Ten years after the smash hit Train to Busan (and six years after the extremely disappointing and forgettable sequel, Peninsula), South Korean writer/director Yeon Sang-Ho returns to the land of the living dead with Colony. Just like they were on that speeding train, these zombies are extremely fast, aggressive, and agile. They love to leap after their prey, pulling off some acrobatic moves that would catch the eye of a few gymnastics coaches.

It all starts rather simply at a biotech conference. Kang (Kim Jong-tae), the CEO of a leading bio company, is giving a presentation on a new bioengineered mold that communicates through a hive mind. He describes it as an "organic semiconductor," capable of adapting itself and everything connected to it in an instant. Of course, that all sounds fine and dandy as long as it's used responsibly.

Seo Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan), a former employee who feels he's been cheated out of recognition for his discovery of this organism, decides to weaponize it. He injects the CEO with the mold, violently turning him into a bloodthirsty zombie whose sole mission is to bite and claw at people to spread the infection. One zombie becomes two, then four, then eight, and so on and so on. Within an hour, the whole building has been locked down to contain the hundreds now infected, with a few survivors trying to make their way out.

"Imperfect communication is the source of all tragedies" is Seo's reasoning for starting this chain reaction. How many horrible events throughout human history can be attributed to poor communication? How many lives have been lost? How much progress has been erased? The infected communicate through a shared brainwave, cutting through the walls put up by the complexity of language. They are a new version of humanity, all equal in the knowledge they possess. Think of the hive mind from Pluribus, with everyone being a lot gooier and more violent.

Learning to communicate is a cohort of survivors, each fitting a specific archetype within a disaster movie. There's a nice old man who possesses more skills than meets the eye, a rude middle-aged business executive, annoying teenagers, a police officer who takes charge, and a conflicted main character who often provides the voice of reason. Most of them make dumb decisions that put themselves in further peril, usually stumbling around just as they're about to escape to safety.

If not very fresh or interesting, Sang-Ho at least uses these characters to move us from one thrilling set piece to the next. The zombies undergo a logical evolution of their mental and motor skills. They learn that cardboard model cutouts aren't human, and that people have a distinct smell to them. The same tactic can't be used twice, leading to many different sequences where the survivors must use their wits to move past the growing horde.

Eventually, it does start to get a little repetitive, with false flags being waved around too many times for us to believe in their trickery. Seo's role as an outright villain is a refreshing take, with Koo consistently playing him with a devilish grin. The scope enlarges once the army gets involved, focusing on the debate about how much attention should be paid to a few survivors when the outbreak could easily snowball to envelop the entire country.

It's that mixture of brains and brawn that keeps Colony interesting from beginning to end. In our relentless pursuit to eliminate all that makes us different, we threaten to rid the world of uniqueness, creating a monoculture where a single way of thinking reigns supreme. In essence, we would all become zombies, doomed to walk the same path without an individual thought.

Well Go USA Entertainment will release Colony in select theaters on August 28th.