When an outbreak hits, Aidan barricades himself inside his apartment and starts rationing food. His complex is overrun by infected Screamers, and with the world falling apart into chaos, he is left completely alone fighting for his life.
Tyler Posey had been acting in movies and TV from an early age but it wasn’t until he was cast in the role of Scott McCall in 2011’s “Teen Wolf” that he came into his own. Since then, he has appeared in numerous films and TV series such as “Jane the Virgin,” “Marvel Rising: Initiation,” and “Truth or Dare.” In “Alone,” Mr. Posey spends the majority of the movie by himself, as he battles the undead, loneliness, and suicidal tendencies. For the most part, he pulls off the despondent and melancholic Aidan, a young surfer who is confined to his apartment when a pandemic envelopes the world.
The virus causes people to mutate into flesh-eating zombies through the most characteristic method we are familiar with: being bitten by an infected person or zombie. The story never explains what caused the pandemic and that’s okay because most zombie-themed films or TV shows just drop us into the middle of a zombie apocalypse and we watch as our protagonists try their best to survive. “Alone” begins with Aidan waking up after a night of partying with a girl who sneaks out of his apartment upon first waking up. Shortly thereafter, gunfire and screams of terror can be heard throughout the apartment complex and in the streets below. The news informs us that a virus is slowly engulfing the world and gives us enough necessary exposition so that we know it is a zombie apocalypse. Being single, Aidan has enough food and water to last several weeks but when the power and water are eventually cut off, he must resort to maneuvering the zombie-filled hallways in his search for food from neighboring apartments that appear to be empty.
With no human contact in weeks, Aidan slowly succumbs to loneliness and depression and gradually begins to lose his mind, and just as he is about to end his life in his living room, he sees a young woman, Eva (Summer Spiro), across the courtyard from him, cautiously looking out her window. He immediately runs over to the window but she has retreated behind her curtains for the day. The next morning, he catches her attention and they begin a conversation utilizing markers and paper. Eventually, he retrieves a set of walkie talkies from a dead neighbor and manages to throw one to her so they can speak to each other but just as things seem like they are settling down, a horde of zombies attack Eva’s apartment, forcing Aidan to constitute a plan to rescue her, if they are both to survive.
“Alone” adds nothing new to the zombie genre but instead, tries to ratchet up the tension by keeping the story and narrative in one central location, and it works, occasionally, but overall, the film suffers from not enough action and too much Tyler Posey brooding and taking offense at the pandemic as if he were the only person affected by it. Summer Spiro turns up about halfway through and is fine as Posey’s apprehensive but resolute neighbor Eva, and within the last twenty minutes, veteran actor Donald Sutherland makes an appearance but is nothing more than a glorified cameo. In the end, “Alone” wants to have its cake and eat it too, declaring that while it is very much a part of the zombie genre, it is also independent of it, standing on its own two feet as a dramatic piece, but what director Johnny Martin doesn’t understand, is that a zombie movie doesn’t need to be merged within the confines of a dramatization, people don’t want meaningful zombie flicks, they want to see people running away from zombies, being caught by zombies, and being eaten by zombies. It’s pretty straightforward really, if you want a drama, then invoke the likes of “Contagion,” “Outbreak,” or “12 Monkeys,” stories where tragedy undoubtedly adds to the tension. The same effect is not promised in a zombie film.
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