#Alive (A Korean horror flick)
There are so many zombie movie iterations that it's sometimes hard to get excited about a new one that pops up. But there are those rare gems that come up every now and then. Netflix has just brought the Korean zombie flick, Hashtag Alive, to its platform.
So the story goes like this. A young man wakes up to find himself isolated in his apartment. The world outside has broken into utter chaos due to an unknown virus which turns people into raven cannibals. Have you ever seen the French drama The Night Eats the World? It's about a young man who wakes up in an apartment and the world outside has descended into chaos where a virus outbreak makes people into raven cannibals.
I was really afraid that Hashtag Alive was going to be just a rehash of that wonderful French film. But luckily it carves its own path. The first portion of the film we really get to dive into the mind and just the character of the young man who's trapped in his apartment, Oh Joon-woo.
He's not somebody that you'd pick to be on your team if you were making a survivalist group. He's an online gamer who does a lot of social media. Sure, he seems like he's a nice guy, but he doesn't really have any skills that would prepare him to survive a zombie outbreak.
It's just a lonely existence as he eats what little food he has and tries to connect with the outside world through social media, or through what's on the news, or even attempting to get cell service because that is spotty at best. And so he has really no way to connect with anybody that he cares about. And we really begin to feel that isolation that he's going through.
And he does such a good job at communicating what he's feeling through his expressions and just his whole body language. And to make Joon-woo even more isolated, there are moments where outside of his apartment he can see people who have not yet been infected. So we get this slight glimmer of hope that, maybe there's more like me.
Maybe there is a chance for survival. But not all of those stories end up with happy endings. This has some really good drama in it, but there is a lot of tense action in it as well.
They pack a ton into the hour and 38 minute runtime. There are moments in this where some movements don't make a lot of sense, where we will see Joon-woo doing something and be in some kind of dire situation, and then it will make an awkward transition and now he's not in that spot anymore. And so I would prefer to see him try and get out of that situation. How did he get from point A to point B? Don't fade to black. Don't cheat me out of that experience. I want to see that because it was already super tense.
The loneliness and the isolation really do a good job, though, to connect us with the character. There are a lot of zombies that go for just the action and the gore, and that's fine. But sometimes we're looking for more to suck us in.
The Night Eats the World, Train to Busan, even Shaun of the Dead create characters that we really are drawn to, and that becomes more of the story. And the zombie apocalypse is just the occurrence happening around them, that the true story is of survival, is of isolation, is of just the characters themselves going through motions or trying to attain a goal. And in those instances, the movie then becomes so much more than just a zombie movie.
This is a very tense and wild ride, and I really did enjoy the character of Joon-woo. We get to watch him transform from just this helpless person to somebody strong and who is able to kind of stand up for themselves and to make some progression. And I like seeing that growth.
There are predictable parts in it, and like I said, some of the transitions, I wish that they wouldn't have just faded to black. I wanted to see some more of that progression. But even still, the urgency, the tension is present in a lot of the movie. And while it may not be the best zombie movie, it does have a good heart. And it also has some bloody action in it as well.
I give Hashtag Alive four and a half out of five stars. So what is your favorite zombie movie of all time? I'd love to know in the comments below. Thanks for reading, bye for now.
Posted using CineTV