ZIAM (Thailand, 2025) - MINI REVIEW

When you forget you've already got The Sadness at home.

Set in the climate ravaged dystopian future where Thailand is the only nation on Earth that’s still moderately functional, a mysterious and unexplained zombie outbreak occurs at a hospital where Dr Rin works.

Her boyfriend Singh, a Muay Thai expert, must battle wave after wave of the undead to rescue his beloved and, as Arnie would say, “get to the chopper”.

This is just The Sadness set in a different country with less annoying protagonists, right? The set up here is almost identical: the day starts off relatively normal - at least in this movie’s sense with the dystopian Communist style future - with two good looking characters. They set off to work or other activities, an unexplained zombie breakout occurs, violence and death ensues, they end up at a hospital where the military botches an extraction mission.

It’s almost the same, but there are some differences that sets this movie apart from The Sadness. Firstly, the male character in this movie is far more likeable and intelligent, with a legitimately useful skill - even if that skill would be slightly more cumbersome during a zombie outbreak.

Unlike The Sadness though, this is far more action oriented, and in my opinion that makes this movie more engaging and exciting. Singh is a confident character who loves to let his fists, elbows, feet and knees do a majority of his talking. From the opening ambush scene to the final moments where he is mortal combat with the lead extraction soldier while somehow managing to not bleed to death from his near fatal gunshot wound, he is an exciting and moody character.

I think your tolerance of the film will be in your ability to just ignore some of the obvious gaps in the plot and enjoy the popcorn nature of this film. The origins of the outbreak appear to be straightforward, but why was only one person affected? How do some people turn so quickly, while others take a while? Why are the zombies deaf in one scene, but quite alert in another? And why does water seem to mysteriously bring everything back to life? I guess that’s a metaphor.

I have to admit that the opening third of the movie was the most enjoyable for me. It gave off a bit of a Soylent Green vibe but with the more modern “let them eat bugs” twist. There wasn’t that much protein going around, but there were plenty of cockroaches. I’ll let you figure that one out.

There’s also a bit of the whole Socialist/Communist vibe with the whole ‘Mr Vasu is our savior’, the large posters full of propaganda and the dog-eat-dog life for the common citizens who fight for scraps, water and need to put up with electricity curfews while the rich live as normal. It felt like a combination of The Hunger Games with the videogame Bioshock.

Enough with politics though, I’m not interested or well-versed enough to discuss that topic anyway.

The movie doesn’t quite match the gore and depravity levels of The Sadness though, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I’ll leave that up to you. Personally, I was relieved not to see any eye-socket sex scenes or the excessive, over the top gore. This movie is bloody - don’t get me wrong - the hospital walls and floors are smeared with blood, but it’s not at any extreme level.

What we have then is a movie we could call The Sadness Lite, all the fun and silliness of a zombie outbreak, with a bit of over-edited martial arts action thrown into the mix.

Gee, I used the word ‘vibe’ a lot in this review. Maybe that’s what this movie is, it’s just the vibe.

GENRE Action Horror with Zombies
DIRECTOR Kulp Kaljareuk
STARRING Prin Suparat, Nuttanicha Dungwattanawanic, Wanvayla Boonnithipaisit
ORIGINAL TITLE ปากกัด ตีนถีบ
ALTERNATIVE TITLE Ziam
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN Thailand
RELEASE DATE 9 July 2025

Watch this movie on Netflix.