Netflix has a new zombie flick called #Alive. The hashtag is there to reflect the social media angle the movie is supposed to have. I heard it was a bit of a satire of our connected world… and it has a little of that but the movie is mainly just a standard zombie flick.

Which isn’t to say it’s a bad movie, actually. In fact, I think it’s a reasonably successful film in an overcrowded market of similar flicks. The movie doesn’t do anything super original, but what it does, it does well enough for a 90 minute sit.

The movie is about a teen in South Korea who has a presence as a vlogger, gamer, or youtuber (not really sure). He lives in a high-rise apartment complex when the usual zombie outbreak occurs and he has to #survive.

These are your faster, occasionally smart zombies and there’s some pretty suspenseful survival sequences. Credit to them for getting that right, most of the time. But a lot of the film is more centered on his isolation as he is alone in the apartment, rapidly running out of supplies. He uses his computer to vlog his survival, including the occasional slip where he asks people to subscribe… and that could be a smarty-pants screenwriters way of satirizing them millennials or GenZers, but I think it’s just more a way to get narration into the movie.

Overall, the movie does what it can with such a small cast and minimal locations. It’s not always successful at keeping the tension or interesting things rolling, but it’s certainly not bad. I was into it for most of the running time, with some kind of bog standard zombie survival movie cliches to wade through. But the cast is likable and sell the material well enough. Obviously I’m not over the moon here but if you like (and aren’t sick of) the zombie apocalypse genre, this one is worth checking out.

Score: 78