The Ending Of ‘Ziam’ Sets Up A Potential Sequel, But Is There Enough Meat On Its Bones?

It’s an unwritten rule that no Netflix movie can ever truly end. With streaming content being what it is, the possibility of a sequel must always remain open no matter what, and there’s a whiff of that in the coda to Ziam, a bloodthirsty Thai action-horror from Kulp Kaljareuk that asks the important question of whether Muay Thai alone can defeat a zombie apocalypse. As it turns out, the answer is “We’ll find out next time.”

This isn’t the kind of movie that strictly needed a cliffhanger, but here we are. Now that we’ve got the possibility of one, I do wonder if it might be a good idea after all. While Ziam has a bunch of perfectly serviceable action and one or two decent ideas, its set-pieces aren’t quite good enough to distract from how much context and potentially interesting plot has been left unexplored. A sequel could address that. And the “Muay Thai vs. the Undead” gimmick will still be funny.

So, let’s go over what happened, postulate on some potential answers for why, and theorize about what a sequel may look like if enough people stick with this one to the end.

I’m Still Not Entirely Sure Where the Zombies Came From

One of the more intriguing ideas of Ziam is that its world was already wrecked when the zombies arrived; in fact, the state of the world and the self-serving nature of the people running it were exactly what allowed the outbreak to occur. Though I must confess to still being slightly unsure about how.

I have a pretty good idea of how the world ended. Thanks to pesky global warming – what else? – the polar ice caps melted, releasing long-dormant bacteria into the oceans. Those bacteria killed all the fish and messed up the food chain. The knock-on effect was global famine. But it’s the fish that are important.

With everyone starving, the VS Corporation had seized control of Thailand’s food supply ostensibly to “solve” the crisis but really to line the pockets and grease the palms of the company’s CEO, Mr Vasu. Endlessly greedy and with a dangerous saviour complex thanks to his company’s “charitable” endeavours, Mr. Vasu became obsessed with the idea of saving the life of his wife using fish liver, and presented a bunch of the obviously contaminated sea creatures to a local hospital as a kind of Old Testament miracle.

There are clues here and there that the VS Corporation might have been experimenting with various species to bring an end to the famine, but I think the answer is simpler than that. Mr. Vasu was probably just an idiot who didn’t quite put two and two together that dead infection fish probably weren’t suitable for human application. Hence, patient zero, and a rapidly spiralling zombie outbreak. To make the point clear, in a late turn, the hospital’s sprinkler system exposes the zombies to water, which turns them into horrific fish monsters. Just in case you missed it.

Mark Prin Suparat in Ziam | Image via Netflix

Singh’s Noble Self-Sacrifice

The hero of Ziam is Singh, an expert Muay Thai fighter who worked security for the VS Corporation’s fish delivery trucks. When the outbreak begins, he realizes his partner, Rin, is trapped in the hospital that has become ground zero for the outbreak, and spends the rest of the movie trying to save her, along with a kid named Buddy he picks up along the way.

Singh doesn’t have much of a character beyond his impressive facility for beating up zombies with his bare hands. For this reason, it’s fairly obvious that there’s a noble self-sacrifice in his future. The movie makes a big deal of it. With the hospital rigged to explode by the Royal Thai Army, it’s a race against time to see if Singh can escort Rin and Buddy to the helicopter that was sent to extract Mr. Vasu and his wife. With those two dead, there’s space in the chopper to get Rin and Buddy to safety, but the ticking clock and several nasty injuries mean that Singh finds himself lagging behind.

To buy Rin time to escape, Singh stays behind to fight the horde on the rooftop, and in a hilariously overdramatic scene, she powerlessly watches the building explode with Singh still atop it. Or so she thinks…

Singh’s Miraculous Survival Keeps His Options Open

The epilogue of Ziam reveals that Singh survived the demolition of the entire building by hiding in a water tank on the terrace. Improbable or not, it leaves the film’s hero alive to flying elbow the undead another day, and with a new objective to boot – tracking down Rin and Buddy.

To be fair, Ziam did tease the water tank thing way before its ending, so it’s less of an ass-pull than you might think. You can quibble about the feasibility, but this is fundamentally a movie about a Muay Thai fighter punching fish zombies, so I think that kind of thing is out the window.

With Singh and Rin both still alive, the general outline of a potential sequel is already there. Now engaged to be married, Rin and Singh are separated by even more distance than before, and with the outbreak spreading beyond the confines of the hospital and the evil military doing everything they can to keep it under control, Singh has to fight his way back to Rin one more time.

Sounds like a decent enough time to me.