#Alive (Korean) (2020)

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐  

This low budget and modest zombies movie from Korea turns out to be a far better zombies movie that the Train to Busan sequel Peninsula. At first I was marveling at how the Korean film makers can manage to make a simple story look so interesting and absorbing. Later I found out that this is in fact based on an original script for an American movie titled ALONE which asper the time of writing this review has yet to be released. I did catch a trailer for the American version of this and based on what I could see. this Korean film follows the original script faithfully as I could match every single scene shown in the trailer with #Alive! This is not necessarily a bad thing but it did throw away my original impression about #Alive's freshness and originality. Being released first here has the advantage as it has the element of surprise in the plot.

#Alive tells the story of one teenager trying to survive alone in his apartment during the sudden zombies epidemic. He can only watch the mayhem happening helplessly from the balcony and TV station broadcasts, while slowly depleting his very limited source of water and food. With a tight running time of just over an hour and a half this movie is nicely paced and never bores. Young Korean star Ah-In Yoo who plays the survivor here initially looked kind of irritating because of his character's punk attitude and spoilt nature. However his character soon grows on you as we watch him face new challenges. He makes his character believable with his mood swings as we begin to understand more and more of what he is really like.

If you are looking for a zombies fix and felt disappointed with Peninsula, then, I highly recommend #Alive. It certainly has more originality, style and soul that Peninsula. I understand this will be available for viewing from Netflix with subtitles so it should garner a sizeable audience quickly.