Review: #ALIVE(2020)

Genre: Action, Drama, Horror, Thriller

Language: Korean

 I bet you must have watched dozens of zombie movies in your big list of action movies but trust me guys, Korean zombies are different and they are awesome. Even the sight of zombie transformation is a treat to watch.

To summarize this movie, if you have seen Rajkumar Rao’s Trapped, this one is sorta like that, except that there’s a zombie apocalypse outside. The protagonist is a young gamer boy in his 20s who’s living alone as his family is out visiting relatives. The movie doesn’t take much time to get into action and before the protagonist figures what is happening, he is trapped in his house with his neighbor who’s bitten by a zombie. The protagonist is forced to stay in his house with very limited food waiting for the help to arrive while losing all hopes of survival.

Even though the movie is mostly filmed at one location, interesting things keep happening scene after scene. It keeps you engaged with the story but in a really fresh way. This is not your generic zombie movie, #ALIVE explores the whole concept with a very fresh perspective. The zombie movement is surprisingly interesting. If you are fed up with the same old zombie-killing movies, this one will definitely give you the cinematic experience that you have been missing out on.

 Trigger Warning (mild spoilers):

Being violence and gore an obvious part of the movie, there is a point when the protagonist tries to attempt suicide. There is another scene where a guy helplessly hears his family getting eaten alive by the zombies.

Critical and technical aspects:

The movie is available only in the Korean language but it won’t be a huge problem since there aren’t a lot of dialogues in the movie. The rest is covered by the subtitles. It is a 98 minutes long action feature with the standard aspect ratio of 2:35:1. The sound mix is Dolby Atmos and the Camera used to shoot the movie is Arri Alexa like most movies these days. Meaning that you can expect a very pleasant cinematic experience from this Korean movie.

Where to watch:

It’s available to stream on Netflix

 My overall rating:

8.1/10