Die Alone

A young man with amnesia bands together with a rugged survivalist in a world that has fallen in a zombie-like apocalypse.

My love of zombie apocalypse stories is pretty well-documented at this point.

With their great aesthetic, plus the blood and gore and gunslinger action, all wrapped up in the classic mix of Man vs Nature and Man vs Man stories, I believe that the strength in these stories, and the key to making good versions of this story, lies within sticking to their basic premise. That’s why, every time someone comes along, thinking they have some amazing new spin, I already know it’s not going to turn out well, and I'm usually right. Whether it’s telling the story from the zombies’ point of view, or the zombies are intelligent, or the zombies are the good guys, or to somehow not use zombies as simple mobile obstacles while telling a story where the true bad guy is humanity, whatever it is, whenever someone tries to veer off the path, or thinks they're going to reinvent the wheel, the simple truth is…

It’s usually just a recipe for failure.  

Because that’s the thing about zombie apocalypse stories… it's just a setting, like a Western, or a War film, and all you have to do is... make it good. Not different. Not new. The only thing new your story needs to bring to the table is good characters, entertaining characters, characters with believable and relatable personalities and motivations. That’s it. Just good characters. Sure, after that you have to run them through a bloody and violent crucible, all while asking yourself "What's the worst that can happen to them?" and then doing just that, but honestly, that's just gonna be a bunch of pretty basic and familiar stuff. The reason we stick with the story, the reason we care about the characters, and want them to survive, is because they’re good characters. That’s why most of these "new spin" attempts fail, they spend too much time trying to be clever in some unimportant way, and not enough time building a good story with good characters.

Well, that, and the fact that the zombie film genre is a relatively cheap and easy pool to jump into. As a result, it attracts a lot of broke, low budget, and brand new filmmakers, which seems to mean a lot of creators of varying talent and resources who just aren't all that interested in thinking about their story, their characters, or the world that they inhabit all that much. At least, not as much as they are in the gore and special effects. I don't think it's unfair of me to say that, because a lot of the people making these zombie movies are more interested in the splatter, and are too busy trying to reinvent the wheel by making it a square, they often don't spend enough time on their characters or their story.

Die Alone is one of these films.

But it's got Carrie-Anne Moss and Frank Grillo, you say.

I know, that's why I watched it.

But let's be honest, having these particular names in the film is not really the best indicator of quality.

Carrie-Anne Moss is great, but she’s clearly struggled to find a place for her work in a Post-Matrix world. For every supporting role in a TV show that she lands, she seems to then turn around and decides to star in a bad film. I don't know if she's trying to recapture her previously held heights of stardom, so she takes anything where she's the lead, but each bad decision she makes only seems to lead her to a slew of worse options. So, here she is.

Frank Grillo, meanwhile, is also great. Also, I found it really charming how he was in awe of Alan Tudyk’s ability during the Creature Commandos Press Tour, but like Nic Cage, he is obviously willing to appear in anything, and generally doesn’t seem to give a shit about quality. He seems like an actor where, if you call him, he’ll show up. I get it. He’s a Working Man’s actor, one who came late to his fame, and probably understands that you gotta make that hay while the sun is shining. I totally get that, but the downside of this attitude means that, if you don’t already recognize the project, or if the director doesn’t have an already well-known reputation, and Frank Grillo is in it, then there’s a good chance the film is not going to be any good, regardless of how good Frank Grillo might be in it.

So yeah, while they're both fine in this movie, they don't make it better.

Die Alone starts out with a suicide, and then it flashes back.

I‘ve talked about this before, even in other zombie film reviews, but I hate these kind of openings. There’s no value to them. They only hurt the story, as they either mean nothing to you when they happen, so they lack any of the intended emotional impact, and when you do finally reach that moment again, all the surprise is gone, so they lack their intended emotional impact at that point too, or, later on during the film, when you remember the opening, if you do at all, it then takes you out of the film while you consider how exactly it is the character is going to end up in that situation, all while the film rolls on with only a fraction of your attention.

