Ancient feudal Korea: There are rumours that the Emperor has died, but
it's soon announced that everyone who spreads such rumours is to be
executed. Now this somewhat worries crown prince Chang (Ju Ji-Hoon), so
much so that he travels to the palace to look after his father - but
access to the Emperor is denied to him by his stepmother, the Queen (Kin
Hye-Jun), and the Queen's father, prime minister Cho (Ryu Seung-ryong),
who's obviously after some kind of power grab. So Chang basically breaks
into the palace, to find him gone, but a monster roaming the hallways -
but when he's caught by Cho and his men, they deny the existence of any
kind of monster and have plenty of feeble excuses for the Emperor's
absence. Chang manages to leave the palace unscathed, but later he learns
that Cho is plotting to have him murdered, and something convinces him he
needs to find his father's surgeon to get to the bottom of everything.
Meanwhile, in another part of the country, physician Seobi (Bae Doona)
runs a clinic for the poor, but the clinic runs out of food all too soon -
and when the resident surgeon, who's also the Emperor's surgeon, returns
from one of his trips, all he brings with him is a corpse - a corpse one
of the patients eventually steals and turns into food for everyone,
claiming it's deer. The patients like it, and Seobi finds out the truth
only all too late, when the patients already throw up and keel over, as
the corpse was not just a dead body but something more sinister - and
that's not even the bad part, as it's not long before the dead come back
to life, with one thing on their minds, to devour the living ...
True, taken by its own merits, this first episode of Kingdom
does suffer from a few too many characters and stories, but instead of
throwing us right into the thick of it, it sets up things rather nicely
for later episodes to go all-out, and adds enough mystery to the
proceedings to keep one interested enough. And of course, the sets,
costumes and locations, accompanied by stylish camerawork, are enough to
keep this visually interesting. So basically, this one shows great
promise, with hopes that the series will readily deliver.
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