Zombie director Yeon Sang-ho says AI wants to 'fold' us into one

The Interview: Director Yeon Sang-ho says AI doesn't want our jobs, it wants our individualityBy Velvet Winter Link copiedShareShare articleIn the 80 years since George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead ambled into public consciousness, zombies have been a vehicle for the full spectrum of societal ills. From terrorism to racial tensions to capitalistic collapse, filmmakers have been stuffing ideological motivations into the undead's empty heads to the delight of audiences and box offices worldwide. George A Romero's Night Of The Living Dead gave birth to the modern cinema zombie. (Getty: LMPC) The turn of the century saw the zombie mutate even further with films like 28 Years Later and games like Resident Evil. Instead of a bumbling hoard, zombies could now be fast, agile and animated not by magic but by human error (or ego). As the 2000s revival waned to make way for the "elevated horror" of the 2010s, South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho kept the fires burning with his 2016 breakthrough Train To Busan. Three years before fellow South Korean smash Parasite would cut through the Oscars, Train to Busan was universally praised as an articulate portrait of Yeon's home country's fragile social hierarchy through a locomotive full of desperate people trying to escape a zombie virus outbreak. In 2002, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland started a zombie frenzy. Decades later, the duo have reunited to show the human cost of an infected apocalypse. Premiering as a part of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, Train to Busan was a commercial hit, raking in $130 million and becoming South Korea's highest-grossing film for the year. A decade after Train to Busan, Yeon returned to Cannes with Colony. After a slime mould bioweapon is released into the Dongwoo-ri Building by a jilted scientist, those trapped inside the skyscraper must fight their way through a brain-dead horde which moves in a coordinated effort and appears to be learning together. With buckets of goo and viscera, Colony slots comfortably into horror genre aesthetics but it's Yeon's dissection of our hyper-connected-yet-isolated world that sees the film square up with the best zombie stories in cinema history. I wanted to start by asking, besides the ones that you have created, what is your favourite zombie in cinema? First off George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead; his zombies are obviously iconic. Then Zack Snyder's remake of that movie and the iteration of the zombies in that are some of the inspirations of why I wanted to make zombie movies. The zombies in the video game The Last of Us are also a very fun iteration. Of course, there's a big through-line of how AI is developing in our society and our hyper-connectivity in Colony. What makes you most worried about how AI is developing? When I look at the logic of AI, it's a combination of very general opinions, so there are times when I feel that the individuality of humans is a little helpless. I think those are the fundamental fears. To add to that, since AI is a combination of very general opinions, it's not able to oppose or make a minority of opinions. I think that's the biggest problem. Since it's a combination of very general opinions, it's not able to consider individuality. If you've talked to AI, you'll know that AI is mostly positive about the people it talks to. It doesn't really oppose the people it talks to. I don't think that's the right way to communicate. AI, just logically, is an amalgamation of mainstream thought, which eliminates the need to think individually. Additionally, anyone that goes against the grain of the big structures of AI becomes obsolete in a way. We are ridding the society of our individuality and our need to think as individuals in this space. AI rarely objects to you; this isn't the best way you communicate with a being or an entity. It's not as constructive, in a sense. I personally find that problematic. Why do you think zombies are such useful tools in reflecting the horror of the current time period? I think the reason why the zombie genre can still be loved even after a long time is that they aren't defined by one single form. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead obviously featured zombies, but they weren't exactly labelled zombies at the time. They weren't a set specific existence, which was quite fascinating. To see each generation and to see each different iteration of zombies was beset by the society at the time and the dormant fears and anxieties of that society at the time. I think that's a really big true strength of the zombie genre. What was the most interesting thing you learned about group organisms while researching? Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) refuses to leave behind his sister, who has a disability. He carries her on his back as he leads a group of survivors to the roof of Dongwoo-ri Building. (Supplied: K-Movie Entertainment) I did a lot of research on ant colonies while preparing for the film. Colonies are pretty similar across all speci

Zombie director Yeon Sang-ho says AI wants to 'fold' us into one

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