‘#Alive’ And ‘Alone’
(aka “IF YOU THINK THESE ZOMBIES ARE SCARY, YOU SHOULD SEE WHAT THEY'RE CHARGING FOR RENT!”)
By CptBlackVest
So there's this trend, I'm not sure if it's still going on as much, but this trend of an American filmmaking team adapting an Asian horror movie for an American audience.
You probably recall it if you're a horror fan. Bringing Ringu and Ju-On over as The Ring and The Grudge, talks of adapting the South Korean zombie film Train to Busan for America, things of that nature. On the face of it, you'd think these two movies, #Alive and Alone, are the same. Funnily enough, it's the inverse. Both movies are based off a 2019 script titled Alone, by Matt Naylor, though the South Korean #Alive came out first.
Either way. Both are 2020 zombie movies set in an apartment building, with a man barricaded in his apartment. There are differences, but the broad-strokes plot is the same for both movies. They both have their good and bad points.
The movies overall are fun and watchable, with decent moments of introspection and character development, tense action, and reasonably good special effects. If you like fast zombies, both are worth a watch, though I'd say in general #Alive is the better of the two films, so if you're only going to watch one, do that one.
Both movies feature a young man trapped in his apartment, as he wakes up late and discovers that whoops, it's 'Zombie O'Clock.' The man has to deal with dwindling food and water supplies, as well as the solitude of the situation, which drive him to his breaking point before he's rescued by the realization that he's not alone.
The movies are good about the character study of the man's situation as well as questions of survival and ennui. While other media cover that topic in a zombie apocalypse better (The Night Eats the World being the biggest one that comes to mind), these two movies combine it with more and better action.
Now, a pre-spoilers review:
#Alive feels like a solid 4/5.
Alone feels like a solid 3.5/5.
Pros:
-Solid action without the protagonists feeling like action heroes.
-Some solid scenery wreckage of the overrun or abandoned apartments, as well as the outside area.
-Surprisingly creepy zombies.
-Interesting questions of survival.
-Interesting decisions/plans based on survival (example: in '#Alive,' the protagonist uses a quad-copter drone to great effect).
-(Alone only) The creepiest fast zombies I've ever seen.
Cons:
-Slow pace may not be appealing to everyone.
-Trigger Warning: Suicide-related stuff. Not to mention the movies carry some depressing themes and moods.
-(Alone only) The movie doesn't end so much as it just stops.
From here on out there be spoilers, so woo, enjoy this barrier. Read on if you don't care about spoilers or if you've already watched the films.
Both movies follow the same rough overarching plot. A man finds out it is 'Zombie O'Clock' after sleeping in late. His family/housemate isn't present and after seeing the initial chaos, his neighbor barges in, wounded and scared. The neighbor claims people are attacking each other and goes into the restroom. While the neighbor is in there, the man learns from the news that it is zombies, it is spread through wounds, and the first real symptom before they turn is bleeding eyes. Cue the neighbor coming out and his eyes start bleeding.
The man forcibly ejects the neighbor before he goes full zombie, where he's promptly attacked by other zombies. This doesn't happen again in either movie, by the by. There's no zombie-on-zombie fights, which suggests the neighbor wasn't done fully turning.
Either way, the man is forced to barricade himself in his apartment with limited food supplies. The water runs out and he's forced to turn to liquor. As the TV and internet die or stop being useful, the man realizes he might have to go out there, but he's scared to.
He does video logs, to keep himself calm. An early message from a family member gives him strength. They both encounter a zombie, with Alone having the zombie come in through the air vent, while in #Alive, the zombie forces his way through the barricaded but damaged front door after the protagonist makes too much noise. They defeat the zombie in their respective styles, more on that in a bit.
Regardless, things turn dire. The food and water is almost out and then the protagonist gets a call from a family member. Instead of it being a good thing, this just means the protagonist gets to listen as their family dies to zombies, while the family member in question begs them to be safe. This drives the man into a frenzy, where he leaves his apartment and finds out that yes, he was quite right not to leave. He encounters the initial neighbor as a zombie and inadvertently draws the horde in the building on them, escaping in their respective styles, before fleeing back to their apartment and having to spend some time holding the door shut so the zombies don't get in.