Either way, when it comes to these kinds of openings, where an action of some kind happens, and then the film flashes back, and the story is all about catching back up to that opening action, they usually don't work, and/or are unnecessary distractions.

In short, thumbs down on these particular types of openings.

Anyway, after the suicide, the film then flashes back to the guy who at some point later on shoots himself in the head—his name is Ethan—as he, and his presumably soon-to-be dead wife, flee into the night in their car, all while the usual kind of Day One zombie outbreak alerts sound over their phones and car radio. Basically, the shit is hitting the fan, and these two are looking for a safe place. Unfortunately, for them, Ethan is getting sleepy as he’s driving. Inevitably, in a very telegraphed moment, he crashes in a flash of headlights (like when Dawson's Dad died) and screeching tires (like the beginning of the song "Leader of the Pack"). He wakes up with a start the next morning, on his deflated airbag, in a seemingly empty town.

And his wife is gone.

The rest of the film is concerned with his hunt for his wife, and how, while he is looking for her, he meets up with a grizzled survivor,a mysterious older woman with secrets. She takes him to her isolated and off-the-grid farm, and reluctantly agrees to help him find his wife. Throughout this, the pair are beset by two kinds of monsters, the zombies who wandering the forests and ruins of the old world, and the ravenous packs of men looking to take anything they can.

There’s a twist to this film, and it turns on the fact that Ethan is an unreliable narrator, meaning that the story shares a lot of ideas with a more successful film, that also starred Carrie-Anne Moss, called Memento, except with more zombies. Also, some of you out there, who might be more familiar with zombie films in general, might be somewhat suspicious as to what exactly Ethan’s cast is hiding. Honestly, even if you're not all that familiar with Memento, or with zombie films, none of the film's "twists" should surprise anyone who’s actually paying attention, as Ethan's recollections and the state of the world in the film do not add up.

This movie was obviously filmed in an abandoned town, maybe an old mining town, or maybe a company town that dried up when the factory closes, or maybe there was some kind of toxic spill in the area, either way, it’s all very apocalyptic looking. Very apocalyptic looking. There’s garbage strewn along the weed-choked streets. The yards are overgrown. The houses are all boarded up and dilapidated. The abandoned vehicles are mostly rust. And inside the houses and buildings, it’s an absolute ruin, but not in a “people left in a hurry and haven’t been back in a couple of weeks” kind of way, more in a “it looks like squatters and methheads have been shitting in the corners of these rooms for years now” kind of way.

Basically, it looks TOO post-apocalyptic.

This wouldn’t be a problem, if not for the fact that the film indicates that, right before the crash–which is presented as late last night–the radio announcements make it seem like the zombie apocalypse was still in its first few days/weeks, and yet the town and the other characters in the story all look like the apocalypse happened maybe a decade or more ago.

This is a common problem with zombie stuff.

The Walking Dead presented incongruous timeline shit, as well as nonsensical character reactions to the state of the world, for years. It would drive me crazy, because it meant that the world, the characters, and their motivations weren’t in line. Either the buildings and infrastructure shouldn't be this old and rundown, or the people shouldn't be this surprised and seemingly unfamiliar with the concept of zombies at this point in their timeline, or both. This is generally the hallmark of poor quality work for me, because it means you aren't thinking through the world you're writing about. I hate that. Now, with low budget films, an overly-rundown set is maybe more forgivable, as it's usually just the reality of having no budget and being forced to use what's available for filming, but with shit like Walking Dead... they've got plenty of money, so that's just poor quality work.

Of course, having characters who should be more familiar with what it means to live in a Post-Zombie-Apocalypse doing the kinds of stupid things that a naive person might do on the very first day of the apocalypse, instead of doing the things that a hard core veteran survivor would have naturally adapted to doing, simply because they've survived for this long...? Well, that's usually just the result of bad writing, regardless of the size of the budget.

