I think my earliest memory of an emotionally resonant zombie movie is I Am Legend. While the film could be classified as a “horror,” it’s emotionally so well done that you can’t help but find yourself in tears even thinking back on it. Over the years, we’ve had many such movies and TV shows. World War Z, very recently The Last Of Us, and not to forget the Asian gem that is Train To Busan. But this genre has reached the point of oversaturation, and unless you bring on a nuanced take like in the Korean drama Kingdom (zombies in the Joseon dynasty), it fails to be memorable in any way. Sure, some scenes can be scary, and some can be interesting because of the CGI, but at the end of the day, we’re going to be forgetting it all if it’s not on a grand scale. That’s what happens when a film like this comes to an OTT platform. In an apocalyptic world where famine has taken over and people are desperate for food, a young man, a former underground Muay Thai fighter, finds himself fighting his way through hordes of undead in order to save the love of his life. A new action hero is born, but does he stand a chance in the big leagues? On the other hand, we’ve got big corporations trying to profiteer out of a crisis. Wow, how original!
The idea of Ziam is interesting enough. There’s a small twist in the tale that could’ve been explored to make this film worth watching. But what makes the film so underwhelming is the reliance on character archetypes with the least inspired motivations. Not to mention, the same old motivations we’ve seen a million times by now. On the surface, Ziam is an original film. It’s a new franchise; it introduces you to new characters, new world-building, etc. However, the real mess-up is that it doesn’t actually do any of that; it simply slots Thai characters into a tried and tested formula. Sure, if you’re just here to be entertained by some action sequences, the film is fine. I honestly had more fun watching the exciting camera work in M3GAN 2.0. Additionally, apocalyptic movies and TV shows all look the same with the dull yellows and the dark greys and blues, making for very dull viewing. Added to that, if you’ve got a brooding lead character who has minimal dialogue, it’s honestly dissatisfying to watch. This is what happened with Peninsula too. Meant to be a part two to the epic that was Train To Busan, the film took everything Korean out of it and swapped it for a bore fest of Western influence that had zero recall value.
Honestly, the only interesting thing about this film is the title itself, which is wordplay on the former name of Thailand, Siam. Mix in the zombies and we’ve got, fresh off the press, Ziam. There’s no denying that there’s a trend for Asian films to be more Hollywood blockbuster-esque in an attempt to emulate the biggest industry in the world; however, we tend to forget that some of the most globally acclaimed Asian films are dripping in culture, which is what makes them so fascinating to watch. Industries should play to their strengths, like the Koreans know how to do family drama fantastically; they blend the themes seamlessly into any genre, which is what makes Train To Busan so compelling. Thai horror works best when it blends traditional themes into the storytelling. In the case of Ziam, though, we have a disconnected generic sci-fi plot, so there’s nothing particularly Thai about it. None of what has made the Thai horror world famous, at least.
Additionally, I think we’ve seen zombie attacks so much now that nothing truly surprises us anymore. It’s almost as if we now have zombie tropes, but it’s not characters; it’s entire scenes. Someone stuck behind a door, someone trying to climb out of a building, and most importantly, a rooftop scene with an outpouring of zombies and a helicopter in sight. I suppose this looks like the perfect recipe, but it’s a dish that nobody is going to touch once served. Mild spoiler alert, but this film is just here to set up a franchise with a dull, last-second numlification of the stakes. You know this is just the beginning, but it’s a beginning that doesn’t leave you wanting more in a positive sense; it makes you wish you hadn’t wasted your time on it. I could talk about the performances if anything was exciting about them, but apart from the child (another trope, yay!), the characters haven’t got much to do.
Singh, the protagonist, barely has any dialogue, and honestly, a brooding man who will do anything for his girl is so old and tired, I’m not interested at all. Meanwhile, Rin, his girlfriend, doesn’t have much to do either. She seems nagging because she doesn’t know what he’s up to, and she wants him to be safe. This makes them both upset to see each other all the time, and the whole thing is just meh. Finally, when it comes to the kid, they couldn’t decide what they wanted him to be, so he’s both comic relief and symbolic of the loss of innocence, which is tonally inconsistent. Why’s he laughing at a zombie in a wheelchair?! Even in a zombie film, we’ve got blatant ableism. This is horrendous. I feel like Thai comedies are actually really fun and have a lot to offer. There have been a few zombie comedies of late, and they’ve all been at least a little bit more interesting than your typical fight for survival films, so if they’d taken that route, it may have felt a little bit more authentic and local. The appeal of global films is not that they all seem to be the same; it’s that they’ve all got their own flair and something new to tell. We’re not looking for replicas; we’re looking for entertainment, which means newness. Honestly, I’d say skip this film, because there are a dozen other Thai films on Netflix that are genuinely interesting, if not fantastic (don’t miss How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies). I’d give Ziam 2 out of 5 stars, and if there does happen to be a second film, I’d hope they take a few pages from their own stories this time around.