This is almost the last straw for the protagonist, but then the last straw actually hits as they notice a seemingly failed military campaign. In #Alive, the protagonist hears and sees bombings happening, but they're not close to where he lives and the sound isn't drawing zombies away. He realizes that it will take too long for the military to save him, if they even can. In Alone, there's some sounds of bombing but the main thing is the power in the city dies.
This provokes both men to attempt to hang themselves, but they're saved by a girl. Again, more on that. They introduce themselves to the girl and start trying to make a plan. Their antics at planning and supply-sharing attract the attention of zombies, one of which makes a spirited attempt to get to the girl. The guy manages to help deal with the situation.
Realizing the lack of supplies, the guy goes to check that first undead neighbor, stealing his keys off of him. He goes to explore the neighbor's apartment, finding some supplies but getting into an encounter with the dead neighbor's roommate, which he is barely able to escape from. One of the items he loots is a set of radios, which he shares with the girl to communicate better.
They plan to find a safer place in the building, with different divergences depending on the film, but this all culminates in an encounter with the old strange neighbor upstairs. Said neighbor is a bit creepy but otherwise friendly... but it's a trap. His wife is a zombie and, not knowing any better or not caring, he's been feeding his fellow survivors to his wife to keep her alive and comfortable. He's defeated by knocking him into his undead wife and the man (and possibly the woman) flee. And again, this leads to different endings.
Both films feel different in spite of it being the same overall plot, and it comes down to who the Man and Woman are, as well as... well. I'm not sure if it's just writing differences or cultural differences helping, but they're there.
So, let's get into that.
In #Alive, our protagonist is Oh Joon-woo (played by Yoo Ah-in), a video game streamer who lives with his parents and sister. Joon-woo is implied to be an isolated, semi-introverted sort, which means he sort of weathers the initial outbreak better. He's mostly calm and practical at first, though the growing stress gets to him.
Joon-woo immediately barricades his home with his fridge before trying to get in touch with his family. He starts rationing his food immediately. He tries to ignore the apocalypse brewing around him by gaming, but the internet dies within a few days. He's unable to call out because cell service in the building sucks, but comes up with several plans to try and get around it.
Joon-woo's 'style,' as it were, is that he's a ridiculously average nerd. He's not a fighter, he's not built. He survives encounters with zombies through being clever, being lucky, and hiding, for the most part. When he fights his first zombie, instead of trying to take on the massive zombie with a golf club, he runs for his window and hangs on the outside railing, and lets the zombie rush him down and fall over the railing. In the hallway encounter, he panics and runs and gets very lucky with his dodges, before managing to lose the zombies by hiding.
This continues in other ways too, but let's get to the Woman. Kim Yoo-bin (played by Park Shin-hye) is somewhat mysterious. She gets Joon-woo's attention as he starts hanging himself by using a laser pointer from across the parking lot, which motivates Joon-woo to save himself since he's not alone. He struggles but frees himself from the noose. She uses the laser to point at a few hanging pictures and plaques and crocheted wall hangings with words on them, using them as a rudimentary form of one-way communication, and her first 'words' are 'no' as he's still hanging, 'hello' after he's free, and circling the syllables for 'idiot,' because she thinks he's an idiot.
She's taking none of Joon-woo's shit and is easily the more competent of the two of them. It's heavily implied she got in touch with Joon-woo because she herself attempted suicide, and didn't want to watch him do it to himself. She's a former rock-climber who has rigged her smaller apartment with booby-traps, and seems to have quite the body count.
The trading supplies and zombie encounter are fun and better than the similar scene in Alone by a country mile. The duo are separated by an entire parking lot (compared to the small alley between them in Alone). Joon-Woo has the biggest issues so Yoo-bin wants to send him supplies. She has an idea to use a baseball with a string attached to make a zip-line, but that's a far pitch.
