New Life

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.

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.

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 didn't have high expectations when I went to see this movie. This synopsis sounded intriguing, however my anticipation for this movie was limited.

The start is rather slow and our protagonist (Jess) meets and older couple and through their interactions you get to know her a little better. The order couple is lovely and definitely adds some emotional weight to the movie. We are also introduced to our other protagonist (Elsa) who is trying to find Jess. As soon as Elsa arrives at the older couples place, intriguing things start happening. From that point on the movie had my full attention since I like the subject matter. The first contact with our threat is made and it was portrayed really effective and was a thrilling contrast to the slow start. A minor complained is that there is a really cheap jump scare which was absolutely unnecessary. On the other hand there are some really well made makeup effects to be seen.

However the narrative progresses and there are new characters introduced. And then the movie kinda just ends. I felt like the ending was pretty abrupt and felt a little bit unfinished. It could have been a rather big finale but instead we get a pretty short ending. Overall I really like the idea of this movie and going in without knowing what exactly this was about was a really nice decision. It's definitely not a masterpiece or a movie that will be remembered in a couple of years from now with how many movies are being released nowadays, but it was certainly a good watch and a nice way to spend not even 90 minutes. [6,2/10]

This movie was on sale on iTunes for five dollars so I figured I would give it a chance. The trailer was good and within the first minute or so I turned it off since trailers tend to spoil the whole movie. I started watching it and was pleased throughout the entire movie. It was engaging and original. You can tell it isn't high budget movie but the production values are exceptional and the soundtrack was top notch. There is nothing that feels "low budget" about this film. I am not a film school snob. I have no knowledge on any of that stuff. I typically have an extreme distrust of reviews, especially critic reviews, since there's a huge disconnect between the rotten tomatoes website when it comes to audience scores and film critic scores. The audience scores usually are substantially lower than the critic scores, and vice versa. I don't wanna spoil anything about this movie but I assure you if you like dystopian style movies that have a creepy mysterious twist then you will thoroughly enjoy this movie. There's only a few scenes that have mild jump scares so this is not a horror movie in any sense of the term horror. Every actor in the movie did an exceptional job. I highly recommend. This is a 10/10 for limited budget movies and my scoring is just a general one that judges everything and I use the same criteria for all movies. So, my 7/10 is quite good. I would actually be happy to watch this movie again and plan on doing so with a friend. Please be kind, this is my first IMDb review and I was too lazy to spell check. Sorry not sorry. Best wishes with your quest to find a good movie to kill some time with! -Brandon.