KUALA LUMPUR, May 23 — Director Yeon Sang-ho’s (Train to Busan, Hellbound) latest zombie thriller, Colony, is off to a strong start at the Malaysian box office, crossing the RM1.4 million mark.

The latest South Korean zombie flick held an advance screening in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday at GSC One Utama, coinciding with its release in South Korea.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the film recorded 199,768 cinema admissions in South Korea on its opening day, citing data from the Korean Film Council.

Malaysia became the first South-east Asian country to officially screen Colony beginning yesterday, drawing a positive early response.

Yeon’s latest feature began filming in early 2025 and wrapped later that same year.

The film premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at the Cannes Film Festival on May 15, 2026, before securing distribution deals in more than 120 international territories.

Starring Jun Ji-hyun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-been, Kim Shin-rock and Go Soo, Colony follows a group of survivors trapped inside a building after an unknown infection spreads rapidly.

Cut off from the outside world, they must fight to survive against infected individuals who continuously mutate into increasingly dangerous forms.

Yeon previously shared in an interview that the zombies in Colony represent modern anxieties in an era where rapid information exchange, collective consciousness and artificial intelligence (AI) are gradually replacing individuality.

The film reimagines the zombie genre with a chilling modern twist, delivering a breed of horror audiences have never encountered before.

South Korea’s zombie genre has no doubt risen to prominence since 2016’s Train to Busan, praised for its intense suspense, emotional storytelling and human drama.

Colony aims to bring a fresh perspective to the genre and is currently screening nationwide.

CANNES, May 19 — Acclaimed director Na Hong-jin has unveiled South Korea’s biggest budget film ever: a blood-splattered sci-fi thriller featuring killer extraterrestrials played by real-life couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander.

“Hope” by Na, whose low-budget horror movie “The Wailing”  became a huge hit in his home country, was able to give free rein to his dark imagination in this gory tale of alien invasion.

“It’s the most expensive film in the history of Korean cinema,” Na told AFP in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival where the film premiered on Sunday night.

“It’s a film that really required a very, very large budget because of the special effects, the design, the actors.”

Despite having a genre-defying concept that was hard to sell initially—it skips between thriller, sci-fi, horror and comedy—he received backing from Korea’s Plus M Entertainment and a budget of around 30 million euros ($35 million).

The cost of “Hope” underlines the increasing resources available to South Korean directors whose hit films such as the quadruple Oscar-winning “Parasite”, as well as TV series like “Squid Game” have turned the home of KPop music into a global entertainment centre.

Reviews for “Hope” were broadly positive, with Screen magazine calling it “a thunderously entertaining genre mash-up” while The Hollywood Reporter said it had “instant cult classic written all over it”.

But others such as IndieWire slammed the quality of the special effects—suggesting the budget was “not enough” for Na’s grand ambitions—while its run-time of 160 minutes was described as “over long” by Variety.

Although married acting couple Fassbender and Vikander, stars of films from “12 Years a Slave” to “Ex Machina”, are listed on the film’s cast, many fans might struggle to recognise them.

Their acting has been transformed by special effects, with all the recognisable lead roles performed by bankable Korean stars including Hwang Jung-min, as well as Hoyeon from “Squid Game”.

Korean wave 

The all-action film, full of bodily fluids and gunfire, revolves around a clash between the residents of a remote town close to the frontier between South and North Korea and terrifying visitors from another planet.

With its themes of conflict and the incompetence of local officials, Na said he had “the wars that we know at the moment and the political situation that we had” at the time in his mind as he was writing the screenplay.

“Hope”, intended as the first film in a series, is one of 22 films competing for the prestigious Palme d’Or prize for best film in Cannes.

It is the first by Na in 10 years since “The Wailing”, which also focused on a remote location struggling with a mystery arrival.

The Cannes jury this year is headed by a South Korean director for the first time, Park Chan-wook, the maker of arthouse classics such as “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden”.

“Korea is playing a role as one of the central hubs of the film world, and I believe this is a movement befitting the time,” he told AFP last week.

“It makes me think of a lot of the (Korean) predecessors who were truly outstanding but never had the opportunity to be recognised internationally,” he added.

Park insisted that he would not favour his compatriot, Na.

“Some even joked that I might go out of my way to be harsher on a Korean film, because it wouldn’t look good if I appeared to be favouring it,” he told AFP. “I intend to judge everything as fairly and objectively as possible.” — AFP