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!

Dead Earth, 2019

AKA Paradise Z, AKA Two Of Us

    Our story opens in a tropical resort in Thailand where two young women live alone in silence hiding out. They go about their days sneaking around the resort quietly and armed, covering one another while constantly on the watch for danger.

    The monotony of their existence is expressed thoroughly in these establishing scenes by continuing on for a full 20-some-odd minutes. However, as the duo are lithe and comely, we the audience are treated to shower scenes, topless sunbathing, bikini yoga, and yes! Even some girl-on-girl lovin’. 

    Now, I’m certainly NOT one to complain about this type of thing, mind you, but I do think the potential viewer should be made aware of just how close to a ‘sexploitation film’ the first quarter of this movie is!

    Moving on - When, finally, the ladies do venture out of their somewhat fortified compound, it is due to the fuel of their generator running low. So, the two arm up from their impressive little arsenal, don some impromptu tactical gear, load up a extended-length electric golf cart, and head out in search of supplies.

    It turns out that other meeting up with other survivors is not ideal. A chance encounter combined with paranoia and a rash decision or two makes meet & greets brief and messy.

    Our first actual zombie appears after a full 50 minutes in the film’s only expositional flashback. However, undead encounters proper take place soon after that, as the pair returns home and discovers that their stronghold has been breeched. What follows is an attempt to escape their one-time fortress to uncertain safety.

    Dead Earth's zombies are your standard running growlers, but very purposeful and quite athletic in pursuit! Of the Rules of Romero,  the dead seem to follow all but the slow and shambolic method of mobility, as well as remind us of a lesser known method of dispatch mentioned in ’68, immolation. (As Sherriff McClelland said , “Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy.”) They also introduce a new one - that zombies are afraid of water because they can’t swim. This, I am sure was introduced mainly to establish a tense scene of the undead surrounding one of the women while she is in the river. 

    Our two main protagonists, (of whom we get to see plenty!) are likable enough, but even with the expositional flash-back and some chatter between themselves, they are just lacking any real depth of character. This is pretty disappointing because there are only the two, and they had the lion’s share of an hour to make themselves more relatable.

 Once the action DOES get going, it is pretty entertaining, but it doesn’t really go anywhere - just another ‘chase, escape, repeat’ -type of thing.

So, I got out the ol’ Zombie Movie Rubric to grade Dead Earth as objectively as possible, (since, clearly, I was not that big of a fan!) and to my surprise, it earned itself a whopping 1.44 points out of a possible 4.0. The zombies, (although I am NOT a fan of runner/growler types,) and the beautiful Thai scenery
being the only real things buoying this above the ‘avoid’ level. 

Here is a YouTube link for those still interested, but just know that almost ALL of the footage in the trailer is from the final 20 minutes of the flick! DEAD EARTH