Movie Review: ALIVE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: January 30th, 2023 / 10:40 AM

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Ellen Hillman, Neil Sheffield, Kian Pritchard, Gillian Broderick, Angus Kennedy, Stuart Matthews, Andrew May-Gohrey, Daniel May-Gohrey, Stuart Matthews, Simone McIntyre, Helen Coathup
Writer: David Marantz
Director: David Marantz
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Release Date: January 31, 2023 (digital)

ALIVE is a mostly well-done and sober-minded (that is, non-comedic) zombie movie. It suffers not so much from anything that it’s doing wrong, but more from being something of a latecomer.

Borrowing the idea of contagion, but not the extreme speed, from 28 DAYS LATER, ALIVE posits an epidemic that the English government downplays, even as the situation becomes increasingly catastrophic.

The disease is passed through bites. The irreversibly infected gradually turn, losing their ability to speak, at the same time that they begin to attack uninfected humans for their flesh. Although the infected aren’t technically dead, the uninfected refer to them as “zombies.”

ALIVE begins with clips that show us how events unfold in the early days. During this, we meet Olivia (Helen Coatrup), a woman getting bad news at a fertility clinic, and her husband Dan (Neil Sheffield), who is busy boarding up their isolated house in the countryside, just in case.

A bit later, as things have become more dangerous, we meet fifteen-year-old Helen (Ellen Hillman), her eight-year-old brother Barney (played by twins Andrew May-Gohrey and Daniel May-Gohrey), and her devoted boyfriend Kevin (Kian Pritchard).

They and teacher Miss Horton (Simone McIntyre) are trying to make it to an island that has promised safety in a radio broadcast. A different broadcast advertises safety in a valley, where six people will be admitted for every one fertile female in their group.

That’s a fair amount of story elements to start with, and writer/director David Marantz adds more as ALIVE unspools. We don’t feel like we fully know any of the characters, but we can respect their loyalty and initiative, with Hillman in particular conveying powerful moral rectitude.

Additionally, ALIVE looks good, with bright warm fields shown in effective contrast to menacing, cramped interiors.

But ALIVE suffers from a couple of problems. The first is idiosyncratic, at least for this horror subgenre. The actors playing zombies don’t appear to have been directed to move in any specific way. Consequently, they often look like regular people simply walking a little quickly or a little slowly, peering around with conventional human curiosity, rather than expressions that suggest mental alteration.

The larger issue is that it’s unclear which audience ALIVE is meant to target. Viewers who like zombie fare will in all likelihood have seen movies like 28 DAYS LATER, MAGGIE, and/or FIDO, as well as any of the multiple iterations of THE WALKING DEAD, to name just a few. The subject matter has been covered before, as have the questions raised here.

ALIVE ultimately plays more as indie drama than a horror. It moves slowly and doesn’t bring anything new to the discussion, but it treats its topics with respect, and does most of what it does well.

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A serious British zombie movie that covers familiar ground

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