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The Zombie Epic Kingdom Is Remarkable and Resonant
 

 
All zombie stories come down to one basic question: If civilization suddenly began to fall apart, would you work to preserve whatever was left of it or act in ruthless self-interest and become a thinking version of a ghoul? This conundrum usually plays out onscreen with small groups of people wrestling with private moral dilemmas that affect whatever tiny community they happen to be a part of. Even when the tale is told on a wider canvas — as in both Dawn of the Dead films, the book and movie versions of World War Z, and AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead (about the origins of the plague in The Walking Dead) — it’s rare that storytellers take a panoramic view of the systematic process by which a society collapses.
That’s what makes the South Korean series Kingdom, currently airing in the U.S. via Netflix, so remarkable. It’s a zombie epic that feels like one of those domino displays that cover the entire floor of a warehouse, dazzling you with the intricacy of its cause-and-effect mechanics until the very end, when the last tile falls and you’re left with a flattened remnant of what used to be.
Set amid political struggles and famine after a string of military defeats, Kingdom starts by literalizing one of the oldest metaphors for societal decay: The country is rotting from the top down because its king has become a demented monster. Everyone in the royal court is keeping the tragedy a secret, denying the obvious, or trying to leverage the situation for personal gain by acting in naked selfishness while claiming to implement the king’s orders. The official story is that the king has smallpox, but this diagnosis is belied by his rotting face, glottal growls, and tendency to snooze all day and feed on servants at night. (Like vampires and cockroaches, Kingdom’s zombies do their business under cover of darkness, then scuttle into hiding when the sun comes up.) The crown prince, Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon), the offspring of the king and a concubine, is next in line for the throne, but he can’t claim it because everyone says his father’s not dying, just sick. The king’s age-inappropriate wife (Kim Hye-jun) is pregnant with a child who will become the new heir — a scenario that strengthens the cover story about the king not feeling so well.
 
 
   

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