New Life

I can't see a reason why a moviegoer is gonna dislike it, i mean, it delivers what it promises. As long as you know what this is about. So, it's not a horror movie and it's mislabelled here. This is a scifi thriller movie, leaning more into drama than horror. It's not scary neither mindless fun. There are some thrilling and intense moments but it requires your patience, it's a slow burn but it didn't drag. Furthermore, it's well acted and the script was not very good but good enough to make a viewer invest.

Simultaneously, i can't see a reason why a moviegoer is gonna love it or get excited. Really low budget for this genre, a bit amateurish production and definitely a movie which almost everyone who watch it, will forget in a week max.

So, lower your expectations, know what this is about and you will probably like it, if you like this genre. I have watched many trash movies and tv shows recently, NEW LIFE is defintely not like that. It's a good movie. Still, not a MUST WATCH. There are far better movies to watch (older movies mostly) if you have not much free time to spend.

I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the 2023 movie "New Life" here in 2024, and of course I did so. Sure, I didn't even know what I was getting into here, aside from it being a horror or thriller that I hadn't even heard about. So writer and director John Rosman had every opportunity to impress and entertain me with this movie.

Oh boy, I wasn't exactly prepared for what writer John Rosman delivered here. The storyline in "New Life" was really a nice surprise, and I am very glad that I had the chance to sit down and watch this movie. It was a well-written script, narrative and storyline, and writer John Rosman really caught me off-guard here.

I genuinely enjoyed "New Life", but it sort of felt a bit incomplete. Perhaps a follow-up movie would bring more to the narrative, as "New Life" felt like it was only the beginning of something.

The acting performances in the movie were good, and they had some talented actors and actresses on the cast list. I wasn't familiar with the cast in the movie.

While "New Life" wasn't a movie that relied heavily on an abundance of special effects, I will say that the effects that were in the movie definitely helped bring the narrative to life, and also looked realistic.

While it might be somewhat of a niche movie, I think "New Life" is definitely a movie that is well-worth checking out, especially if you have an interest in both zombie movies and viral outbreak movies.

My rating of "New Life" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Agent Elsa Gray is tasked with tracking down Jessica Murdock, who's on the run and heading for The Canadian border. Unbeknown to Elsa, Jessica is hiding a deadly secret.

The short running time appealed to me, and that was both good and bad, good that I could squeeze it in one afternoon, bad because at times it felt a tad rushed.

The opening is simply bizarre, you won't know who's who, or what's happening, it really does take time to work out what's happening, the trouble is, when it does, and the action starts, it's not long before the credits roll.

Some good action sequences, and a few jump scares, there's nothing new here, nothing we haven't seen several times before, but there is some originality here.

The twist, when it comes it unexpected, it really did catch me off guard, a story I simply wasn't expecting.

Nicely acted, good visuals, with some rather effective makeup, overall a decent watch. I don't find myself saying this very often, I just wish it was longer.

6/10.

John Rosman's New Life tries to breathe exactly that into the zombie genre, and only somewhat succeeds. This is a film with some good atmosphere, scenery and genuinely disturbing special effects but it's consistently unclear in narrative, distracted by its own weird subplots and never quite grounds itself in anything wholly cohesive. A young girl (Hayley Erin) is on the run from the director (Tony Amendola) of a nefarious institute who has hired a mysterious fixer (Sonia Walger) to track her down and eliminate her. Why? Well I've already mentioned zombies earlier which isn't a secret the film really keeps too well from the outset, so there you go. The film is at its strongest when it focuses on the young girl evading her pursuers, seeking food and shelter from a kindly farmer and his wife, the simplicity of moving from place to place. When the story pivots back to the fixer is when it sort of loses momentum; Walger is a great actress whose work I love in LOST, but she's saddled with an odd arc here. Too much dialogue and a bizarre subplot about her early onset ALS do nothing for the story at large and just muddy things up. It also suffers from a jarringly abrupt ending and a general lack of focus.

A mix of The Fugitive with 28 days later. But if everyone was idiotic. I didn't care about any of them.

Great premise but at less than 90 minutes it's too short for any of it to have any real impact. A lot of unearned attempts at emotional moments.

The "twist" is less of a surprise and more just expanding on what you already are able to understand.

There's a secondary story with Sonya Walger that is supposed to add depth to her character but it just comes of as superfluous. There's no impact to the story other than making the reason why's she's picked for this manhunt to be completely idiotic.

I typically don't want longer movies but this one could have used more time in the oven.