Another Korean Zombie Horror: #ALIVE Movie Review

Korean cinema, in addition to police dramas and strange comedies, actively exploits the theme of the zombie apocalypse. And if in “Peninsula”, better known as “Train to Busan 2: Peninsula“, The zombie theme serves only as a wrapper for the average action movie, then in”# Survive”Social loneliness comes to the fore. Serial actors Yu A-in and Park Sinhae diligently portray a love drama in isolation while their fortress-apartments are besieged by fast and highly predatory infested.

The protagonist Jung Woo, played by Yoo Ah-in, lives an ordinary student life: he blogs, plays games and doesn’t care too much about the space around him. Surfing the web instead of grocery shopping or sleeping through university is common. Especially while all his family members are away. But one morning, Zhong Woo learns from the chat messages, and then from the official news about the outbreak of an unknown virus in Seoul, which makes people aggressive and very dangerous zombies. Having barricaded himself in the apartment, he tries to use the modest reserves wisely until the connection and water are lost. On the 20th day, he decides on a desperate act, from which he is saved by another survivor in the window opposite – professional climber Yoo Bin (Park Sinhe). Now divided by the street and the army of the infected, the couple will have to fight for their existence together.

A good plot idea and a dynamic environment with intelligent infected, who can unite in a flock and have the rudiments of a collective intelligence, are destroyed by numerous scenario problems. For example, at one point, the main character calls someone else’s apartment on the phone to take the zombie flock to another part of the apartment building, but never again during the film uses this logical trick to find supplies and survivors. Stupid and lost zombies in one scene do not see or feel the participants in the story from a distance of a couple of meters, and in another they can accurately determine the apartment, the floor number and even use the elevator. In one place, the Korean military is bombing and rocketing entire neighborhoods, as evidenced by the glow of explosions on the horizon, and in another, helicopters search for survivors on rooftops.

Survival without food and water for 20 days and the hero too vigorous for many days of exhaustion raise many questions, as does the refusal to logically explore neighboring apartments in the early days of the pandemic. Against the background of all these inconsistencies, one can already forget about the strange twist with the maniac and the early hints of the collective mind of the infected.

At the same time, “# Survive” looks good due to good camera work, general dynamics and actors. But even this does not allow him to leave the category of fairly average and passing films on the not-so-trendy theme of the zombie apocalypse. However, sometimes there are days when in the evening you want to put everything aside and just watch something like that.

6 out of 10

Author: Alexander Loginov (xtr)

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