Alive

I surprisingly quite liked this. There is most certainly a lot to forgive as far as shortcomings go... but for a solidly creepy, anxiety inducing little thriller/horror with a concept full of potential... not bad.

This wastes no time throwing you right into the thick of it which I quite liked. The pacing there after was up and down. Not perfect but not awful. I feel like one of the bigger missteps as far as plot goes was any sort of background or context on the doctor. They would give us a hint here and there with a room or an object... and then just leave us hanging. So much storytelling potential squandered.

The acting was a bit hit or miss as well, I don't think anyone was bad per se, but they weren't always hitting the mark for a horror/drama/thriller that I wanted to see, which was a little frustrating because if they were on point it really would have taken this to another place.

The thing I liked most about this movie and what drew me to it to begin with was the story. Although it had hints of being slightly derivative of the SAW franchise and little blips of feeling silly/amateurish, there was still something about it that retained an intriguing factor and felt different and enthralling.

Despite the vibe of the ending feeling a tad hokey, conceptually I was not mad at that either. I would loveee to see someone remake this with a solid budget and some reworking of the cast/plot in a Last Shift/Malum way because I think it has the potential to be a banger. Would recommend.

Solid acting, great little premise, great protagonist ending, some head turning little bits in there too which do make you whince.

But... It was painfully drawn out, the protagonists continually chose the most ridiculous things to do purely to help the movie along when there were obvious things to do otherwise... Then the most worn out trope right at the end there could be.

If you do watch it you will hear yourself say, "oh just do (insert action)" , "Really?" "FFS" a fair bit, and none of this is in an excitement induced way because you are riveted to the screen. No. It is because you have had enough and just want to see how it climaxes.

That's my warning for you!

I went into this after reading the other 2 reviews and of course making sure they were not the usual 1 review shills and I was not disappointed as it is not a bad little low budget horror.

It does actually feature one of the actors from the original Saw series as the main character and it was his acting that puts this a rung above your average horror film. The two leads are quite effective too and coupled with an amazing location it keeps you guessing all the way to the gruesome denouement similar to Saw so it accomplishes what many other in the genre fail to do with larger budgets.

Its not on the level of Saw but it will satisfy any true horror fan as the script, acting, setting, photography are all top notch so give it a go; it gets an above average 6 hatchets out of 10 from me on this one!

Very 'Saw' as other reviewers have said, plus a bit of Misery (an innocent person, or in this case two innocent people, kept captive by a crazed medic). A bit of Human Centipede First Sequence (a madman carrying out extreme surgical experiments). Very good on tension and suspense and overall pretty good and much better than I expected at the start. And I really wasn't expecting the ending! Along with the ambiguity as to what happens to the two victims at the end.

As I say pretty good and if you like the body horror category well worth seeing.

This movie was good, but very slow developing with an interesting ending.