What a view | Netflix’s Kingdom, in which zombie apocalypse meets Korean period drama, is horrifying for all the right reasons
Starring Ju Ji-hoon and Ryu Seung-ryong, all six episodes of season one are now available, with season two in the works, promising blood, gore and more
Even now, I can’t watch Charlton Heston. Not because the Hollywood star remains in death an unreconstituted ex-president of the National Rifle Association – which would like to make Smith & Wesson classmates of all American children – but because he was The Omega Man.
A birthday “treat” for a friend involved his father taking him and half a dozen other youngsters to a matinee showing of the eponymous science fiction-horror movie. Our reward for somehow beating the age limit was to witness grotesque, goggled-eyed albino mutants, survivors of a biological war that left only vaccine-protected Heston unscathed, scavenge across Los Angeles while plotting tirelessly to turn Ben-Hur into gruel. Instead, they traumatised me into cowering behind the seat in front, then feigning vicious stomach pains so as to be taken home early. Great choice of film, Mr Lomas, thanks a lot.
Nightmarish visitations from Heston, however, could hardly have been expected to afflict the latest South Korean period-drama blockbuster from Netflix: Kingdom, six episodes and counting of exquisitely shot history, action – and horror.
Amid 15th-century pastoral beauty, Kingdom advertises all the attributes of a dynastic political thriller, with a slowly expiring king kept functioning by a strange potion dispensed by a mendacious minister; a heroic crown prince (Ju Ji-hoon) who is trying to figure out what’s going on with his father and why the whole country is suddenly calling in sick; and a spiteful queen (Kim Hye-jun) threatening to separate the crown prince’s head from his shoulders if he tries to contact his dear old dad. And that’s because – here, Kingdom careers right off the reservation – the monarch has become a growling, undead monster that chomps human flesh!
Why the widespread cultural fascination with zombies, ghouls, vampires and mutants? Does it manifest itself most clearly at times of economic, political or environmental precariousness? Is it all the fault of Jane Austen and Abraham Lincoln?