After the growing popularity of South Korean thrillers—including Netflix's own Okja from Bong Joon-ho—the streaming service is turning to The Tunnel and A Hard Day director Kim Seong-hun for its next horror series.
Kingdom, which drops on Netflix on 25 January, brings a zombie plague to late Joseon Dynasty Korea. As the plot synopsis reads:
In a kingdom defeated by corruption and famine, a mysterious rumor of the king’s death spreads, as does a strange plague that renders the infected immune to death and hungry for flesh. The crown prince, fallen victim to a conspiracy, sets out on a journey to unveil the evil scheme and save his people.
Like much of Seong-hun's work, this zombie plague is a highly stylised survival-thriller twist on the typical reanimated dead genre. The trailer itself is filled with a number of beautiful set pieces—including a mountain of corpses eating a woman alive, and soldiers taking on the coming horde with bows and arrows.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