Joon-woo has a drone, though, which was previously used to try and get him phone signal by carrying the phone up past the buildings. He uses his drone to deliver a string and she sends him some supplies. Unfortunately, a former fire-fighter notices the baseball she pitched, as well as the rope tied to it, and remembers enough to start climbing. Even worse, she tied it off to a table, so his initial pulling on the narrow rope yanks the table and bowls her over, temporarily knocking her out.
Joon-woo has to distract the zombie with his drone, which works for a bit before the zombie grabs and smashes the drone. But it's enough for Yoo-bin to wake up and save herself by cutting off the zombie's hand with a climbing axe, causing him to drop to his death. So good work team!
The duo have a more shared sense of survival, with Yoo-bin helping the starving Joon-woo first, then Joon-woo delivering some of the bounty from his neighbor's apartment to her. He helps save her from another zombie encounter (not in the other film) by luring off the zombies on her floor with the building's intercom system. It's Yoo-bin's plan to make it to the Stranger's floor, as she notices one of the floors in the building is basically empty of zombies.
The duo head down to the parking lot via rope (climbing gear on Joon-woo's side courtesy of his dead neighbor) and fight their way to the elevator, picking up a dead cop's revolver along the way. The floor is not as safe as thought, but the Stranger (played by Jeon Bae-soo) rescues them using smoke grenades, which seem to confuse the zombies. Yoo-bin is quickly suspicious of the Stranger, as some details aren't adding up, whereas Joon-woo is grateful and immediately eating the man's offered food. After seeing Joon-woo eat it and be fine, she takes some water but doesn't drink much. Unfortunately, she was right to be suspicious as the offered food was dosed, and both pass out.
Joon-woo gets lectured by the Stranger, who thinks his wife can still get help and mentions this not being the first time he's done this with other apartment survivors. Joon-woo calls him a murderer but the Stranger counters on how many zombies Joon-woo killed. Joon-woo manages to sort of get free and gets the revolver back.
Meanwhile Yoo-bin didn't drink as much poison as Joon-woo and wakes up just in time to keep the Stranger's zombified wife (Lee Chae-kyung) from killing her. The duo manage to kill the Stranger together, with Yoo-bin basically throwing the zombie at the Stranger while Joon-woo holds him at gunpoint. He shoots both of them and, with no real options, they try to flee the building. This fails dismally, as the zombies force them to the rooftop. The duo contemplate suicide again, but luckily the military shows up, having been alerted by the various video blogs and social media postings like what Joon-woo was doing to rescue survivors in the area.
In Alone, meanwhile, we have Aiden (Tyler Posey). Aiden's story begins at the suicide attempt and we go back to the beginning. Aiden lives with his sister, I think, and wakes up in bed with a one-night-stand girl. The above stuff happens but uh, well, see below.
(An aside: we don't see much of either Aiden's sister or the girl in his bed. What little we see is enough that they look similar, which lead to me and a few others I know to believe that Aiden was in a relationship with his sister. Smooth move, movie editing folks.)
Aiden reacts poorly to the zombie apocalypse, spending the first day crying and drinking while trying to call his family. It's only on the sixth day that he thinks to barricade his apartment. Aiden's video logs indicate that he's an extroverted person who hates being alone, which combined with his drinking means he's more miserable here.
(As another aside, I find it amusing that Joon-woo, the isolated and antisocial one, has more encounters with living people than Aiden does. In addition to the ones mentioned under both entries, Joon-woo also encounters a dying woman in the halls during his rampage, and the noise he was making that attracted his first zombie were him trying to distract zombies attacking a female cop, whose revolver he later steals. Aiden has no other living encounters beyond the ones mentioned under both movies, beyond sleeping with the aforementioned girl before the outbreak.)
Aiden's story is over double what Joon-woo's was. Joon-woo attempted suicide on the 20th or 21st day, whereas Aiden did it on the 42nd. He's having a bad time, drinking and crying and hallucinating. His zombie attack is when he's talking on the video log about hallucinating things in his peripheral vision, so I have to imagine a surprise zombie popping out the air vents did not do wonders for his sanity.
