“Kingdom: Ashin of the North” (2021) is a prequel to “Kingdom,” a two season South Korean television series about how the ruling classes created a zombie outbreak that threatened them and their subjects. This prequel focuses on the titular character whom we meet at the end of the second season.
“Kingdom: Ashin of the North” starts with three storylines: the natural food chain becoming polluted, a conflict between the Jurchen and Joseon and Ashin’s people, Jurchen people who live in Joseon thus no longer considered a part of their original tribe, but not accepted as part of the Joseon people. This story is busy and unsatisfying. It reframes the entire series in a way that robs the first two seasons of its horror metaphorical significance between zombies and inhumanity of the rulers. Instead it becomes a vengeance story, which I normally adore, but not when it is so unrealistic. For this story to work, the natural food chain storyline should have been omitted.
I highly recommend “Kingdom.” If you see “Kingdom: Ashin of the North” before the first two seasons because it is a prequel, you may never want to watch the series because the feature is a tedious, monotonous, grim, dialogue and logic free story without any character development. Please trust me that the series is far superior to the feature, and I am shocked that the feature and the series share the same creative team. If there are future seasons of “Kingdom,” it may be required viewing to understand events after season two, but I would wait before wasting your time and watching this movie.
If I had to say something nice about “Kingdom: Ashin of the North,” the cast can act.
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I admire consistency. I loved “Kingdom” because even though zombies were involved, the story felt grounded in the real world, so it earned its horror and sci fi facets. Morality was nuanced so while there were good and bad guys, there was plenty of shocking, unexpected greys from both sides. “Kingdom: Ashin of the North” lost me with the CGI animals and felt empty in comparison. It is also possible that I misunderstood the story because I am an ignorant American, and this film is set in Korea in the past. I am unfamiliar with the nation and its history so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
The Joseon leaders extrajudicially execute the Jurchen for illegally harvesting on their land. The Jurchen want revenge, but Joseon rulers do not want to engage because the Jurchen are badasses from childhood. A tiger consumes a zombie deer and begins terrorizing the land. (“Train to Busan” called, and they want their zombie deer back.) Little girl Ashin, who comes from the soft Jurchens, wants to cure her dying mom so she too enters the forbidden area to get the zombie flower. When the Joseon and Jurchen clash, zombie tiger begins killing both sides. The Joseon save the Jurchen and explain that zombie tiger killed the Jurchen, but the Jurchen are hard core and thank the Joseon by saying, “We know you killed our people, not a zombie tiger, so you are dead.” This storyline is the equivalent of a kid telling his teacher that the dog ate his homework, and at that exact moment, the parent walks in with the dog who literally pukes up the homework. The dog never ate the homework, but the kid got lucky because the dog winked and said, “I got you!” Why is this cover story implausible to the Jurchen? I can’t buy it. For some indiscernible reason, the Jurchen reject the tiger story, but find it plausible that Ashin’s Jurchen killed their people so the Jurchen slaughter Ashin’s village while she is on one of her trips to the forbidden land. Ashin is understandably pissed, asks the Joseon to avenge her, lives with them and hones her fighting skills while hunting wild boar in the forest.
“Kingdom: Ashin of the North” has a single cool transition scene when little Ashin runs up a fallen tree then turns with her arrow and becomes grown ass Ashin. The middle of this movie has some rapid big twist reveals that you could literally blink and miss them, which could explain why the film did not work for me.
Ashin goes to the Jurchen camp to get revenge, discovers that her dad has been held as a prisoner all this time, tortured then later uncovers the Joseon’s betrayal in the archives. So naturally she creates a zombie outbreak in the Joseon camp and kills everyone. Does she single out the specific Joseon officials who betrayed her family? No, because that would make sense. Then we find out that she resurrected her entire village, which are now zombies. I can buy a kid thinking that “Monkey’s Paw” is a great relic to wish on because kids are dumb, but even dumb kids learn albeit slowly. Um, so a little girl infected everyone, knew about the zombie catch in the etchings’ fine print, chained them up and brought them food from a great distance frequently. Seriously? And as she got older, she thought, “Great idea. Keep doing that!” Then she sells the plant to the Emperor’s doctor and is responsible for the outbreak.
I love little girls driven mad and out for revenge. See “Firefly”/ “Serenity” and Arya in “Game of Thrones,” but “Kingdom: Ashin of the North” is too outlandish and absurd for my tastes. I can buy that a little girl who does not know better may infect some people, but keep them alive until she becomes an adult and destroy a couple of nations? If so, she is batshit and a villain. It really felt as if they just wanted a badass chick and a ton of zombies, which is fine, but it is such a leap in logic that I found the whole movie tedious filler. It felt as if the creators thought about the most effective, gruesome moments in the two seasons then put them in the denouement of this television movie. Were you appalled when a group of zombies fed on a single person? Remix!
This episode rushed through her childhood so she could wreak havoc instead of taking its time so that it would make sense. A little girl living among soldiers during the Middle Ages is going to have some challenges surviving and skipping over that robs us of getting to know Ashin more. Remember that Ashin comes from the soft Jurchen so to assume that she came crying out of the womb as a bad ass robs us of the opportunity to get to know her. We mostly get sequences of her training herself in the woods and subtle implications of abuse. The final scene when she openly-during the daytime, not hidden, completely in front of her target, stands and draws an arrow at a hardcore, experienced Jurchen leader with his soldiers on horseback made me hate this movie more. Little Miss Rambo has stopped being covert and though outnumbered, thinks that she can take seasoned warriors sans zombies as backup. Please no. I loved “Xena: The Warrior Princess” because it was over the top and ridiculous, but this humorless jaunt embraces the absurd while also demanding gritty, torture porn realism.
Unpopular opinion side note: while Ashin’s village were done dirty and did not deserve their treatment, they were dumb, and while the hardcore Jurchen were wrong about why they were traitors, the villagers were traitors. They did spread propaganda though they knew that it was not true. The series never gave us a sense of why these villagers made an intelligent decision to separate from the badasses. Instead they are fools. If you are giving us hopeful immigrants, we need to understand why they are so desperate for a better life. Why are they leaving? Why are they happy with crumbs on foreign soil?
