‘Kingdom’ Almost Made Me Puke and It’ll Do the Same For You

The first time I tried to watch Kingdom I was eating lunch. As the crunch of my popcorn started to match the snap of people eating the bones of other people, that proved to be horrific mistake. From its grisly special effects to the gleeful use of cannibalism, Netflix’s Kingdom isn’t for those with weak stomachs. That’s a compliment, by the way.

My bar for zombie shows is very specific. Nuanced character development and survival stories are swell and all, but when I’m watching a drama about zombies, I’m in it for the undead in all their gross glory. It’s one of the many reasons why I never lasted more than a few episodes of The Walking Dead. More zombies, less complaining about how the world has moved on, people. I was fully expecting Kingdom to follow in The Walking Dead‘s undead-adjacent footsteps. After all, the South Korean series is primarily about how an empire in the Joseon period can survive a plague straight from the horror playbooks. By description alone, it was poised to be a series that was mostly a political drama with some zoms thrown in for stakes-raising fun.

But that’s far from the bloody truth. Kingdom loves and revels in its gore in a way that would make one of the goriest shows in modern history, Ash vs. Evil Dead, proud. It loves to get gross. And it gets gross often. I mean, in its first episode Kingdom starts with a small starving village unwittingly eating one of their infected friends, before leading into this nightmare:

Look at that poor woman’s resigned face. Is she even alive anymore? Is she in so much pain that she’s become numb to the literal swarm of people feasting on her? Who knows! But everything from the zombie child lurching on her back to the zombie on the left with the luxuriously extended hand is toxic fuel clearly created by someone who loves this sort of nightmare.

What about this one:

That’s a single, now mentally scarred, person dragging out a bundle mass of decomposing bodies. Who even thinks of something like that? That’s so vulgar, over-the-top, and nauseating, it’s haunting.

Kingdom has many merits. The political drama at its core, one that pits complicated rivalries against an heir to the throne who may change everything, is intrinsically interesting. Ju Ji-hoon gives a great performance as Crown Prince Yi-Chang, creating a character who is continuously fighting to stay in control both of his precarious political position and his own uncertainty about the future. And on a more superficial level, Kingdom just looks good. Its costume work is gorgeous and its cinematography ambitious, transforming what could have been a so-so series into one that begs to be binge-watched.

But to me what makes this zombie drama worth it is all that gore. Kingdom has no qualms with jumping into the world of the undead with endless moments of puke-worthy horror, showing just how terrible life in this horror trope would be. From beginning to end, every moment is a grisly ode to gross-out special effects and sheer nastiness. God bless this test of everyone’s stomach.

Watch Kingdom on Netflix