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.

Was so slow I picked up a book, read, and taught myself hot to crochet while watching it only in hopes that I didn't waste money renting it. It reminded me of a family movie that was given Steven Spielberg's theatrical background music to try to infuse the movie with some hope in action. Hope died.

The actors were good. The directing was good. The plot was slow.

I can not say more about this movie not much happened. So enjoy steps to crocheting to meet the required amount of characters needed to warn you:

Chain a multiple of 3 plus 4. To begin the blanket stitch, you will need to make a chain of the amount of stitches needed plus an additional 4 stitches. The additional 4 stitches will provide some slack for working the first double crochet stitch.

Make your chain as long as you think it will need to be for your project. For example, if you are making a blanket, then you will probably need to chain at least 90 stitches, plus 4, for a total of 94. Or, if you are making a washcloth, then you can probably just chain 18 stitches, plus 4 for a total of 22.

Written and acted as if it is real life. Reminded me of the series Black Summer, which also seemed as if it could be real life.

This movie is NOT a zombie slasher flick and NOT a zombie blood fest!

Acting is perfect.

Writing/script is on point.

Locations are beautiful.

The zombies 'style' is something I have not seen before. From their makeup to their 'thirst' we get to see something new and refreshing.

(Funny, referring to zombies as being new and refreshing)

This is a slow burn, human driven movie. It kept me interested throughout.

I will definitely be watching this a second time. And, I would like to buy it on DVD to add to my Zombie movie/series collection!

Definately worth watching.

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.

Watched this hidden tale of a movie tonight by a recommendation and I throughly enjoyed it!

👀At first glance, it plays out like an extended episode of "The Last of Us", versus a full movie, as it centers around a young man and his sister traveling across the open country, following a global outbreak. If you're a fan of simple stories, with a few characters to keep track of and character development, this one works great. Oh, and there's zombies!

As mentioned, this one really centers around the character relationships and is able to accomplish empathy for them in the short amount of time it's given. I genuinely was interested and engaged in a very short amount of time.

While movies of this kind can be known to drag, this one as paced perfectly and did not waste a second.

Bonus points for an excellent soundtrack and score!

Is it pumping with horror? Not exactly, but think of it as a slower level of a horror video game, where it's still looming, but there's some time to focus on the characters for a bit.

Recommend!