Anyway, my point here is, these incongruities caught my eye immediately, and in the film's defense, there is a reason for it, so good on them, but it brought up an interesting question… Did the filmmakers intend to lead us astray by relying on the fact that most low budget filmmakers making zombie films are inept, especially when it comes to their world-building, and would make these kinds of mistakes? Or did they even notice these incongruities themselves, and it just kind of worked out for them? Or did they not think through the importance at all, and just assume that the audience wouldn’t notice the incongruities either?

In the end, it doesn’t matter, because the film all-around doesn’t really work, but still, an interesting question to consider.

Personally, I think I would lean toward it not being a deliberate mislead, at least not in any kind of meta sense, as the film is also filled with fake technology. Like… completely nonsensical versions of modern day stuff like solar power. So it’s not the specific tech itself that is weird and fake, but the specific way it is used in this story, like how they have boobytrap explosives rigged to a pistol’s safety. It’s just complete nonsense, the kind of ideas that remind me of what it's like in writers' workshops, when you're reading someone's work, and it's clear as you're reading it that they just have... for example... literally no idea how to change the oil in a car. They also clearly have no interest in learning about how to change the oil in a car either, as evidenced by the fact that they didn't just google the basics, and yet... it's a central part of their story.

What makes this so bad is the implied assumption that, despite the fact that changing the oil in a car is central to their story, the writer clearly also assumed that this information is so unimportant, no one else will notice or care that it's wrong while reading the story, and that's so... strangely arrogant and off-putting.

It’s honestly not an uncommon issue when you're reading in genre fiction, even with bigger name stuff. I have a half-baked theory that this is mostly due to the fact that a lot of genre authors are "indoor kids" and most of the things that happen in genre novels could be considered to be "outside activities" like sports, or guns, or learning technical skills, which are things indoor kids generally like to avoid, and instead read adventure books in the corner all day. No judgement there, especially as a mostly indoor kid myself, I'm just saying... when you're writing genre fiction, there's two kinds of "making shit up." There's the kind where something like, say... zombies... are made up, so do what you will, make up whatever shit you want, and it will live or die on it's own merit. Then there's the kind "make shit up" where say, the things your character is doing involves firing guns, and while the stuff that the characters might be doing while firing those guns is completely fake, and you can make up whatever you want as far as that is concerned, guns are real, so you can't just make any old shit up about guns specifically. You have to stick to the very real Real World rules of what guns are, how they work, and why, because if you don't, then people will notice, and your story will be exposed as garbage.

That's the big problem here in Die Alone.

They just make up a bunch of completely unreal and impossible nonsense about some very real Real World shit, some of which are central plot points, moments the story hinges on, and it's so obvious. And so bad too. Honestly, even if the film already didn't work in general, this is the kind of stuff that would have derailed it.

Plus, I lose respect for creators who do shit like this, who won't do even a little bit of research, because the only way this kind of shit can survive to your final edit is if you don't hire a real editor, or at least have someone review it who is willing to give you honest constructive feedback. I can't respect a creator who isn't dedictaed to the process, who isn't interested in the best version of their work. Refusing to draft and redraft and kill darlings and rewrite is the hallmark of an arrogant coward who only makes shit. Real artists submit to the pain of feedback, because they know it only makes them stronger.

I mean, shit… at the very least, google stuff.

Finally, like a particularly shitty cherry on top, my least favorite song in the whole wide world is Crimson and Clover. Any version of it is terrible, but the one with the echo in it is a straight up crime against humanity. Die Alone features it prominently. So on top of all the other reasons, I extra did not like this movie.

I did like the zombies though. In the film, they are all created by plant spores, not exactly in the same way as they are in The Last of Us, but close enough. Still, I did like seeing some zombies wandering around with trees growing out of their heads like horns. That was pretty cool. But that said, even if you're a big zombie fan, that stuff is not enough of a reason to check this dud out, and if you aren't a zombie fan... yeah, there’s just nothing to see here.

Hard pass.