Young Ashin (Kim Si-ah) lives in a poor village of a displaced tribe ground up in a territorial conflict between warring forces that the villagers aren't  a part of. Ashin's dad (Kim Roe-ha) is a spy for one side, but only to ensure improvement of his village's living conditions - he ultimately fails though and vanishes while Ashin's village is burned down and all villagers slaughtered. Only Ashin escapes, more by mistake than design.

As an adult, Ashin (now played by Gianna Jun) has settled in the forbidden zone plotting revenge for the killing of her people, her mother (Jeon Su-ji) and brother (Kim Dam-Ho) among them, and the destruction of her village. She still works for her father's employers, and on one mission for them she manages to sneak into the enemy palace - to find her father, still alive but with all his limbs chopped off and in terrible pain - so much so that she eventually kills him out of mercy. She finds out eventually though that her village was not just overrun by the enemy, but was a strategic and utterly ruthless sacrifice by her own employers, luring the enemy there under false pretext. And this is where Ashin snaps: Rather by accident, Ashin has found the resurrection plant, a plant capable of raising the dead, in the forbidden zone, and she now brings the plant to town, seeing that it's overrun by zombies before too long, and using the undead as her weapon of revenge ...

An origin story or prequel to the popular series Kingdom - a series never in need for an origin story -, the premise of this one sounds very interesting on paper at least, as it shows an original take on zombies never explored in the series. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate too well to the screen, basically because the concept gets tangled up in a lengthy set-up over-stuffed with lies, betrayal and deceit, so much so that the zombies only pop up in the third act, which might be a cool twist had not everybody expected zombies to pop up all along. And while big and accomplished setpieces were one of the trademarks of the series, they also don't pop up here until very late. The other problem with this though is that besides Ashin, there aren't any interesting characters in the whole thing, everybody that's not her seems to be politicians and/or warlords conspiring in a conflict that one quickly loses track of being not at all versed in Korean history.

On the plus side, this is slickly made, at least in parts pretty exciting, it doesn't shy away from ugliness - it just doesn't live up to its premise.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

Feeling lucky? Want to search any of my partnershops yourself for more, better results? (commissions earned)

The links below will take you just there!!!

Find Kingdom - Ashin of the North at the amazons ...   amazon.com   amazon.co.uk   amazon.de Looking for imports? Find Kingdom - Ashin of the North here ...   eThaiCD.com Your shop for all things Thai Something naughty? (Must be over 18 to go there!)   find Kingdom - Ashin of the North at adultvideouniverse.com

Thanks for watching !!!