Aiden's style is... well. Aiden's not as clever as Joon-woo, but unlike Joon-woo, Aiden isn't the stereotypical nerd. He's not seriously built by any measure, but he's more athletic than Joon-woo by a lot, seemingly surfing and playing baseball in his free time. As such, Aiden leverages that, dodging or knocking zombies out of the way, as well as attacking them with a better track record due to being slightly more buff and having a baseball bat instead of a golf club.
The first zombie attack is a woman coming through the vents into his bathroom. His rampage in the halls moment is... both more and less actiony. While Joon-woo does kill a zombie during his, Aiden loses his shit immediately on spotting his neighbor, which attracts the horde. Aiden, instead of hiding and getting lucky, basically runs from the zombies and loops them around, using two stairwells and the lower floor. It involves a lot of dodging and occasionally tackling the zombies.
As for the girl? Eva (played by Summer Spiro) doesn't notice Aiden at all as Aiden hangs himself. Aiden literally saves himself through the power of 'hurr girl cute' and ineptitude with setting up a noose, as it breaks without too much of a struggle. Aiden cleans himself up after spending forty-two days growing a big beard and letting himself go. He initiates communications with a bunch of prepared notecards, though he at least acknowledges that that's a bit awkward that he went through that much work, though she seems just as desperate to talk to someone. She's able to respond with a whiteboard.
Eva is... almost a non-entity in the story. She's not a damsel, really, it's more like she's just there, but not in the 'Sexy Lamp Test' way. For the most part it's Aiden helping her, with the best she offers being advice and going 'no please don't go out into the dangerous apartment complex.' He comes up with and succeeds on the plan to set up a zipline between apartments, he sends her water, and when this attracts the zombie that attacks her, she just kind of freaks out while Aiden distracts it over to his side.
(I suppose right now I should mention the zombies. Both movies feature running zombies with bloody-ish eyes who slowly start looking more and more rotten. In #Alive, the zombies have some lingering memory. The firefighter zombie is able to climb a rope, while the female cop after she zombifies spends a bit of time looking at Joon-woo's balcony, like she remembers Joon-woo being there.)
(In Alone, the zombies don't seem to demonstrate memory. That being said, this zombie is doing some parkour, jumping up balconies to get to Eva and later Aiden. More to the point, though, all zombies have a disturbing little detail. Namely, instead of moans or much snarling, the zombies are constantly barking out and shouting the words they said leading up to their deaths. So imagine, if you will, during all the scenes with zombies beating on doors or trying to kill Aiden, they're all screaming stuff like 'YOU'RE CRAZY' and 'HELP ME' and 'I'M SORRY!' It's honestly one of the creepiest things I've seen in zombie media for a while.)
Aiden pelts the parkour zombie with beer bottles from a trash can on his balcony to attract its attention, while at the same time zombies try to bust into his apartment. Eva tries to help admittedly by reattracting Parkour's attention, but 'Aiden r da man lol' and insists on keeping her safe. He gets the zombie's attention again, then tells her to get inside, while he goes to deal with the situation by resecuring his door, then getting his bat as parkour zombie breaks into his apartment.
(A refreshing thing from this movie that I rarely see for infectious zombies is that Aiden is very conscious of worrying about infected blood. Any time he gets splattered or potentially hurt by the zombies, when he's safe he pulls off clothes to check for wounds and then cleans himself up of blood. He also double-layers his clothes when he's actually expecting to deal with zombies, as an added minor defense against scratches or blood.)
Aiden is the one sort of driving the meet-up plan... without her really knowing at first. He's having conversations with himself in the mirror, and his motivation to go out is to get more supplies to make the journey easier. Please note, he's not giving off 'crazy dangerous' vibes here. He's more striking me as 'I am a very social person who hates being alone, and I have been alone for over a month' vibes. So while I'm poking fun, Aiden never strikes me as 'dangerous' in the movie or creepy with his interest. It's more just... desperation, I suppose, but an understandable one.
Regardless, he goes over to get supplies from his neighbor and has himself a time, searching the apartment for stuff clumsily and somehow missing the zombie while doing so.
