Netflix’s Latest Zombie Movie Is The Next Plausible Step For The Genre
The Thai zombie thriller combines muay thai action with apocalyptic horror.
In a genre that fittingly refuses to perish, you’ve got to respect the many filmmakers furiously working to put a fresh spin on zombie cinema. For Netflix’s new action thriller Ziam, director Kulp Kaljareuk (Master of the House) takes the innovative route of stacking two life-threatening disasters on top of each other. First, a climate-related worldwide famine. And then, of course, a zombie attack.
In near-future Thailand, food is scarce, but federal propaganda assures us that life is worse elsewhere. Purposefully isolated from the outside world, Thai society is still more or less functional, thanks in part to the efforts of a wealthy entrepreneur named Mr Vasu (Johnny Anfone), who popularized a new type of food made from processed insects. People are no longer on the brink of outright starvation, but the streets still tell a tale of poverty and hardship. To make ends meet, our protagonist Singh (Prin Suparat) works as a driver, transporting illicit goods into Bangkok — and protecting them from thieves using his impressive Muay-Thai combat skills.
Singh's girlfriend Rin (Nuttanicha Dungwattanawanich) has a more conventional career, employed as a doctor at one of the city's biggest hospitals. She wishes her boyfriend would choose a less dangerous line of work, but like so many movie girlfriends before her, she’ll soon be glad of his violent background.
When Rin’s hospital becomes ground zero for a viral zombie outbreak, Singh’s Muay-Thai training suddenly becomes very useful, helping him to circumvent the military lockdown and fight his way to where Rin is hiding out on one of the top floors. (For any genre snobs who care about the distinction, Ziam’s zombies are the fast kind, spitting gouts of infectious blood and descending on their prey with feral enthusiasm. Slow zombies would be too easy an opponent for a kickboxing champion.) Adding a touch of social commentary to the action, Mr. Vasu also happens to be trapped inside the hospital. As a well-connected public figure, his life is worth more than that of everyday citizens like Rin, pitting his wealth and power against the selfless determination of an everyman hero.
Ziam’s blend of martial arts and horror is an easy crowdpleaser, inviting comparisons to The Raid as Singh plows his way through hordes of undead enemies. Not that this movie is quite on the same level as The Raid, however. Singh gets his fair share of stylish slaughters, but the pace lags in the middle, when we’re treated to a few too many sequences of characters running through blood-spattered corridors. There’s nothing wrong with a zombie flick that prioritizes shameless hyperviolence over high-concept worldbuilding, but if you go that route, you need to keep the tension on point. Fortunately things do pick up again in the final act, introducing a gruesome (and to my knowledge, unique) new element to the zombies’ transformation.
Muay Thai and zombies? Yes please.
Once we get into the swing of things, we also encounter a troublesome clash in philosophy between Ziam’s two genres. In martial arts cinema, it's perfectly acceptable for your hero to be a fearless badass, dispatching dozens of enemies with nary a blink. Less so in zombie media, where we need to feel more visceral danger, buying into the vulnerability of our human protagonist. In Ziam, that sense of peril is mostly embodied by a young boy who Singh meets in the hospital — and of course by Rin, who displays a realistic level of fear when surrounded by ravenous zombies. Singh, meanwhile, seems bizarrely unperturbed by the whole situation, launching straight into smashing the skulls of recently-infected hospital patients. We all love an efficient, goal-oriented tough guy, but it’s a little weird that he doesn’t even pause to ask what the hell is going on.
Aimed squarely at zombie fans, Ziam doesn’t quite measure up to the heights of Netflix’s heavy-hitters: the blockbuster gloss of Army of the Dead, the prestige atmosphere of Kingdom, or the high-octane brutality of All of Us Are Dead. That being said, it’s a fun 90 minutes of gory entertainment, hinging on a martial arts star who clearly knows his stuff. Derivative it may be, but there’s always an audience for “cool guy kicks a bunch of monsters in the head,” and director Kulp Kaljareuk knows how to keep that audience happy.
