The Reel Review
A young man with recurring amnesia joins a hardened survivalist to search for his missing girlfriend during an apocalyptic viral outbreak that has turned the dead into hybrid plant/human zombies. Carrie Anne Moss, Douglas Smith (Big Love, Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter 1) and Frank Grillo star in this horror/mystery.
Initially a slow burn creeper with elements of 2000’s Memento and the current zombie series The Last of Us, Die Alone eventually builds to a dramatic, heartbreaking finale with a pretty clever twist not seen in most modern-day, point-shoot-and-kill zombie flicks. Getting there, however, is an exercise in tedium due to a very sluggish midsection and disorienting time jumps in the third act that are often more confusing than illuminating.
The low-budget film’s zombie practical effects, while sparse, are at least effective and Moss does a fine job of carrying the story despite the screenplay’s shortcomings. For those with the patience to endure the slow midsection, the big finale is a satisfying, albeit sad, payoff.
REEL FACTS
• Carrie-Anne Moss and Steven Roy (who plays the character her character shoots in the film’s opening scene) have been married since 1999. The couple, who have three children and live in New Hampshire, previously worked together in 2005’s Confessions of an Action Star and 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections.
• Canadian writer/director Lowell Dean wrote the screenplay for Die Alone more than a decade ago.
• Carrie-Anne Moss was instrumental in helping Douglas Smith land the co-starring role in Die Alone, having worked with him previously in 2013’s Treading Water and 2017’s The Bye Bye Man.
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