Ziam, 2025

Global disasters have put the Earth into a worldwide famine. All nations are suffering. Thailand, however, is suffering a bit less so due to an ‘insect farming’ program initiated by a man named Vasu. His next big plan is to provide food for the world with a type of fish untouched by the pollution. Unfortunately, said fish isn’t quite as clean as it is believed, and the consequences are… Anybody? Anybody? That’s right! A quick and painful death followed by cannibalistic zombism.

We meet Singh. He drives (and defends,) a truck delivering those bug-based protein bars across the unsafe countryside, where looters and hijackers apparently run amok. But Singh is a retired Muay Thai kickboxing champion, and seemingly can fend off dozens of men single-handedly. This is not appreciated by Rin, his wife. And not just because she is a doctor at nearby Prachamit Hospital.

It was at this hospital that the first case of, we’ll call it “fish poisoning’ takes place. Rin witnesses the first signs of infection and fairly rapid transformation of a patient. Very quickly, the hospital is overrun with zombies and victims, with the balance shifting rapidly.

Singh hears news of the quarantine at the hospital and scoots into action, defies the quarantine and seeks out Rin, unaware of neither the outbreak of undead, nor the military’s explosive solution to end the spread of the contagion. Action ensues!

    Lots of action.

    Bare-knuckles, martial artsing action! 

Okay! Jumping right into the nuts and bolts of it, the zombies are fast ones. Fast, angry, growlers, true, BUT they 1. Are Dead, 2. Transfer zombism through bites, 3. Seek out and eat the flesh of the living, and 4. Are only stopped by destroying the brain. So, some credit must be awarded for canon. There is a weird transformation to them later in the film, too. Not too sure about that.

The action, though not always zombie-related, is immediate and throughout. Decent gore, and the darkened hospital setting makes for a nice claustrophobic and labyrinthine environment.

As for the cons, the characters, while capably acted, come off as fairly one dimensional and uninteresting. Not overly engaging and I found myself not really caring about their fates.

Then there is the story arc: An outbreak, followed by hero tries to rescue damsel. Et cetera. The entire plot really added nothing new to the genre, and some of the events were quite predictable.

And there is a concept called ‘plot armor,’ where your main protagonist can overcome superior adversity, but in Singh’s case, his near invulnerability borders on ridiculous. I mean, is this guy even human!?!

Lastly, and this might just be me, it wasn’t really scary. Oh sure, it had horror elements and a scary scenario, but no real jolts. No jumps. No dread.

But that’s me nit-picking. Let’s get a more objective rating by holding it up to the Zombie Movie Rubric! And, based solely on that grading system’s criteria, Ziam lands itself a ZMR score of 2.6 out of a possible 4.0. This does earn it a “Worth-a-watch” recommendation, but go in expecting a fun, at times silly, martial arts film within a Zombie outbreak.

Here is the YouTube trailer: ZIAM 

And just a word of caution, if you ever are in Thailand, watch out for those car windows. They shatter like thin ice!