Alive: Movie Summary + Movie Review

I've been summarizing about Hollywood movies and I thought of making an article about a Korean movie too. I thought of doing this so because I'm a fan of the two actors who starred in this film.

: Movie Overview

#Alive is a 2020 South Korean zombie film directed by Cho-II-Hyung. Park Shin-Hye and Yoo Ah-In are the main casts of the film. The setting is based on the 2019 script Alone by Matt Naylor. Naylor co-adapted this script with the director Cho. The film revolves around a struggle for survival for a video game live streamer. He is forced to stay alone at his apartment in Seoul during a zombie apocalypse. The film was globally released via Netflix on September 8, 2020, and was originally released in South Korea on June 24, 2020.

: Plot

The film starts when Oh Joon-woo is streaming an online game. He is alone in his family's apartment when a mysterious disease break out and causes those infected with the disease to attack and eat uninfected people. When he turns on the television, he is surprised to see how chaotic the country is. As he reaches his balcony, Joon-woo sees a chaotic and panicked crowd fleeing and running for their lives.

As soon as he opens the door to the hallway, a neighbour of him from the next apartment barges in and reaches his hand to the door. The man begs Joon-woo to let him stay. Joon-woo locks him in the bathroom but as soon as he realizes that the man might be infected, the man begins to attack him. Joon-woo pushes him back out and locks the door to save his life. He receives messages from his family assuring him that they are safe. He checks his food supply and regrets of not going to the grocery the day before.

Joon-woo blocks the front door's apartment with a refrigerator, opens his phone and posts a rescue request on social media. Meanwhile, a policewoman was running from the infected people tries to escape herself. Joon-woo shouts at them out of sympathy, but the policewoman was overwhelmed. She's now overrun with hungry zombies that were infected.

Moments passed, as Joon-woo starts to lose access to phone networks. After a while, the internet was gone and even running water. Joon-woo was shocked by a zombie trying to break into the apartment. What Joon-woo do was to trick him and let the zombie fall off the balcony. His food is now very limited for his survival. Then, Joon-woo hallucinates about his parents and sister because of hunger and thirst. He has not been eating properly for days. He receives a voicemail momentarily of his family recording their last moments.

Devastated and hopeless, Joon-woo attempts to end his life by hanging. However, a laser pointer's light was moving around his apartment indicating that there is a survivor aside from him. He manages to free himself from the attempt. Joon-woo learns that Kim Yoo-bin is also a survivor living in the opposite apartment. Yoo-bin communicates with Joon-woo by pointing letters on his apartment. Yoo-bin soon tells Joon-woo to set up a zip line to send him some food. However, the tie is not enough to tie it across, Joon-woo uses his drone to carry the food back to this apartment.

Meanwhile, an infected firefighter was able to find a way to cross the building by climbing up the failed zip line. What's worst is that Yoo-bin tied the failed zip line to a table which knocks a lot of her things in the apartment. She loses consciousness when she was hit by a table. Joon-woo did his best to distract the infected people but they were able to reach the balcony. Shortly Yoo-bin wakes up and cuts off the hand of the infected man.

Desperate, Joon-woo decided to steal food, clothes, and walkie-talkies from his neighbor's unit. But, while searching for something that may be relevantly used, an infected sleeping zombie begins to wake up and attacks Joon-woo. Joon-woo manages to save himself and was able to bring the essentials to his apartment. He sends a walkie-talkie to Yoo-bin and the two communicates through it.

Joon-woo and Yoo-bin, make a plan to transfer in to a building where zombies have not reached yet. Meanwhile. The infected people became overly aggressive, as they were trying to barge themselves into Yoo-bin's apartment. However, Yoo-bin was knocked out over the shelf while in view of a window to the hallway. A group of infected people goes to her apartment as soon as they heard the sound. Joon-woo asks the number of the apartment next to Yoo-bin and he was able to distract the infected people by calling the apartment and let the telephone ring.

From then, the two ready themselves and gear up used rappel from their balconies. Yoo-bin bravely comes down first and distracted the zombies through passing cars, Joon-woo takes the revolver and shot infected people reaching to them. They were able to reach the apartment with no zombies but they were wrong. An infected man was on the same floor as them and summons other infected people. Luckily, an older man drops smoke bombs on them leaving the infected people unable to see. The pair was saved by the man and let them in.

Inside the stranger's home, the pair desperately accept food and water. At first, the two were hesitant but as soon as the older man drinks his water, the pair hurriedly eats the food given to them. However, the water offered to them was mixed with a sleeping drug and so Joon-woo falls asleep first. Yoo-bin tries to fight off the effect of the drug but the older binds their wrists and locks Yoo-bin in a bedroom with his infected wife.

Yoo-bin realizes that she's in danger and cries for help. Joon-woo wakes up and threatens the older man to shoot him, but he drops to pull the wife's harness leaving the door. The room went silent. The older man opens the door to see what's going on when Yoo-bin managed to save herself by pulling the fabric over the infected wife's head. The older man, submits himself to his wife and Yoo-bin shoots them both with the gun.

The gunshots attract the infected people rushing towards the apartment. Yoo-bin asks Joon-woo to kill her because they're both hopeless already. As Joon-woo hesitates, a helicopter passes outside. The two rushed to the rooftop while being chased by the infected people.

Luckily, an army helicopter appears behind them and shoots infected people leaning towards them and they were able to survive. A voiceover from an anchor explains that the internet has been restored and the military has begun rescuing survivors.

It has been an intense experience watching the film. Yoo-Ah-In made a promising performance along with a famous actress Park-Shin-Hye. I'm shipping them now together. Haha.

Honestly, I am more of a zombie film fan than ghost films. Since I started watching Train to Busan, I begun to like Kingdom and Alive as well.