Just suppose there’s a pandemic and you can’t leave your home. Oh, wait…
In #Alive, a pulmonary affliction is causing people in a Korean metropolis to savagely attack and bite other humans, further spreading the pandemic. The young gamer Jun-woo (Ah-In Yoo) is isolated in his eighth floor apartment, under siege from what are essentially zombies. It’s kind of Home Alone with zombies.
The hook here is that, like in Home Alone, our hero must depend on his ingenuity to survive, both in fighting off the cannibalistic attackers and in harvesting equipment, food and water from the ravaged apartment building. Fortunately, he discovers another, much smarter survivor, a girl (Shin Hye-Park) holed up in the apartment building across the courtyard. There are two surprises in the final 20 minutes.
This is the first feature for writer-director Il Cho. He peppers #Alive with funny bits, all the more effective because he doesn’t linger on any of them. One example is when Jun-Yoo presses a button to wait for an elevator as a horde of zombies rush toward him.
#Alive contains the requisite amount of throat biting, brain eating, amputations and bloody splatter for a zombie movie. If you don’t like gore, there are better choices for you on my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.
This isn’t great cinema, but it has its moments. #Alive is streaming on Netflix. On Netflix, the Korean dialogue is both subtitled and dubbed into English.