Six new titles land between 23 and 29 August, and the range could hardly be wider: a Korean zombie thriller from the director of Train to Busan, a bittersweet summer romance, a Ridley Scott survival film, and a cartoon coyote finally getting his day in court.
Colony reunites Korean horror with the filmmaker who redefined it. A decade after Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan, he returns to the infected with Colony, in which a rapidly mutating virus escapes a biotech conference and forces authorities to seal the building. Professor Se-jeong, played by Jun Ji-hyun, is trapped inside with a small group of survivors and an infected horde that can communicate and move as one, more hive than mob. It is a grisly, inventive spectacle, even if the back half leans on the same tricks once too often. Colony opens in cinemas Friday 28 August.
The Last Sunrise, arriving Wednesday 26 August, adapts the novel by Anna Todd, the writer behind the After series, into a romance with real stakes attached. College student Ry, played by Maia Reficco, escapes to Mallorca with her mother, played by Eva Longoria, and falls for a local while a chronic illness quietly complicates every plan she makes. Director Carlson Young's film streams on Prime Video, and Amazon MGM is already eyeing a sequel, a notable vote of confidence before the first film has even opened.
Two more releases share that same Friday. The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott, follows Jacob Elordi as a lone survivor of a global pandemic who takes to the sky in a battered old plane after picking up a mysterious radio transmission, with Josh Brolin as the wary companion he has come to depend on. Coyote vs. Acme finally gets its day in court, with Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation over products that have failed him one too many times, in a film Warner Bros. shelved for a tax deduction back in 2023 before public backlash and a change of distributor brought it back from the dead.
Her Private Hell already played US cinemas earlier this summer under Nicolas Winding Refn's direction, and from Tuesday 25 August it becomes available to rent or buy digitally, still following a young woman searching for her father through a fog that has swallowed an entire city, and the American soldier whose own search collides with hers. Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups goes bigger still, an Indian crime epic running past three hours that follows Yash's rise through Goa's underworld as Portuguese colonial rule collapses, opening in cinemas on Wednesday 26 August.
Put together, it is a week that swings from hive mind horror to a coyote's long overdue lawsuit, with a summer romance and a survivalist odyssey in between. Colony is the one to see with a crowd, and The Last Sunrise is the one to watch at home.
