After its screening in Séance de Minuit at the Festival de Cannes 2026, Colony opens in French theaters on 27 May 2026. The new film from Yeon Sang-ho, the director of Train to Busan, re-enters South Korean horror cinema with a claustrophobic tale of contagion.
Colony
Film | 2026
Release in cinemas: 27 May 2026
Horror-thriller | Runtime: 2h 2m
Directed by Yeon Sang-ho | Screenplay: Yeon Sang-ho, Gyu Seok Choi
Starring Gianna Jun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-Wook
Original title: Gunche
Nationality: South Korea
Rating: Not recommended for under 12s, with advisory
The film was part of the official selection at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, out of competition, in a section long associated with genre fare, thrillers and late-night horror titles. Yeon Sang-ho already knows this Cannes niche: Train to Busan had also debuted in the Midnight Screenings in 2016.
In Colony, a mysterious contamination sweeps through a skyscraper in downtown Seoul. The building is quickly sealed off, trapping the occupants as the infected start to behave in increasingly unsettling ways. The narrative shifts the zombie threat from individual monsters to a collective organism confined within a vertical space that becomes the primary battleground for survival.
The project extends several motifs from Yeon Sang-ho's cinema: collective crisis, panic in confined spaces, and the brutal transformation of an ordinary place into a danger zone. Before Colony, the South Korean filmmaker had already drawn attention in Cannes with the animated film The King of Pigs, shown at the Quinzaine des Cinéastes.
Colony trailer:
To extend the in-theatre experience, check out the May cinema releases, the films currently showing, and our selection of horror titles to discover on the big screen.
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