Hell is other people

First of all: If you're looking for a zombie movie, Ashin will disappoint you. It is the story of a woman and her solitary quest for vengeance in an unforgiving, cruel world - zombies do show up at some key points in the story but they don't even feature for most of the movie.

Once you accept that this isn't a movie about people in the zombie apocalypse, as you might expect from Kingdom, it is a very enjoyable dark tale about bigotry, selfishness, and the true evil being people.

The latter is my problem with the story, it is too dark and grim, with nearly everyone being some flavor of terrible and no hope, no goodness, only despair and every goodness being punished by the narrative. Ashin herself is the only character who feels truly three-dimensional, while everyone else only exists to drive home the message of the world of the living being a greater horror than the zombies.

I enjoyed it for the story of Ashin growing from a child into a lethal warrior and clever spy, all the while suffering greatly. She has quickly made it right to my list of favorites among the Kingdom characters. It is also very interesting to get more backstory on the plant and to get more on this bigger plot the ending of season 2 hints at. I didn't even miss the familiar characters, though I wish more characters besides Ashin would have stood out distinctively.

Aesthetically, I didn't miss the splendor that the royal plot lines of Kingdom provide, the grime and mud suited the atmosphere of the story well. But with this movie nearly completely set at night, a few scenes early on aside, I got very annoyed with the lighting. It's tiresome squinting at your screen trying to see something amidst all that darkness for most of a movie.

That aside, I love this movie and it was exactly what I would have wanted from this kind of backstory tale. Something which tells a new, unique story within the universe and exploring a new part of our heroes' world instead of retreading familiar ground. It also stands very well on its own.

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Whisked away to an otherworldly island

I honestly wasn't sure how to rate this movie since I have a lot of criticism about it, yet at the same time it does a good job at being entertaining within the confines of its possibilities.

The movie is only an hour long and you very much notice this in how the characters have no time to be developed, we get very little chance to explore their motivations or romance even when a major plot point hinges on a change of allegiances. In the same manner, the plot is rushed and at times contrived to have everything fit within the very narrow timeframe they have.

And yet, it is a very entertaining movie. I enjoyed the xianxia world we are presented with, the CGI is good and gives us a fittingly fantastic experience, and the way everything rushes and tumbles like a fever dream actually lends itself well to the often-surreal atmosphere of the movie.

It is a very entertaining movie if you simply let yourself get pulled along on this adventure to an island that appears like a magical paradise but is actually a deathly trap. Oh yeah, and there is indeed a turtle on turtle island, though it showed up far less than I had expected (more turtle, please!)

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Gripping politics amidst the zombie apocalypse

I avoided this drama for years since I don't like gore or scary shows, but I'm so glad I finally gave it a shot. The politics sucked me in right from the start, as did the gorgeous sets and rich atmosphere of the show. You are immediately sucked into the claustrophobic atmosphere at court between gild and etiquette and the horror of the undead.

The show isn't subtle at all with its moral message of corrupt, self-serving leaders being the actual plague the country is suffering from, with the zombies only the most visible symptom of the corruption the country is suffering from. As such, most characters are starkly good or evil, and I wish there could have been more characters who left us guessing or weren't so easily defined, as I found these the most engaging characters. In this, it clearly shows there are only six episodes to the season, short even by Netflix standards, which leaves limited room for personal and interpersonal conflicts (season 2 did a better job of balancing this in my opinion.) But all the same, the characters are engaging and I found all of them interesting, even if not surprising.

I didn't find the gore as distracting or jarring as I had assumed I would, it fit in well with the pacing of the story. It was far less interesting to me than the political and social side of it, but that might just be because that's where my interest lies. Kingdom does interesting things with its zombies, though, both with the distinctive spins it puts on their powers and how cultural values shape how people respond to a familiar threat such as zombies.

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