figure out they have to kill this zombie mass. So, they do a call back to the ants' conversation they had early on and the ants get into what is called a death spiral, but they're not ants, there's zombies and they're swirling around a central point because they've been confused by conflicting commands. And then they kill the zombie master and they all freeze in place and I'm like thank God and then the last half second of the movie one of the zombies goes and suddenly sit the screen and I'm like, man, I was so mad. I like, I know it's not that I mind that it just, it just was a really decent movie and I'm like, that didn't make it better. It just didn't make it better. So yeah. I mean, that means that that that that all meant that that everything was for nothing. And I'm all for a good, nihilistic horror movie every now and then. Yes. But like this this movie does not. This is not like it. It's not that movie. This choice he could have made at the train to Busan where the two survivors are walking through a dark tunnel, and the soldiers are going to hit them with a sniper because they don't want an infected to come in. And a little girl starts singing a song, and they don't kill them. That would be like, in the end, at the end of Crain to Busan, if they'd shot in those two innocent victims. You know what I mean? I'm like, oh, great. I'm glad I spent my time watching this movie. It didn't ruin the movie for me, but I wasn't annoyed. Yeah, so if you wanted to, I don't know, maybe you want to set up a sequel or you just want to have that warm move thing. I think the way to have done it is like the final movie or the post credit scene is six months later and they've, I say, they've got some zombies isolated in the lab and they're studying it to try and figure out what happened and maybe then a zombie stirs to life and you're like, oh, oh, there's more to this than we thought. But I wanted to know that are the two women who survived the movie and solve the problem. got together and had a successful life. I'm excited. Yeah, I agree. And most of the movie. I mean, the movie is betrayed by its final half second, but the rest of the movie really is a better story than yeah. So okay, John, let's walk through your pillars at the beginning of this podcast, you identified four pillars of the zombie movie. Let's find out how many of them are in. Colony and I think a lot of them are going to be in colony, but let's find out John in colony is there an apocalypse. Yes, it's a mad scientist induced apocalypse, but there's a potential apocalypse actually not to split hairs, but this is important. Yes, your night-a-living dead is the movie that starts the day after the hero's and this one fail to stop the zombies. Exactly. Exactly. In colony is their contagion. Yes, but it does require being bitten. It's not just blood, so it's not as easy as like 28 days later, where if you just get a blanket blood in one of your pores, your machete wielding sidekick suddenly kills you. You know what I mean? So it's not that bad you do have to actually get bitten because there's multiple scenes of people fighting with zombies getting blood on them attacking them, but as long as they don't break their skin one thing that this director loves to do is have his heroes wrap duct tape or packing tape around their forearms so they can shove them in zombies mouths and not get bitten, which I thought was kind of great. it's so smart and it did lead to one of the characters in this movie. I think it's the bully teenager girl. Yeah. Has this hilarious. She's like, she's like so. She's wearing she has put on the bags. Yeah, she's put on all these layers and she like is like waterling around with this. She looks like the, I don't know, you know, like the Michelin entire guy. Yeah, it's very funny. There were two actors that I was very curious about. One Like the security guard carries his sister around on his back a lot. And I wondered how much of that was was real. I like how they staged that so that actor didn't like break his shoulders. I mean, she's not a large woman and he seemed fairly strong. But still doing that for four hours a day on a set like that's exhausting. So I'm curious how they pulled that off without killing the both. and doing that without breaking a sweat like is also a question why can't be a movie star as soon as you wrap me up in that thing that teenage girls wearing like the sweat is pouring off my all the makeup is flowing off my face like for the right yeah okay john does uh in colony do we find tough moral choices Yeah, it's all about tough moral choices. They're often black and white, and we sort of only have one person who's good at making the moral choices, and that's our hero. Like the policeman makes a tough moral choice and makes a bad one. It happens sort of constantly throughout the movie. So part of her superpower is the stubborn person who can make the moral choice. Yeah, there's some solid classic moral choices in this movie. I will say this does that genre thing where a character who is clearly making the correct moral decision is cast as like a reprehensible bad guy, right? Yes. So I'm good. Yes, the cop is the cop makes the objectively correct a decision of, hey, we've captured the vet villain. We cannot risk going back to save your sister who's down in the basement of this building. We cannot risk going down there. We need to focus on getting out. And like this movie, That's a horrible choice and we hate it and the sister is lovely and her death scene is moving. But he's also making like the correct choice. Am I right? I mean, you're right. Yeah. You're right. And I think with a contrast that with actually is, and the villain says this to our hero, like will you be an outcast and he's basically challenging her saying to solve this you have to kill me and everyone will hate you for doing it are you willing to do that and she is so it's a it's actually a contrast between those two things it's the right thing to do nobody will understand it and she will become a villain and then there's the cop who essentially does the same thing but we hate him you know mean so it's interesting And I do, and just to be clear, I do hate him, I do not want like a, you know, Edge Lord Zack Snyder movie