Asian cinema has been delivering some big international hits in the last several years, including several Oscar contenders and winners. Streaming has played a huge role in bringing the likes of Squid Game and Alice in Borderland to screens, and Netflix has been a driving force in pushing such shows, and several high-performing movies, into audiences’ homes and, a lot of the time, this has produced hit after hit. Now, a new zombie nightmare has crawled its way to the top of the 
Netflix global chart, but whether it deserves to be there is up for debate.
The Elixir has surged past several popular movies such as Keira Knightley’s The Woman in Cabin 10 and eternally present KPop Demon Hunters to take the number one spot on its debut. The Indonesian horror movie is another addition to the zombie genre, and comes with the following simple synopsis:
“An elixir unleashes the undead in a village. A family at odds with one another must unite and fight to survive as their hometown collapses.”
The premise is solid enough, but the execution has divided both critics and audiences, with opinions swinging from “obnoxious rubbish” to “best original zombie movie of 2025.” The gulf of difference seems to come down to style over substance. Reviews have been mostly unanimous in praising the special effects, the look of the zombies, and the technical aspects, but the story and character development is where things crumble like the undead carcasses roaming the streets in the movie. As one review puts it:
“Cinematography is decent, but everything else is obnoxious. The movie tries to get you to care about the characters and their relationships with one another, but it felt so rushed and poorly paced that none of them are compelling.”
In contrast, ScreenAnarchy critic Peter Martin has nothing but praise for the movie, willing to completely overlook the film’s flaws and writing, “Director Kimo Stamboel … says ‘hold my beer’ to every other horror filmmaker. Dynamic camerawork, furious pacing, and frequent gods-eye view drone shots … make The Elixir consistently compelling, even mesmerizing.”
Asian Zombie Horror Is Often in a Different League
When it comes to the differences between American and Asian horror, there is often a huge gulf between the overproduced blockbuster style-over-substance approach many Hollywood studios take compared to a more subtle, grounded and chilling path taken by movies and shows from Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan in particular. The difference can be seen in films like Ringu and its U.S. counterpart, The Ring, with the former building its dread with a washed-out color pallet and some truly unnerving effects, while the latter turns in part to CGI to bring Sadako to life for the final act.
When it comes to zombie horror, movies like Train to Busan, Peninsula, #Alive, and All of Us Are Dead have continually provided some visceral, gory thrills for fans of the genre, and often tend to be more unpredictable and unrelenting compared to Hollywood’s love of dramatic slo-mo, easy-to-spot twists, and repetitive storylines, While The Elixir may not be one of the best, it is still proving incredibly popular on Netflix right now and looks to be keeping its hold for a while.
- Release Date
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October 23, 2025
- Runtime
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116 minutes
- Director
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Kimo Stamboel
- Writers
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Agasyah Karim, Khalid Kashogi, Kimo Stamboel
- Producers
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Edwin Nazir