Ziam

In a dystopian future, a former Muay Thai fighter must fight a horrifying army of zombies to save his girlfriend, and also some kid.

As the inevitable results of the climate crisis fucks us all over, and the world is suffering from a myriad of food shortages and disasters, the melting polar ice caps release a flood of bacteria that are millions of years old. Meanwhile, Thailand has chosen what is most likely going to be the most common answer around the world, as the century drags on and it comes to governments and corporations maintaining social order, by focusing on insect breeding farms as our primary food source, and sending out the oppressive boot of its fascist police in order to keep the "peace."

Singh, a former Muay Thai fighter, is now working as cargo driver, fighting off bandits along the road, and delivering items scavenged from wrecked freighters along the toxic coast. This is his last job, as he’s planning to take his money, leave Bangkok, and move back to his hometown, Chiang Dao, so that he can live a quiet life with his girlfriend Rin, who works as a doctor in a city hospital. So, for his final run, Singh drives a load of frozen fish to Bangkok for the VS Corporation, which is looking to corner the market on food sources that aren’t insect-based.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the fish all look like the evil rotten cousins of Anglerfish, everyone is completely unaware that the fish are contaminated by an unknown pathogen. They soon find out after a senior VS official confidently serves some to the Board, and they all go into convulsions, spitting blood. These men are all taken to the very same hospital where Rin works, and after they die, they reanimate and start biting the other patients and staff.

Now, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you work at a hospital, and it’s otherwise a pretty normal day, but then you see crazed patients running pell-mell through the halls, eating the staff and other patients… Well, this is what some folks might call a “red flag.” Get your coat. Get your purse. It’s time to leave the area.

Rin does not, and soon finds herself trapped inside a locked down hospital, with the police shooting anyone who tries to leave, all while a zombie outbreak rages through the blood-splattered halls.

Lucky for Rin, her boyfriend Singh is a kickboxer.

Singh sneaks into the hospital, although to be fair, the cops are only shooting people trying to leave the hospital, they don’t give a shit if you’re dumb enough to go inside. Singh is, and once he’s in there, he just starts a’punching and a’kicking his way to Rin, who is somewhere in the building. Now, to be fair, Rin isn't aware that Singh is in the hospital, battling zombies with hand and fist, while looking for her, but if we’re being honest here, Rin is moving around way too much, instead of just finding a locked room and sitting down.

As a result (admittedly unknowingly) Rin is forcing Singh to basically chase her dumb ass all over the zombie infested hospital. To make matters worse, along the way, Singh runs into a preternaturally precocious child. Friendless, yet weirdly chirpy, this kid usually spends his days tagging along behind Rin at the hospital being “cute” while getting in the way of her doing doctor stuff. Awww… he’s giving out medical advice in a cute little kid way. Awww! Way to go, kid, you just killed that man. Save the doctoring for the actual doctors, you annoying little muppet.

I sure that hope he doesn’t get eaten by the zombies!

(Spoiler: Unfortunately, he doesn’t.)

Anyway, this kid is either actually named Buddy, or no one really cares what his real name is, which I get. Either way, now Singh is saddled with dragging this little human care bear motherfucker through hordes of zombies, as he chases his idiot girlfriend around the hospital, because she won’t just sit down in a god damn locked room for two god damn seconds so that Singh can find her, and the whole time, Buddy cries and mews and basically reacts in the worst way possible at every opportunity. Damn you, you stupid child with your innocent laughter! You’ve alerted the zombies and doomed us all! And, because of course he is, Buddy is asthmatic too. Gosh, I hope he doesn’t lose his inhaler…

Stupid kid.

So, obviously, Singh is absolutely worn the fuck out by the end of all this.

To make matters worse, the CEO of the VS Corporation is in a secure location of the hospital, as his wife, Mrs. CEO of the VS Corporation, is in a coma and getting treatment for an unspecified incurable disease. So this means that we now have in the mix the privileged wealthy, and a bunch of trigger happy cops in the hospital, who are there to evacuate Mr and Mrs CEO of the VS Corporation, because that's how the world works when it comes to the wealthy and their jackbooted thugs with badges. Even worse, once they do this, they plan to blow up the hospital, believing that the zombie infection is contained solely within the hospital. They’re wrong, of course, as we all know the infected is out there because of the fish, but they’re gonna do it any way. It’s for the greater good.

So, now everyone has thirty minutes to reach the helicopter on the roof. That means it's time for the punchin’ and the kickin’ to go into overdrive!

Will they all make it out in time?

(Spoiler: No.)

A Thai action horror zombie film directed by Kulp Kaljareuk, who was inspired basically out of a desire to just watch someone fight zombies using Muay Thai, Ziam is... fine.. Nothing special. The kick-boxing is fun, but this choice mostly just illustrates how difficult it would be to survive a zombie apocalypse bare fisted, and how helpful a baseball bat, a zulu stabbing spear, or maybe even a Trucker's Friend All-Purpose Survival Tool would be in the event of an outbreak of the undead. Even worse, watching how beat up and exhausted even Singh the bad ass is by the end of the film pretty much forces you to acknowledge how helpful a shotgun would be too, and that maybe, if zombies were to suddenly fill the streets, maybe–gasp!–maybe Lee Greenwood was right about America all along...?

But on the other hand, you think…

Sure, okay, there’s lots of guns in the U.S., but if we’re being honest here, at this point it’s clear that gun ownership in America obviously overlaps heavily with the kind of anti-science halfwit dummies who whole-heartedly proscribe to the antivax dipshit agenda of their worm-brained king of the MAHA movement. These are the same dumb fucks who responded to COVID by not refusing to wear a mask, and were repeatedly infected, and many died, because they “refuse to live their life in fear,” so it stands to reason that they’d also be the kind of people who, when they get bitten by a zombie, would then go: “I’m gonna put some colloidal silver in this, drink some raw milk and horse paste, and avoid food coloring, and then go out in public to the local Chik-fil-A for a prayer warrior circle, because I refuse to live my life in fear just because purple-haired libtards and George Soros global elites in the lamestream media said so! Trump! Trump! Trump! Let's go, Brand–BWWAARRR!(pukes a torrent of blood, and proceeds to eat screaming prayer warriors and Chik-fil-A bigot customers...)”

My point is... most of the very living monsters that we'd need to help stem the initial horde of undead monsters, specifically because they've waited their entire lives for a chance to shoot indiscriminately into a crowd, would most likely already be a part of that horde of undead monsters, because they "did their own research." So, I guess, sadly, whether there's a plethora of guns hopelessly entangled with the local culture or not, when it comes to zombie outbreaks, it probably all works out the same no matter where you live.

In the end, while Ziam—a reference to Siam, just spelled with a Z for zombies—isn’t a particularly innovative, challenging, or even all that good, of a zombie film, in its defense, the zombies are all clearly the result of practical effects, not CGI, so that’s always cool, and some of the fights are fun. If you’re a fan of zombie movies and martial arts movies, which I am, then you'll probably enjoy this at least a little bit. It’s quick and easy and fun, but definitely not great.