where, you know, that we don't, we don't fight against this sort of cruel practicality, but let's just, let's just acknowledge that he's probably the, the quote hero of this film and anyway, okay, lastly, John does colony feature loved ones turning against you. it does and it's very sad like the sister when she when the the guy who's given up everything including his own moral certainty and sanity to save his sister and she comes back as a zombie who can now walk like that was a pretty chilling version of that. Yes. So yeah. That was a good that was a good rich loved one starting to get to see. Absolutely, because he'd given up everything. He would have given up everything to save her. And then when she's dead, he's like, I'm going to give everything up to get revenge. He doesn't get revenge and the villain has brought her back to life. That was a very delicious bit there. Okay, John, that means we're down to our traditional final three closing questions, John. I think I know the answer to this first one, but John, would you and I survive in the zombie world of colony? I don't think so. I think just looking back at the cast, the only person over 50 are either the government people in the safe and the tent in the truck outside or the CEO of the company and he's the first one to become infected. So I don't think so. I wouldn't. So first of all, with fast zombies, I'm just done. I mean, I don't even think I try. I just be like, just get it over quick. Now in this movie, I will say like, they that like larger people can fight off a zombie they do regularly like not so maybe I could like boil I am a big large man maybe I could not knock my way through a couple of them but I don't think I would last very long. But you know the real reason I wouldn't survive, John, is partway through the movie, the heroes all start. They realize they can't talk out loud to each other. Yeah, I can't shut up. Because the villain can over here, I mean, it's too complicated to explain. But so for that reason, they all have to communicate even when they're in the same room. They have to communicate through text messages on their phones and the group chat. Yes. So, I mean, there's some fun symbolism there. Like, you know, it made me think of the times in my house where like I'm in the other room from my wife or kids and we're texting each other. That's what I'm like. Do I? But also, I... I am an old enough man that I just never learned to be a native phone textor, right? I do typos, I misspell, I audit, audit correct obliterates everything I try and do. So I would not be able to communicate certainly not well being chased by zombies. I would not be able to be firing grammatically correct instructions about which way to turn to get to these gay bags that I'd be toast. if anybody spent more than 15 minutes in a room with me they'd realize I couldn't shut up long enough to survive these zombies. So for different but related reasons we're both toast and scenario. All right, John, is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies? I think it's a zombie movie. Like there's a thriller plot, but it's really it's a zombie movie at heart. I think so too. Yep, without the with the different threat from zombies, you have a really different film. So yeah. Okay, and lastly, John, do you recommend colony? First is just a general movie that you think is worth people taking time out of their lives to watch. And secondly, does colony have special interest for the zombie-loving listeners of this podcast? So I think, yes, people would enjoy it. If you don't like gross things, it's not a good movie for you, but as it is more of a thriller than a horror movie, I think it might actually appeal to a slightly broader audience than our normal audience. Yeah, so yes, on that note, it's not not scary. If you're scared by things that are gross and people with milky eyes and that kind of thing, I mean, it's still scary, I think I'm just immune to that kind of scare at this point in my life. As far as a zombie movie, yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of fun interesting things happening in this movie. So I'll give it a double, despite our quibbles and a couple of annoyances, I think I'll give it a double strong yes. I will, too. I also, I just have lost any ability to answer the question, is this a gory movie or not? Like when someone, if I go and see a movie, someone is like, oh, is it like a gross horror movie? It's like, I'm not able to answer it. I don't know. Like if somebody asks me, I'd be like, this one's not that bad. You know, like, and I'm sure somebody, like, I could send a perfectly innocent co-worker who believed me to this movie and they'd be like, what is wrong with you? Right. Exactly. Yeah. So I do think this is, I imagine this is rated R. I don't remember. But like, if you're, you know, this could be a date night movie if you both like kind of like somewhat scary movies. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, this is a good one. I give it a modest general recommendation. I don't think this is I don't think you need to race out and see this before it leaves theaters. No, but I do think the zombie fungus hive mind is we've seen it a few times, but like we discussed early. I don't think this is a played out concept. I think this throws a few interesting things in the mix. So if you're a zombie fan, yeah, you should go check this one out. And I'll put one more thing out there. One of the big things about zombie survival movie is like creative problem solving. How can we get through this horde of zombies in a way that isn't just run through them because of some circumstance? And this movie has interesting survival problem solving. Very much so. Yes. Yep. Well, that does it for our discussion of colony. John, do you want to tell us what's up next on zombie streams? Yeah, as I mentioned at the beginning, we were going to release blood of Gassley, horror this week. So if you're looking forward to that, that's actually going to be next week. So thanks everyone for listening. Please give us a rating or a review in your podcast app of choice. And we look forward to seeing you next time on zombie strains. You've been listening to zombie strains. 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