Kingdom. Reinventing the zombie genre.

Train to Busan brought to larger audiences in the Western world a brand new way of making zombie movies. It focus less on the zombies themselves, or on the conflicts of human settlements, in western style, but on human feelings, on how we cope with the absurd of people becomind rabid flesh eaters, with the horror, the ethical dilemmas, how we deal with it as individuals, as humans, and as societies.

How can you kill that zombie who was once your best friend, your mother, your child? Would killing be something so easy as it is in a video game? 

It also brought new aesthetics: less CGI, more practical effects, the zombies were more choreographed, lots of make up and characterization, their movements carefully studied to bring a feeling of disconfort, tension and repulsion on the audience.

Then came Kingdom.

Kingdom is a period horror series, on the zombie genre. This is in itself unusual. Zombies in Joseon, not in moders South Korea. It is set after the Imjin wars, after the Japanese invasions in the 1600´s and this a Joseon inspired Kingdom, which bears the trauma of these wars, the political divisions at the court, the trauma the population suffered, including the horror of famine, servitude under the nobility, the highly hierarchical society creating classes of people considered unworthy of living at all. 

The series has a prequel, released after the second season (or second part).

It is a star studded cast, for hallyu, and the performances are amazing. It is a show that feels expensive, but not a cent was wasted: from the performances of the cast, to the smallest details, everything aims to perfection. And it holds no punches.

Why is it called Kingdom and not zombie-something? Well, because it is not about zombies, it is about people and about power. Oh, not the petty little power play of The Walking Dead, where humans go back to tribalism, and have to fear bands of humans in a wasteland. We´re talking about real power here, the crown, the country, the kingdom, Game of Thrones kind of stakes: either you win or you die.

SPOILERS!!!!!!

The interesting thing about this show is that even though you are spoiled rotten, when you watch the episode, it still holds strength, the punch is still strong enough to knock you out.

It is unapologetic Asian, and one hundred percent Korean, so western audiences are a bit lost when it starts. The first episode starts in the palace, and you see a doctor and his apprentice. Western audiences don´t know that, because we don´t know squat about the rituals and official garnments of palace workers, therefore the eunuchs, military officers, the bureaucratic officers, the nobles, the scholars, the palace maids, they are all an undistinguishable bunch for westerners. With time and a little attention one can slowly discern their ranks and functions. Hierarchy is very important in the society, in fact, it still is important in modern Korean society!

The pristine palace floors, where people walk wearing socks, their manners, and their formal speech is also somewhat lost in the dubbed version. The subtitles loose a bit of the translation, but a lot can be understood by the tone of voice, so I highly recommend the subbed version.

The king is dead, but if the world outside the inner court finds out his death, the crown prince will ascend the throne. It should be fine, except that the king has a very young queen, from a very powerful clan, and she is pregnant, and everyone is sure the baby is a boy. The adult crown prince is the child of a concubine, so, despite being older, he ranks lower than the yet to be born half sibbling.

That birth is the harbinger of ill omens for the crown prince. Most certainly the (Dowager) Queen will have him assassinated or executed, on some account of treason, to erase any dispute for the throne, and her clan is also arming itself to wage another war on their borders, including with the distant Japan.

But how can they make a dead king seem alive? They bring a doctor from a village about 400km distant from Hanyang (modern Seol), who once helped the Cho clan create fierce warriors in the war against Japan using a "plant of ressurection", which brings the dead back to life. But they are not quite the same as they used to be. That is enough for the Queen and her father, the power Minister Cho.

An unfortunate accident happen during the process, however. The dead not dead king takes the doctor´s apprentice and kills him. 

In the meantime, the Crown Prince wants to see his father, he needs to confirm whether or not his father is alive, and he counts on his personal guard to help him. And here you have one of the best dynamics of the show: Crown Prince Lee Chang and Mu Yeoung. The former is a low born military man, in his forties, who owes his wife the support to pass the examination, and who is happy that he is soon to become a father. The Prince lets him "steal" delicacies from his table, so Mu yeoung can take home to his pregnant wife. Lee Chang teases Mu Yeoung about it, but that only highlights the class difference, how someone in the guards position would legitimately fear the whims of a prince. On the other hand it also shows that Chang cherishes his personal guard albeit disregarding the reality of his poverty due to his sheltered life.

The truth is that although Chang is sheltered from poverty, his life has been in danger since he was born, because of palace politics, so hunger for food or power, both are dangerous.

When he realizes that his father might be either dead or in grave danger, Chang runs from Hanyang with his guard (just in time to escape prison and execution), to find the last doctor who treated him.

That´s when the story does a cartwheel.

The doctor works in a small village hospice, where more people are sick from malnutrition than anything else. Nurse Seo Bi is one of the female medics responsible for caring for the patients in the absence of the doctors, and things are bleak, as they have only a watery broth to serve. They can´t even hunt in the woods without the nobles´permition, and all game belongs to state.

One non conformist soldier questions her authority, and despairs over the misfortunes of the peasant life:Yeong Shin.

When the doctor arrives, he brings a casket with the dead apprentice and locks himself in a room, obssessed with curing "the disease". Seo Bi leaves to find herbs and returns to find people eating joyfully, from a pot full of meat... well, Yeong Shin cooked the dead apprentice and served them to the hungry, and while an ethical debate ensued between him and Seo Bi, about how people in the south survive the years of famine during the war by resorting to cannibalism, while the king and the yangban (nobles) did nothing, those who ate from the soup started to die as if from poisoning... and once they were dead, they rose as undead, hungry for human flesh, and their bite was very infectious.

It is as if the disease has somehow changed its course, concluded the doctor, himself bitten, and soon dead to the living, and living to the dead.

At this point we have the Prince heading to that village, the hospice with a full blown outbreak of an unknown disease, a man who unwittingly spread that disease, and a medic who values life above all else, and palace officials determined to kill the Prince.

An episode that started in a slow burn, finished ominous. The outbreak sequence had details that combined gore and elegance, if it is possible... well, Kingdom proved it is possible!

What one can see in the first episode and that will be a constant in both seasons is that everything is intensely storyboarded. I don´t think it is just to save money on wasted shots, but because it is not a show that makes intense use of CGI, on the contrary, it uses CGI only when it is necessary, so it feels horrifically natural. 

A Kingdom zombie is a creature that does not move naturally. Its bones creaks and breaks when it moves, and that disjointed movement is disturbing. Each of them has a different make up, so the extras are important and no mere extras. You don´t add green patches on them and replace with CGI later. They must act. Shooting some of those sceenes must have been gruesome for everyone involved.

The thorough storyboarding allows for longer shots, wider planes without cuts or smoother cuts, better composition. And the aesthetic is a language in Kingdom: when you get immersed in it, you´ll soon feel the mood change by a slight change of colour, of edition, the close ups that widens... you will be tricked into the song it is singing.

The music is also very good. It does its job perfectly as an inducer or emotion. It does not bother with creating themes, it is no Star Wars. However it subreptiously uses the keys inside of human ming to trigger the right emotions in the right time!

From Episode 1 onwards it takes us on north and south of this Joseon, and we see how a Crown Prince becomes a leader who ultimately cares little about titles, as he finds a cause bigger than himself and than any individual, how Chang begins to understand what the Kingdom really should mean and the role the King should play, we follow brave and intelligent Seo Bi, whose condition as a women does not prevent her from speaking her mind and from being inquisitive and driven to problem solving, never a damsel in distress! We also find that Yeong Shin at last found a means to redeem himself from his past, and that he is not just a follower or a subject, but a warrior full of freewill. It is a journey worth taking from episode 1!