zombie

#ALIVE: the ultimate pandemic shelter in place

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Ah-In Yoo in #ALIVE, Photo courtesy of Perspective Pictures.

Just suppose there’s a pandemic and you can’t leave your home. Oh, wait…

In #Alive, a pulmonary affliction is causing people in a Korean metropolis to savagely attack and bite other humans, further spreading the pandemic. The young gamer Jun-woo (Ah-In Yoo) is isolated in his eighth floor apartment, under siege from what are essentially zombies. It’s kind of Home Alone with zombies.

The hook here is that, like in Home Alone, our hero must depend on his ingenuity to survive, both in fighting off the cannibalistic attackers and in harvesting equipment, food and water from the ravaged apartment building. Fortunately, he discovers another, much smarter survivor, a girl (Shin Hye-Park) holed up in the apartment building across the courtyard. There are two surprises in the final 20 minutes.

Ah-In Yoo (wielding golf club) in #ALIVE, Photo courtesy of Perspective Pictures.

This is the first feature for writer-director Il Cho. He peppers #Alive with funny bits, all the more effective because he doesn’t linger on any of them. One example is when Jun-Yoo presses a button to wait for an elevator as a horde of zombies rush toward him.

#Alive contains the requisite amount of throat biting, brain eating, amputations and bloody splatter for a zombie movie. If you don’t like gore, there are better choices for you on my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

This isn’t great cinema, but it has its moments. #Alive is streaming on Netflix. On Netflix, the Korean dialogue is both subtitled and dubbed into English.

ZOMBIELAND DOUBLE TAP: another raucous romp

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Zoey Deutch and Jesse Eisenberg in ZOMBIELAND DOUBLE TAP

The raucous romp Zombieland Double Tap is a fun change of pace to the serious fare in theaters. To set the tone, it begins with the woman in the Columbia Pictures logo dispatching a couple of zombies. This is a worthy sequel to the riotously funny Zombieland, number one on my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

In the original Zombieland, our young heroes (Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, Emma Stone as Wichita and Abigail Breslin as Little Rock – very early in their careers) band together to survive the Zombie Apocalypse with the master zombie killer Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson).  Tallahassee’s astonishing skills and unwholesome enthusiasm are very funny. 

In Zombieland Double Tap, the characters, like the actors, are all ten years older. The young folks have learned from their mentor and are now equally adept at slaughtering zombies. This time, there is less zombie splatter, replaced by plenty of funny new threads. The four are camped out in the deserted White House and then travel to Graceland.

A new character Madison (Zoey Deutch) shows up, and Deutch practically reinvents the Dumb Blonde. A bit where she thinks up the business plan of Uber may be her funniest bit, but Deutch’s performance by itself makes watching this movie worthwhile.

Little Rock is no longer a kid, and she yearns for the companionship of a guy her age. Of course, she finds exactly the wrong first boyfriend (Avan Jogla) in a survivor who is hippie poser (named Berkeley!); not satisfied to impress Little Rock by plagiarizing Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, he even claims that he wrote Lynard Skynard’s Free Bird.

Luke Wilson and Thomas MIddleditch show up as clones of Tallahassee and Columbus. Eisenberg and Middleditch have a lot of fun with their similarly neurotic personae. Rosario Dawson is in this movie, too, and she’s a lot of fun.

In the comedic highlight of Zombieland, the group finds shelter in Bill Murray’s LA mansion where Bill Murray (playing himself) is surviving by impersonating a zombie.  If you stay through the closing credits of Zombieland Double Tap, you’ll be rewarded with a taste of Murray.

This a very funny movie. The Wife hates horror, and she enjoyed Zombieland Double Tap, too.

Stream of the Week: ZOMBIELAND – riotously funny

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Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg and Abigail Breslin in the original ZOMBIELAND

The sequel is coming out this weekend, so I think we need a refresher on the riotously funny Zombieland, number one on my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

Zombieland brings several nice touches.     Our young heroes (Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin – very early in their careers) band together with the a master zombie killer (Woody Harrelson).  The zombie killer’s astonishing skills and unwholesome enthusiasm are very funny.  After many close calls, the group finds shelter in Bill Murray’s LA mansion where Bill Murray (playing himself) is surviving by impersonating a zombie.   The climax is a showdown in an amusement park where the zombies have cornered the heroes.

Zombieland is also on my list of Woody Harrelson’s Overlooked Gems. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Waking up this morning…

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Waking up to a nation where everyone else has been infected by a rage virus
Waking up to a nation where everyone else has been infected by a rage virus

Imagine waking up to a nation where everyone else has been infected by a rage virus.  You too?

It’s all reminded me of Danny Boyle’s 2002 post-apocalyptic thriller 28 Days Later...   Cillian Murphy plays a guy who awakens from a coma and learns that almost everyone on the island of Britain has become infected by a rage virus that drives them to kill the uninfected. He finds a hidden band of the uninfected (Naomie Harris of Moonlight, Our Kinf of Traitor and Skyfall and Brendan Gleeson of In Bruges and The Guard) who decide to risk a dash through zombie territory to a reported safe haven to the north.

These zombies don’t shamble – they are amped up on adrenaline and they can outrun you. Accordingly, they are way more terrifying that a regular shambling zombie.

Technically, the “zombies”are not zombies (reanimated dead people), but are live people who are infected with the rage virus. However, they fulfill the role of zombies in the plot, and Boyle has acknowledged that scenes in 28 Days Later… reference scenes in the George A. Romero Dawn of the Dead series.  28 Days Later… is consequently on various zombie movie lists. As in the rest of the genre, the zombies are trying to hunt down the people, a person who is bitten will become a zombie, and, to survive, the heroes need to massacre hordes of zombies.

Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) is known for his visually arresting movies, and here he creates a spectacular post-apocalyptic Britain – menacingly dark and deserted except for the lethally crazed.

It’s on my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.  You can rent 28 Days Later… on DVD from Netflix or stream it from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a variety of other sources.