Review: Kingdom Season 2

I finished this series last week. If I tried to review it then the post would have been nothing but incoherent screaming. So I left it until now, when there's a chance of more coherency and less screaming.

The opening credits and title card are exactly the same as the first season's. Quite disappointing. I thought there might be a few changes at least.

Far, far too many series experience a dramatic decrease in quality in their second season. I braced myself for that to happen in this case. The most I hoped for was something of similar quality to Return to Cranford: just average, somewhat disappointing, but not atrocious.

Turns out I was wrong. It's every bit as good as the first season. In some ways it might even be better.

The first episode picks up where the last one left off: with Lee Chang, Mu Yeong and Yeong Shin facing a horde of zombies in one place, while Seo Bi and Beom Pal are trapped by more zombies somewhere else. From then on the plot follows their attempts to end the plague and confront the people whose actions created the zombies.

Each episode found new and exciting ways to terrify or nauseate me. I thought nothing could be more reprehensible than Yeong Shin tricking dozens of people into cannibalism, until Queen Consort Cho came along and proved me wrong. I also thought nothing could be more gruesome than the zombie attacks in the first season. That tongue-eating scene proved me wrong. Just thinking about it still makes me shudder 😰

Never has any series given me as many near-heart-attacks as the last episode does 😱 I spent most of the second half torn between wanting to watch it and wanting to hide behind the sofa. The epilogue is the most chilling part of all. Once again it ends on a cliffhanger. Unfortunately there's no third season yet. So we're left to wonder if another king is going to become a zombie, and why in the world anyone would deliberately unleash the plague.

I think the best way to describe my feelings about this series is by saying I desperately want season three and I'll be furious if we don't get it. Sure, Kingdom scares the hell out of me, but I still want more!

Is it available online?: On Netflix, probably.

Rating: 8/10.

Review: Kingdom (2019) Season 1

Lately I'm watching and reading an unusual amount of horror. Some so-called horror films and books aren't scary at all. Others are. This is one of the ones that are.

Kingdom (킹덤 or Kingdeom in Korean) is a 2019 period drama/horror K-drama based on the webcomic The Kingdom of the Gods. I haven't read the webcomic so I don't know how accurate an adaptation it is.

I didn't recognise any of the actors, so on to the plot.

No one is allowed to see the king. The queen claims he has smallpox. Crown Prince Lee Chang suspects something more sinister is happening. He goes to find a physician who may be able to tell him what's really wrong. Unfortunately he arrives just in time to be caught up in the zombie apocalypse -- and his father has already become a zombie.

This is the shortest Asian drama I've ever seen. It has only six episodes, each one less than an hour long. Yet so much happens in it that it feels much longer. And unlike some series the characters' bad decisions actually make sense. Far too often I see characters in horror stories doing the worst possible thing for the stupidest reasons. Here, Beom-pal thought removing the corpses was the best thing to do for obvious reasons. In any other story he'd have been right. It's just a pity he didn't know he was dealing with zombies. Same goes for most of the other characters. (Except that imbecile who brought a zombie onto the boat. That's near the top of the "worst decisions ever made in horror stories" list 😒)

Only two things irk me about it. One, the plague is caused by a plant. As I've said before, I prefer horror stories that don't explain where the monsters come from and don't have mundane explanations when supernatural ones would do. Two, the first season ends with a cliffhanger. Our heroes are facing a horde of zombies, their plan has failed, they're in mortal danger... and that's where the last episode ends. It was frustrating enough for me, and I started the first episode of season two almost immediately after finishing it. I can only imagine how awful that must have been for people who watched it before the second season aired.

Overall, though, this is one of the best -- and most terrifying -- horror series I've ever seen.

Is it available online?: I'm pretty sure it's on Netflix.

Rating: 8/10.