Colony – Yeon Sang-ho: “My zombies are ChatGPT”

He comes from a country that has made the collective a religion. Yet he delivers his most individualistic film. With Colony, the director of Last Train to Busan signs his non-conformist turn: his zombies think, learn, cooperate… and bear a striking resemblance to our algorithms. Encounter.

Six years later Peninsulawhat made you want to return to zombies?
This project really started from a question: what is the fear that runs through our current society? We live in an era of dazzling exchanges of information, and with the emergence of what I would call collective intelligence, we are witnessing an erasure of individuality within society. It’s almost a reality that has become powerless. With this observation, I wondered what cinematic genre could best reflect this fear. The zombie emerged naturally. But let me clarify: I did not initially intend to make a zombie film. It was fear that called the genre, not the other way around.

Your zombies are also very different from those we know. They learn, coordinate. You say that they move “like the ten fingers of a hand playing on the piano.” Where does this idea come from?
From the observation of our current society, where the exchange of information is astonishingly rapid and where a collective consciousness is formed. I began to perceive this collective consciousness as a real living species. And it is by mimicking its functioning that AI appeared. If AI and collective consciousness develop to the point of being human-like, the question becomes: what remains uniquely human? What is humanism? My answer is individuality. In any society, we need a minority capable of charting its own path. It is this individuality that embodies an originality that other species cannot imitate. This is what makes us more human.

SO Colony is an anti-AI film?
Let’s say that it’s a film that worries about the disappearance of the individual in the mass. AI is the most visible symptom of this. Very simple example: today, as soon as we have a problem, we ask it to an AI. She gives us a very clear answer, but this answer is never anything other than the expression of a collective conscience. But what society needs most in 2026 is not a general public response. These are minority voices, answers that cannot come out of the machine. My zombies are ChatGPT.

You work with the codes of the “zombie movie”, and particularly with the legacy of Romero. What do you owe him?
Romero’s greatest strength is being able to project the latent fears of his time into the figure of the zombie. In its early days, the word “zombie” wasn’t even used; it is only through images that he expressed this contemporary anguish. It is a voodoo term that foreigners then attached to its creatures. The crazy thing is that he created an original creature that became a genre of its own. Generally when an artist invents something like this, he closes the door behind him. Romero, on the contrary, has opened a path that others can continue to explore. For ColonyI tried to do the same thing: capture the fear of my time by lodging it in the zombie, while keeping the classic codes of the genre.

In ZombieRomero locked his survivors in a mall and made an obvious critique of consumerism. Your high-tech skyscraper in Seoul, what is it the symbol of?
Of civilization itself. There is also a camping equipment store in the tower. For me, camping is the perfect expression of contemporary civilization: nature contains a lot of uncertainties and fears, but thanks to all this equipment, we can enjoy it in a secure setting, have fun in a controlled place. It’s civilization that makes this possible. I wanted civilization to break down at its most advanced point, to start from a peak of technological sophistication to see the most primal violence, the most archaic selfishness, resurface. This is what the tower represents: the highest point from which the fall is the most dizzying.

We also think of Die Hard when watching the film. An assumed reference?
A lot, especially on a structural level. In Die Hardthere are characters inside the building and others outside, and it is exactly the same configuration in Colony. But I was also inspired by The Poseidon Adventureanother confined space survival film. In Poseidonthe ship turns around, and an everyday, familiar space suddenly becomes a totally unreal space where the characters face extreme situations. It’s a lot of classic films like that that nourished Colony.

Ten years ago, Last Train to Busan nevertheless defended exactly the opposite thesis of Colony : collective solidarity against individual selfishness. What has changed in your vision?
Busanit was ten years ago, and the fear that we felt in society then was very different from that of today. What fascinated me during my research for Colonyit is this characteristic specific to colonial organisms: they constantly produce mutants. These mutants are radically different from the rest of the group; but this is precisely what ensures the survival of the species. Without a mutant, a colony can disappear overnight, because it only takes one defect to be discovered for the entire group to collapse. Biologically, the mutant therefore plays an essential role for the survival of the species. For me, the mutant is the minorities who can make their own voice heard, who can oppose collective intelligence. The more collective intelligence prevails, the more powerless minority voices become. But biology proves to us that the existence of these dissident voices is vital.

What you are saying is that basically, you have to assert your individuality to get by, and therefore get out of the group. But leaving the group almost always means the death of the individual. How do we do it?
Colony is the story of individuals resisting absorption into the collective consciousness. And this point is important: it is not only the infected who form a collective consciousness in the film. The government’s response to the crisis is also based on a strictly collective logic — all its decisions are taken in the name of the group. Two characters try to escape from this consciousness: Kwon Se-jeong and Bom-seol. One fights against zombies inside the building, the other acts outside. They both embody individuality in the face of a system that crushes them. And in the end, it is these two women who come together. The answer is there: in solidarity between individuals who have refused collectivity. It is not by merging with the group that we get out, it is by allying ourselves with other individuals.

It’s a paradoxical speech, when you come from a country where collective pressure is particularly strong.
Exactly. When you’re in a society that asks you to blend in, you end up wanting to film people breaking away from it. But it’s not just a Korean problem. It is a phenomenon that arises from technological development and the acceleration of information exchanges. All over the world, it is minority voices that save societies.

Colony, currently in cinemas