Ziam (2025)
★★ — Ziam (2025)
You know that feeling when someone describes a film to you and you think, "Right, I know exactly how this goes"? That's Ziam in a nutshell. Take the brutal, corridor-clearing intensity of The Raid, mix in the zombie-fuelled panic and emotional gut-punches of Train to Busan, shake well, and pour out something that is technically competent but achingly familiar. That's your lot. That is genuinely all you need to know going in.
And look, there are worse parents to have. Both of those films are stone-cold brilliant in their own right, so you'd think the DNA alone would carry Ziam somewhere interesting. The problem is that borrowing from greatness without adding anything of your own doesn't make you great. It makes you a cover version. A decent enough cover version, maybe, one where the chord progressions are all correct and the vocalist hits most of the notes, but you're never not aware that you've heard this song before, played better, by someone else.
The action sequences do their job. Bodies fly, things crack, the choreography keeps you watching. There's enough kineticism on screen that you won't be checking your phone every five minutes. But there's a ceiling on how much you can enjoy a set-piece when you can already see the next three beats coming before they land. Predictability isn't always fatal to a genre film. Plenty of action films and horror films are predictable and still rattle you because the craft is sharp enough to make you forget you know where it's going. Ziam never quite pulls that trick off. You're always one step ahead, and being one step ahead of your own film is not a good place to be.
The emotional beats suffer the same problem. There are characters here who are clearly positioned as the ones you're supposed to care about when things go sideways, and you can spot them a mile off. The film does the work of setting up its dominoes, but by the time they fall, you feel more like a spectator confirming a prediction than someone genuinely affected by what's happening. Train to Busan made me feel things I wasn't ready for. Ziam made me feel like I'd already done my grieving in advance, which is a strange and slightly deflating experience.
None of this is to say the people behind it aren't capable. There's clearly talent involved. The pacing doesn't collapse, the energy is mostly sustained, and it doesn't outstay its welcome. If you've somehow never seen either of the films it's cribbing from and you stumble across Ziam on a Friday night with a takeaway on your lap, you might well have a decent time. Fair enough. But if you've done your homework, if you've sat through the Jakarta apartment block and the Korean express train and come out the other side a changed person, then Ziam is going to feel like a photocopy of a photocopy. The outline is recognisable. The detail has gone soft.
Two stars. There are enough sparks here to avoid outright dismissal, but as genre filmmaking goes, this is the safe, signposted route rather than the one that takes you somewhere new. Watch The Raid again instead. Or Train to Busan again. Either way, you'll thank yourself for it.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2025-07-13
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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