In its opening minutes, Canada’s “The Colony” looks like it might be an intriguingly contrarian post-apocalyptic thriller: In this story, while humanity was gearing up for disastrous warming, it started snowing and never stopped.
So a hardy band of survivors lives underground, carefully cultivating food but running out of protein, while above ground the Earth has turned into something that makes January in Buffalo look balmy. The wise leader (Laurence Fishburne) of one colony, who is at odds with a cruel enforcer (Bill Paxton) in charge of shooting anyone who shows signs of contagious illness, leads a crew to another underground community that has been sending out distress signals.
Then the picture turns into a zombie flick, a screaming, lunging, chomping chase movie that has nothing new to bring to a genre that just won’t die. Can’t somebody come up with a monster that does something more interesting than run at you screaming, “Yeeaaaarrrrgh”?