Recommending a zombie movie in 2026 comes with qualifications. Zombies are a cheap monster option for indie horror filmmakers; just stock up on corn syrup and paint all your friends corpse blue. The subgenre was already crowded before the one-two punch of the live-action Resident Evil movies and The Walking Dead turned the 21st century into permanent undead territory. If this century so far has a trademark monster, it’s zombies.
By now, enough creators have taken their own swings at the subject that you’ve got multiple options for any kind of zombie you like: fast, slow, post-apocalyptic, non-apocalyptic, scary, funny, action-packed, contemplative, consumerist parody, self-parody, deconstructive, reconstructive, non-constructive, scientific, supernatural, musical.
There’s arguably no more point in doing zombies with a twist (unless the twist is really good), because the genre’s already twisted enough. The only thing left, for now, is to do zombies well. That’s the reason to watch the 2020 Korean movie #Alive, which is currently on Netflix.
All alone and an easy target
In retrospect, it’s a surprise that #Alive came out during 2020, rather than just after it. It couldn’t have been made in reaction to COVID, since the timing’s wrong, but still feels like it was. #Alive is built around its sense of isolation and despair, as its protagonist is stuck alone in his apartment watching South Korea slowly crumble.
If it had come out six months later, #Alive would have been an accidental metaphor. It still kind of is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ8CCg1tOqc – trailer
Oh Joon-woo (Yoo Ah-in) is a streamer who wakes up late one morning, after the rest of his family has already left for the day. His usual routine is interrupted by a riot outside his window. An unknown disease has broken out in the city, which is transmissible by bite and causes its victims to go into a violent, cannibalistic frenzy.
Soon, Joon-woo is the only living person that he can see from his eighth-floor window. He’s more or less safe from the zombies once he barricades his door, but what little food and water he’s got quickly runs out. Everything Joon-woo took for granted is gone, and he’s soon improvising to survive as the city falls apart around him.
A quick summary of #Alive makes it sound like it’d be a cheaply-made bottle episode, but there’s some real money and ambition at work here. Much of it is set in Joon-woo’s living room, but the creature effects and set design are both top-notch, some scenes feature dozens of extras, and its setting quickly expands to take up much of the block around Joon-woo’s building. #Alive is a high-budget version of what could’ve been a low-budget premise.
That being said, #Alive would be dead on arrival, no play on words intended, if its lead actor wasn’t up to the job. Yoo Ah-in is asked to carry a lot on his shoulders, and he’s up to the job. Joon-woo could’ve easily been some obnoxious tech-obsessed millennial stereotype, but he’s smart (although a lot of reviews don’t seem to give him credit for that), resourceful, and determined. Joon-woo is an easy character to root for, which is rare in horror, and it’s most of what drives #Alive forward.
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In a previous era of horror movies, #Alive would probably have more of a reputation than it does now. It was a sleeper hit during the pandemic and was briefly in Netflix’s top 10 foreign films. However, it had a lot working against it in the next six years, such as the relentless pace at which Netflix releases original films and, to be honest, the poor discoverability of its title. By now, #Alive is the next best thing to forgotten.
As we head into October, however, it’s worth revisiting. #Alive is a solid, fast-moving piece of horror filmmaking that’s still got a lot of gas in its tank six years later. It’s worth a look for your yearly pre-Halloween horror lineups.
#Alive is now streaming on Netflix.