The zombie film genre is perhaps one of the most famous yet oversaturated in all of horror, especially with Western audiences. With countless movies, video games and television shows, it would seem that the traditional undead ghoul has been dried up and left for dead, so to speak.
However, zombies are seeing a renaissance in South Korean Cinema, with films like “Train to Busan” and “Peninsula” being praised for breathing new life into the genre, while providing their own unique takes, and it seems that Cho II-hyung’s “#Alive” is gladly continuing this trend.
Taking a much more psychological, character-driven approach to the zombie apocalypse, the film follows a video game live-streamer named Oh Joon-woo (Yoo Ah-in, “My First Client”), who finds himself trapped alone in his family’s apartment when a mysterious virus ravages Seoul and turns its citizens into bloodthirsty zombies. As he struggles to survive, he faces the dangers of isolation and hopelessness as his mental health begins to break down and his supplies dwindle. However, when he makes contact with a resourceful young woman named Kim Yoo-Bin (Park Shin-hye, “The Gifted Hands”), they quickly work together to survive and escape with their lives.
The cast is small, but they all give first-rate performances. Ah-in is fantastic as Joon-woo, a young everyman who finds himself in an unimaginable situation no one would be ready for. He manages to make Joon-woo a very vulnerable and human character while not making him a comically ill-prepared jerk. Likewise, Shin-hye excels as Yoo-Bin, creating an empowered female character that remains down-to-earth. Both inject the film with depictions of desperation, fear and hope, elevating it beyond your usual brain-muncher work.
The film wastes no time getting right to the point, with the world becoming an undead nightmare within less than five minutes into the running time. The characters are given little to no background information while dialogue and exposition are kept at a minimum. The tension and dread are balanced out of scenes of levity and genuine tragedy. The cinematography offers some clever scenes involving a flying drone. Many of the characters’ struggles mirror our own situation in the COVID-19 pandemic. Some scenes see Joon-woo passing the time by playing video games and scrolling through social media the same way we do, albeit without the threat of ravenous flesh-eaters in our case. The story itself offers a message of maintaining hope and humanity through connection.
There are, of course, some minor flaws here and there. Much of the first half of the story is slow, though not in an unnecessary way, and in a few of the situations, the characters are somewhat far-fetched. However, these are matters of personal taste and beyond these, “#Alive” is a welcome addition to the pantheon of zombie films as well as an excellent gateway into South Korean cinema.
Image from Netflix via YouTube
