Kingdom: Ashin of the North

Kingdom: Ashin of the North | Main Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
A violent, vicious movie set in the Joseon Empire, which means somewhere between 1400AD and 1900AD. It was a little hard to keep track of who was what, too many furrin names. Near as I can make out, we have a group of Jurchen people who, with the permission of the Joseon Emperor, came south across the border with China and settled in Joseon, which is modern day Korea. In this case specifically North Korea. Things are going along moderately smoothly until a group of Jurchen come south across the river to hunt for ginseng. The local lord takes exception to this and kills them all. Another guy, not quite sure what his position is, a leader of a group of soldiers (we'll call him the major) dares to speak up and tell him that he shouldn't have done that. The ginseng hunters violated the Emperor's law, so they should have been dealt with within the law, not executed out of hand.

Now the Major (in an attempt to cover up the local lord's misdeed) sends Ashin's father, headman of the group of Jurchen living in Joseon, to the Jurchen in  China (north side of the river) to explain that the ginseng hunters had been killed by a tiger. So now we have a tiger hunt. The Major brings a squad of soldiers and large group of peasants to act as beaters. The Jurchens (from the north side of the river) send a squad of lunatics armed with knives. I mean, who goes after a tiger with a knife? I mean, except Tarzan.

Meanwhile, out in the woods, there is a plant that can bring the dead back to life. Seems a deer ate one of these plants and in short order fell into convulsions and when the convulsions ended, the deer was now a zombie, intent on attacking and killing anything that moved. And wouldn't you know it, the first thing the deer runs into is the tiger. Of course. The deer puts up a good fight, but the tiger prevails. However, the deer got in at least one good bite and now . . . you know what happens . . . the tiger becomes a zombie!

Now we have tiger hunt and when the tiger is finally killed (after wiping out half of both hunting parties including a score of peasants), the Jurchen discover that it is some kind of devil and didn't actually kill the ginseng hunters, which means Ashin's father is a liar, and since he is also Jurchen, he is a traitor.

The northside Jurchen attack the southside Jurchen village, kill everyone and burn the place to the ground. Ashin escapes because she wasn't there.

Time goes by, the child Ashin grows to be a tough young woman who has managed to acquire a bow and a goodly supply of arrows. She is being employed by the local lord (the major? someone else?) to spy on the northside Jurchens. An opportunity presents itself and she sneaks into their village where she finds that they have kept her horribly mutilated father in chains all these years. She's pissed to say the least. She manages to escape with her father, and obeying his wish, kills him.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the soldiers from the village where she's been living have been called away to fight against a Japanese invasion in southern Joseon. That's okay, killing the people that are left will make a good start on her revenge. She turns some of them into zombies and when they get going she stands on a rooftop and shoots anyone who looks like they might get away.

China - North Korea Border

The opening sequence shows a map of the China-North Korea border and I realized I didn't know much about the area. The border consists of the Yalu River on the west, Paektu Mountain and the Tumen River on the east. At the far west end of the border is the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge which we repeatedly bombed during the Korean War.

Violent and vicious. With Zombies. On Netflix, 90 minutes long, in Korean with English subtitles.