HORROR MOVIE REVIEW: ALIVE (2022)

ALIVE is a decent, low-budget Zombie horror that might be a bit rough around edges, but which showcases the talents of those involved and I look forward to what Marantz and the team come up with next.

Alive (2022)

Helen navigates a ravaged world with her boyfriend Kevin and her little brother Barney. Desperate to find help after Barney's infection slowly turns him into a zombie, they come upon a house where lives Dan, a man harboring a heavy secret. (IMDB)
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Written and directed by David Marantz

Beware, some minor spoilers ahead.


Okay, so let’s address the elephant in the room before we get stuck in to ALIVE. Was this the best Zombie film I have ever seen?

No.

Was it the worst?

Definitely not.

But it is very much a low budget effort and this shows in the quality of the finished product. It doesn’t quite have the same sheen as a higher budget production and the acting and dialogue can sometimes feel a little stilted. The action scenes aren’t as dynamic as others I have seen and there is a definite lack of gore for a zombie flick.


However, ALIVE’s strength lies in knowing all this already. It doesn’t need me to tell you that, it knows it is low budget and the editing and direction, while having a few fumbles, works really well to make the most out of the low budget and the constraints that these impose on the finished product.

ALIVE is another low-budget horror from a team that promises a lot more to come and, while I may have wavered a little at the start of the film, I was soon invested in the story and drawn through to the end and had fun along the way.


The story won’t be anything new to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of Zombie films.

Helen (Ellen Hillman) and Kevin (Kian Pritchard) are travelling through a Zombie-infested countryside with their teacher Miss Horton (Simone McIntyre) and Helen’s brother, Barney (Daniel May-Gohrey). Barney is infected but has not yet turned full Zombie, and the group are following a GPS to get them to an island where there is no infestation and a hope for a cure.

Separated from Miss Horton, the trio break into a cottage for shelter, only to find it inhabited by Dan (Neil Sheffield) a lone man surviving with a secret hidden in his attic.


A trip to the local school to find power for their GPS puts them all in the path of a crazy priest and his congregation who are also searching for as sanctuary, but one with slightly more sinister intentions for Helen.

So follows a cat and mouse chase and fight for survival between our heroes, the crazy church people and the Zombies.

So far, so 28 Days Later.

ALIVE covers a lot of the tropes we would expect in a Zombie movie, with disparate groups of people fighting for survival, infected people hoping to be saved, mysterious radio broadcasts promising sanctuary, crazy religious fanatics, and zombie-bitten limbs being severed by their desperate owners.
It’s all there.

This is both a blessing and a curse. I want to see some of those things and expect them to be in the mix, but we also want to see something new and, sadly, ALIVE, doesn’t quite do that. Although there are hints at some slightly different behaviour for these Zombies, it isn’t really fleshed out (sorry) in the story and we are largely left guessing as to what the rules are for the infected in this world. The hints we are given are intriguing though and I would have liked a bit more exploration around that. If Barney is infected, why is he not changing, and why is there seemingly a difference in the general infected and a few infected we meet a bit later down the line? I don’t want to spoil anything, so won’t go into detail, but there were some potentially interesting new ideas here, that weren’t quite capitalised on as much as they could have been.


The gore is also limited in ALIVE, which is not something you expect with Zombies, we want buckets of blood flying all over the place. The low-budget is obviously taking its toll here, but the make-up on the Zombies is effective, if a little basic in its application. There is a bit more gore towards the end of the movie but, again, the limitations imposed by the budget are cleverly shielded by the direction and editing, which never lingers too long on any shot.

So, by now, you are probably thinking that I didn’t like ALIVE. Far from it, I enjoyed the film and was invested in the characters and their fates. While some of the events didn’t have the emotional heft of other similar films, there was still enough emotion in the scenes to make you care. Although it has been done before, the idea of a safe-haven that is run by men wishing to repopulate the earth at the expense of young women is unpleasant enough to always be horrific and plenty enough of a catalyst for your protagonists to fight back. Hard.


While the final sequences of ALIVE don’t have quite the same kinetic energy of something like 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead (2004) they do still put our heroes in jeopardy and leave us less than 100% sure if they are all going to survive.
Who does or doesn’t you will have to find out for yourself.

So should you watch ALIVE?
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Well that may well come down to your personal preference and approach to low-budget filmmaking. If you are prepared to get beyond the lower production values when compared to high-budget horrors and stick with something that has likely been made with just as much love and dedication, then you will get something out of ALIVE. If you are spoiled by slick, modern films with lots of slow-motion and contemporary needle-drops, and expect every film to be at this level, then it won’t be for you. 


ALIVE is a decent, low-budget Zombie horror that might be a bit rough around edges, but which showcases the talents of those involved and I look forward to what Marantz and the team come up with next.

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