(Again, more differences between our protagonist. Joon-woo does a fairly serious sweep of his neighbor's house to find supplies, taking anything that might be useful. He misses the zombie more because he isn't aware there should be another person there and got unlucky. Aiden, meanwhile, searches for a bit and finds a body, but also evidence someone else could be there. His search is clumsy, too, starting with food, then he decides to go looking for more out of desperation of the paltry supply.)
(Aiden finds the radio mostly because he notices a bag under the bed that has a climbing axe on it, and thinks 'ooh upgrade.' The radios happened to just be in the bag. Joon-woo, meanwhile, did a pretty full sweep and spends time picking and choosing from his neighbors food and outdoorsman gear, though that reflects a bit poorly on him for sweeping the apartment completely and missing his zombie.)
(Conversely, while Joon-woo just uses the zipline to transfer the supplies, Aiden is kinda dumb but also athletic, and simply climbs down into the courtyard and then throws a thermos with the radio in it up to her balcony. Meanwhile Eva is presumably waking up in a cold sweat because she heard the zombies downstairs get riled up, followed by a heavy 'thunk' from her balcony.)
Aiden and Eva communicate a bit over the radios, with happy music playing because again, they're both desperate for other people. While Joon-woo and Yoo-bin mostly keep it to direct survival stuff with only a bit of talking to try and keep each other's morale up, Aiden and Eva both talk about hobbies, people in their lives, some flirting-adjacent topics. It's like they're trying to distract themselves from the situation instead of planning to get out of it.
Aiden goes out to hunt for more supplies. Given his previous two trips out brought a lot of zombies into his hall, and Aiden lacks any other convenient keys to the apartments, Aiden decides to go through the vents that the zombie went through over a month ago. He finds a body crammed up there, then breaks into another apartment's bathroom. He promptly finds signs of death, with a bloody bathtub, but it's just bloody.
He sweeps the place, finding no other signs of life or death, but the apartment's fridge is pushed in front of the front door. The apartment's cabinets are well stocked, complete with Twinkies, and he thinks he's sitting pretty. He decides to tell Eva, who quite rightly goes 'wait dumbass you left your apartment without telling me? I mean you could've died without me knowing!' She's mad that he hid that he was low on food and that it'd be better if they planned things out together.
He points out that he's found enough food to 'wait this out,' which seems a bit optimistic. I know it's a movie but just eyeballing it... that's maybe a month of food for one person, and it's mostly junk food. He thinks the zombies will starve though, so sure. She asks if it's safe and he points out that it is.
We find out that the zombies are at Eva's wall and clawing at it, and they do it a lot. In the TV news we missed but Aiden didn't, he mentions that the zombies repeat patterns if they're desperate, so maybe he does know the zombies will starve from the news, I guess? Either way, Eva has made a rope to get down to join Aiden. He's worried by this but it's a better idea than the hallways. Aiden wants to go meet her up there and escort her to his apartment, but Eva points out that he's doing a lot already. Plus, c'mon Aiden, quit hogging the screen time, let her do something.
Before they can fight more, she asks if it's safe for him to be talking in there. He points out the fridge is in front of the door. She then points out that if there's no body in the house, the fridge is in front of the door, and none of the windows are broken, he's got a big freaking problem. They both freak out a bit and he explores, ready for trouble. He spots a hole in a closet wall... and someone's behind him.
Enter the Stranger, Edward (Donald Sutherland). He's packing some sort of improvised pole-arm. They talk a bit, realizing they're both not zombies and not infected, and they calm down. Edward's projecting as a kind old man. He mentions having broken through the wall a couple weeks ago and has been taking food from his neighbor. Edward says he's alone and Aiden says the same, but Edward heard Aiden talk and is a bit suspicious. We find out the tenant for this place killed himself, and Edward tossed his body into the hall.
