#Alive (Non-Spoiler) Review
So zombie movies aren’t something I always gravitate towards. Not because I hate them or that they freak me out. It’s just that I feel overwhelmed with them because the zombie subgenre is just so…overpopulated with them. Especially now, it just feels like if there is some sort of monster-type entity it’s going to be some variation of a zombie. And as a creature-feature lover, I’m always hoping that the big bad is going to be something other than just zombies. I get it, it’s something that’s super easy to grasp (especially now), and it can create more of a connection than some other monster. So last year when Netflix announced that they would be picking up the movie #Alive, I was excited that it would be accessible and easy to watch, I just wasn’t so excited for it that I had to watch it exactly when it dropped. That is why we’re here, almost a year later, finally watching it. And I wish I hadn’t waited.
#Alive follows Oh Joon Woo (portrayed by Yoo Ah In) who wakes up one day while his family is on vacation to a zombie outbreak. Joon Woo, trapped in an apartment without much food and water, has to figure out how to survive alone. One day, he meets another survivor (Park Shin Hye) in the apartment across the street from his.
For a zombie movie, the movie largely spends most of its time not really focusing on the zombies. I mean, it kinda does. They are always present, but they aren’t the real focus. The movie was much more of a survival horror film that had a zombie outbreak, than an action zombie film. From despair, hopelessness, and dwindling resources, survival lies in continuing on when all is lost more than the fear of the zombies. Between the real stages of grief that the characters go through, and the real-life survival problems that arise during, I found it a lot more enjoyable and different than other zombie films I’ve seen.
You probably know by now that I kind of have a thing for the silence. I love the mundane slices of life. This usually translates into liking things that most people find boring and I do think that this movie might have that problem with some of the audience that watches it. There’s real loneliness for a good chunk, and most of the time it’s just Joon Woo in the apartment. Park Shin Hye’s character doesn’t even enter until over thirty minutes in. He doesn’t fight a lot of zombies, most of the time we only see them below from the window of his apartment. For me, this is what worked. I liked that it focused more on the reality of a zombie outbreak. Probably due to the world we’re currently in, I felt more of a connection to what the character was doing and the real horror living in the despair of the unknown more than anything else. I liked that they showed him being concerned for his family, the little notes he left around to keep up his spirits. The video diaries he did, and the passing of time doing the things he loved like playing video games. It felt more real, and was easier to connect with.
I wanted to keep this movie review spoiler-free, so I can’t really go into detail about some of my other favorite parts of the movie, but I do want to make note of the way that they bridged current day technology with what is going on and how it plays in the greater plot of the movie. It added even more to my enjoyment and more to the real horror. I don’t think they overused aspects of technology that would make it seem unreal. Cell phones were losing signal in and out. One scene we see him desperately trying to find bars just to listen to his parent’s voice mail. There were references to breaks for commercials during the news updates, and random news segments that were more light-hearted that added this light surreal touch that coming off of the year we had is absolutely true. In the beginning, we see him on social media basically pleading the will to go on because he was so lonely and wanted to connect with someone. Instead of the technology being an aid in fighting the zombies, it was focused more on the connection it provided.
If you haven’t watched the movie yet, I would definitely recommend it. While there is a bit of gore when the zombies are feeding, and a few other points, it’s not super gratuitous and a lot lighter in the amount that it happens. If you aren’t into zombie movies because they cause stress, I still wouldn’t recommend it. I think if you spend your time hyper-focused on the zombies and what they are doing (or what they will potentially do) it would be such a disservice to the rest of the movie and focus you in the wrong direction and I don’t think you’d get the same out of it.
+++