September 9, 2020
I really have to give it to the Koreans and how creatively they can spin a story, even for a very specific horror theme like zombies. Of course, first one that comes to mind is "Train to Busan" (2016), my #1 overall film that year. It had an animated prequel "Seoul Station" (2016), and a sequel "Peninsula" (2020) There had been a couple of projects which brought the zombies to a medieval context during the Joseon period, the film "Rampant" (2018) and the Netflix series "Kingdom" (2019). Now, there is this new one that recently debuted on Netflix, "#Alive."
Oh Jun-u (Yoo Ah-in) was a young man addicted to online gaming. One day, as he was about to play with his friends, they tell him to check on the news. Apparently there was a sudden wave of "infected" people who were running around Seoul, aggressively attacking hapless victims and feeding on them. When these zombies have reached and overrun his condominium building, Jun-u kept himself safe by locking himself in, killing off the occasional zombie he encountered.
However after one month, when things got really desperate and he was attempting to end it all, suddenly he was distracted by a red light from a laser pointer. It was only then that he realized that there was another survivor like him, a young woman named Kim Yu-bin (Park Shin-hye), likewise trapped in her condo on the building across the courtyard from his own. The two eventually found a way to communicate with each other and help each other continue surviving the zombie onslaught.
Unlike the other zombie films mentioned earlier, there was practically only one location for this film, which was just in and around the Jun-u's condominium complex. We only see his own unit primarily, but later there would be times when he would venture outside into the corridors and even the parking lot in futile attempts to escape. Later we would also be seeing Yu-bin's condo unit, but still mostly also from Jun-u's point of view. It was this very claustrophobic setting that elevated the suspense of this thriller.
There may be a lot of plot holes and lapses in logic which will arise if you think too hard about certain inconsistencies regarding utilities like water, electricity, internet, telephone signals, or about the decisions made by the protagonists. Case in point, more than a month has passed by, and Jun-u's short-cropped, platinum-blonde hairstyle remained basically unchanged in length and color throughout. Advise is, just let these little details slide, don't let them bother you and just enjoy the nail-biting tension of the ride. 6/10.
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