Edward's rather friendly, offering help, but he's also suspicious. They talk a bit and we find out the tenant, Jonathan, killed himself. They discuss the philosophy of survival and if killing a zombie is like killing a person, whether or not there's a cure or if the zombies will starve. What's the point of surviving if all your loved ones are dead or just gone? So on and so on. Edward's arguing survival at all cost, very friendly, but as the conversation goes on he's looking more suspicious.
But the conversation can mostly be summed up as this. "Oh kid, you're alone? You sure? Damned shame. Here's a bag! Take this food! Get some from the cabinet! Grab some booze too since I told this sad story. Oh, do you want a baseball bat to the back of the head?"
"Huh?" CLONK.
Aiden somehow wakes up from that, to find he's tied to a bed with Edward's zombified wife Lucy also tied to the bed. Edward's watching him and waiting for him to wake up so he can feed her to Lucy. He's hoping that Lucy will get cured, or at least that he can take care of her, and regrets having to do this to Aiden. Since the zombies won't eat dead bodies and since the zombie assumed Aiden was dead while he was unconscious, Edward's going to make Aiden eat a bunch of painkillers and let her go hog-wild while he can't feel it. It's very creepy, because it's Donald Sutherland sounding kind and sad while Lucy is screaming 'kill me' the entire scene.
Eva sort of saves Aiden this scene, by shouting for Aiden outside the window. When Edward goes to investigate, Aiden manages to break free, then manages to throw Edward towards Lucy while Edward begs Aiden for help. Eva was getting Aiden's attention because the zombies have gotten into her house, and Aiden immediately beats feet to save her without any of the supplies and with a fresh new concussion to boot.
Aiden gets home and does some clumsy parkour and uses his sheet-rope from his earlier stunt to get to ground level. He finds a shotgun that is just lying there (unlike the revolver from #Alive which was properly set up) and uses it to fend off a couple of zombies, while Eva throws down a rope she was talking about making. Eva climbs down to meet him after Aiden is forced to go to a lower floor due to zombies and Aiden cutting the rope. They have a big hug and fight their way back to Aiden's apartment, where Aiden is seemingly injured along the way by the zombies with Eva saving him from being devoured. He's preparing to throw himself off the balcony before he realizes he's not infected thanks to wearing multiple layers, and the movie ends with an awkward decoration of love and a realization that they're still in basically the same situation, they're just not alone anymore.
#Alive is more overall grim but it has a happy ending, with our two protagonists really supporting each other and contributing to each other's survival. I personally think it's overall the better movie. In addition, while both movies are roughly the same length, #Alive has some better pacing and feels longer in a good way. Like it feels fuller and I feel I know both characters better.
Alone has the better zombies in my opinion, and Aiden's got some weird Himbo energy that's fun to watch. Add a visibly slumming Donald Sutherland making Edward simultaneously sympathetic and creepy, and I think it's still good. But Eva's almost a non-entity and comparing her to Yoo-bin makes her look far worse by the comparison. In addition, we know almost nothing about both our principle leads by the end of it. Eva draws and was engaged and is as co-dependent/extroverted as Aiden. Aiden surfs and is a bit of a dork.
Both are still good solid zombie movies. The effects are great, the zombies are rather creepy, and the central premise is interesting. The Stranger, both iterations of him, is an interesting villain as well, just a desperate man trying to take care of his wife through the denial of her situation.
In addition, while it's a bit abbreviated, both movies do something I enjoy in zombie media that often gets glossed over for one reason or another. One of my loves of the genre is the opening outbreak scenario, and the chaos that ensues. While we don't see much, just that initial scene outside the apartments and the side-scenes from the news, having it be present is nice.
Another thing I like, which both movies do with the Neighbor's Apartment, and is done to a lesser extent in Alone with the Stranger's place, is just the creepiness of intruding into another person's home, especially in that situation. I mean think about it. You're a few weeks into the zombie apocalypse, you're not really used to it. You go to loot Mark next door's place and... huh, you've known that guy for years and you didn't know he rock-climbed! Photos with his family, all the things that made this guy a person, and you're just in there stealing his peanut butter.
Overall? Very solid watches. You get some good character study and ennui moments early on, some decent action when the zombies are encountered, and some solid creepiness from the villain.
