Among the Living

When the world falls apart, be thankful you aren't in the UK. Harry is quite possibly the worst survivalist in all of Europe. He's weaponless the entire film, and bloody useless. He screws over the only decent guy that previously helped him. Way to go Harry, you're a dick.

His little sister pretty much whines the whole time and contributes nothing to their survival. She wanders off constantly and is about as useful as a football bat.

If anyone deserves to get killed and eaten, it's these two sods. They wander around with such lackadaisical attitudes, it's like they are begging to killed.

You're injured, stop make your wound open up

Some of the scenes honestly make no logical sense at all. Middle of the night, some girl tries to get in their tent.

Apparently, European tents are impossible to breach, because Harry pushes her out, closes the zipper, and that's, that! She disappears, and later some Zombie tries to get in, but I guess, he can't break the forcefield.

The whole story is dull and interesting, save the beautiful countryside.

Hard pass.

#1. In an opening and closing song by The Renaldis "Likes of You". I will look for that band.

I thought it was realistic (except for the zombie/sick/dead bloodhounds choice of look) and realistically showed a dynamic between an older brother and accident prone pubescent sister. The older brother being about as equipped as any average person would be if the world was suddenly askew. The sister acting as most girls that age would also. The same can be said for others they meet. Good folks, bad folks. Just a different sort of horror/drama, not a ton of either. I enjoyed the scenery and the locations and overall thought it was a good effort put forth by all.

This film is worth the watch if:

• You enjoy watching low budget films
• You're open to a blend of genres (drama on a horror back drop)
• You like a slow burn

Among The Living includes thought provoking moments and steers away from stereotypes - this is not your typical horror zombie movie.

The film showcases some amazing locations, which contrasts the grim reality of living and surviving in a world in crisis. This film brings an element of social realism to the horror genre that isn't often seen.

Although this film doesn't include loads of gore or zombie action, it presents the realistic threat of other humans.

While watching a decidedly low-budget film, I often ask myself why the filmmaker's chose to devote time and money to making it. Was the story so compelling to them that they felt it must be told? Did they believe they'd make a killer sale to Netflix? Or did they receive a government grant that needed to be spent?

It's hard to say what motivated the team behind this film to undertake this talky, static production that barely qualifies as a zombie entry. It features an ineffectual and deceitful sod wandering around the countryside supposedly looking after his sister as he tries to find their father. Along the way they meet some other folks, have long conversations, drink beer - or get smacked about.

You meet a few "infected", but this is mostly a film about hiking and camping, punctuated by gabby intermissions and the main character - the author of his own misfortune - weeping at his self-inflicted fate.

With surprisingly few edits, this could be sold as stock footage of the English countryside.

There some iconic scenes in zombie movies - 'Dawn of the Dead's' shopping mall full of staggering corpses, Cillian Murphy wandering round an empty London, Rick on horseback riding down a deserted freeway towards a desolated city. All of these work well because they're all normal settings we're all used to, only turned on their head so that they're absolutely horrific.

Now we come to 'Among the Living.' Have you ever walked through a wood and thought, 'This is like a zombie apocalypse!' Probably not. Because you can walk through a wood right now and it would be like you're on the set of this movie.

Yes, there are some nice landscape shots of the British countryside, but the budget (or lack of) prevents the story from ever becoming anything truly terrifying. It's about a man and a younger girl (brother and sister - presumably to move away from the far more famous plotline of 'Last of Us' travelling across the countryside in order to reach their family.

It tries to ramp up the tension when a zombie appears (and there's rarely more than a single ghoul on screen at one time) by dramatic music, but not enough happens to justify the score. Plus the zombies operate on weird rules. Maybe I missed a single line of dialogue where zombies are afraid of light, because everyone seems fine with shining torches in the dark and even creating pretty light shows with lanterns without fear of getting eaten. Plus the undead seem to operate on random rules. Are they totally braindead, existing purely on instinct? Or do they retain some form of human logic? Sometimes they act like mindless beasts, other times they'll stalk and hunt their victims - mainly on what the plot dictates at the time.

There's long periods of talking where not much happens, but then that could be a good thing as the actors are hardly top quality and don't get me started on the two child actors. I know it's difficult for kids to act sometimes, so many films don't rely on them too much. This one did - and it probably shouldn't have. Then the adult actors play characters who aren't that likeable in the first place.

Overall, there are so many zombie films and TV shows there are dozens that are better. This one might have been more novel if it came along almost twenty years ago. Now it's a dime a dozen. There was a nice scene midway through with some decent dramatic tension when someone had been bitten was trying to find a 'way out,' but apart from that there really isn't much here to recommend.