Die Alone is a dystopian zombie drama that follows young amnesiac Ethan (Douglas Smith) desperately searching for his estranged girlfriend, Emma. His quest for survival teams him up with seasoned survivalist Mae (Carrie-Anne Moss). Together, they must face not just flesh-eating "plant zombies" but also the burden of their solitude.
Lowell Dean crafts a tragically beautiful zombie film. It's hard to imagine that Canadian filmmaker Lowell Dean gained his initial fame with the WolfCop franchise. While those campy horror-comedies have their own charm, Dean proves his versatility with Die Alone, a far cry from his earlier projects. The zombie drama is set in a familiar terrain, a dystopian wasteland that is occupied by "plant zombies" that seem like a cross between the pod people of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the fungi-infected creatures of The Last of Us. But as our amnesiac protagonist, Ethan, crosses paths with hardened survivor Mae, the story prioritizes love and loss over mind-numbing violence. Die Alone isn't a perfect zombie film, but the budding friendship between the two characters and the yearning for a pre-pandemic past adds a lot of heart to this overlooked horror gem of the year.
The genre cliches can be ignored in the face of a haunting third act. In director and writer Lowell Dean's defense, he does seem to make an active effort to limit his zombie dystopia's parallels with the COVID-19 pandemic. And still, Die Alone brims with some on-the-nose allusions to nature getting back at human society for all its environmental-degrading misdeeds. And there are the usual monologues of loneliness and reconnecting with your loved ones in the wake of the world's end. And yet, despite these elements, Die Alone amps up the drama in a shocking final twist. It might not raise everyone's eyebrows, but it has enough depth to tug at your heartstrings. Couple that with Carrie-Anne Moss's moving, tear-jerking act, and you have a cult hit on your hands.
Carrie-Anne Moss's career-best performance. The actress is in full command of her craft, introducing herself with her usual steel-eyed stillness and later progressing towards more emotional territory that neither The Matrix nor Memento allowed her to enter. Who would have thought that Carrie-Anne Moss would mark her second coming at the hands of WolfCop's director?
A moving zombie tragedy with original concepts despite its occasional genre cliches.
