Die Alone

Lowell Dean: Die Alone (CA 2024). Below: the protagonist couple Ethan (Douglas Smith) and Mae (Carrie-Anne Moss). Above: Kai (Frank Grillo) and Mae.

Country and year: Canada © 2024 Die Alone, Inc.

Rating: 16

Duration: 91 min

Director and writer: Lowell Dean

Producer(s): Benjamin DeWalt, Kevin DeWalt, Danielle Masters

Cinematographer: Mark Dobrescu

Music: Todd Bryanton

Cast: Douglas Smith, Carrie-Anne Moss, Frank Grillo, Kimberly-Sue Murray, Jonathan Cherry, Steven Roy

Language: English

Subtitles: Finnish (n.c.)

Format: DCP

Night Visions Maximum Halloween 3024.

Viewed at Night Visions, Kinopalatsi 1, Helsinki, 16 Jan 2024

Loc: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

    Soundtrack: - "Crimson and Clover" (1968, Tommy James & Peter Lucia, Jr.) perf. Tommy James and the Shondells. 

- "Clair de lune" from Suite bergamasque (1905) by Claude Debussy, inspired by a poem by Paul Verlaine (1869).

 

Night Visions 2024: "WolfCop-kauhukomedioista (NV 2014 & 2017) muistettava kanadalaisohjaaja Lowell Dean antaa väkevän näytön vakavampien genrerekisterien hallinnasta. Die Alone on brutaali ja kouraiseva, osin myös surumielinen kuvaus maailmanlopusta."

"Ethan (Douglas Smith) herää keskellä tuhoutunutta maailmaa muistamatta, mitä on tapahtunut. Hiljalleen nuorelle miehelle selviää, että kasvipohjainen virus on runnellut sivilisaation ja muuttanut ihmiset zombimaisiksi saalistajiksi."

"Inhimillisen elämän rippeitä pitävät yllä vain Ethanin kaltaiset satunnaiset selviytyjät. Muistinmenetyksistä kärsivää miestä pitää liikkeessä toivo kadonneen tyttöystävän (Kimberly-Sue Murray) löytämisestä. Kovaotteinen Mae (Carrie-Anne Moss) pelastaa vaarallisesti haahuilevan Ethanin farmilleen ja tarjoaa apuaan. Tarinaan liittyy kiinteästi myös arvoistaan tinkimätön perheenisä Kai (Frank Grillo)."

"Die Alone kuvaa sisäisen ja ulkoisen maailman tuhoutumista. Zombie-estetiikka, Christopher Nolanin Mementon (2000) aikatasoleikittely ja The Last of Us -sarjan maailmanlopun tunnelma limittyvät elegantilla tavalla. Smith ja Grillo hoitavat tonttinsa suvereenisti, mutta mieleenpainuvimman roolin tekee The Matrix -elokuvien supertähti Carrie-Anne Moss naispääosan surumielisenä selviytyjänä."

"Visuaalisesti häikäisevät kuvat muovaavat jopa kauhun kummallisen kauniiksi. Dean tarjoaa katsojalle painajaisen, josta voi sekä nauttia että selviytyä."

“Thrilling and thought-provoking”

– Cara McWilliam / Cryptic Rock

“Carrie-Anne Moss zombie horror movie is 2024’s surprise stand-out”

– Shawn Van Horn / Collider

“The post-apocalyptic zombie sub-genre gets a new, fresh spin”

– Mel Valentin / Screen Anarchy

“A meditative film with heart and soul”

– Rachel Ho / Exclaim! Magazine

“A young man with short-term memory loss tries to survive the zombie apocalypse while searching for his girlfriend in Die Alone — Writer-director Lowell Dean (WolfCop) adds a dash of Christopher Nolan’s Memento to the usual zombie movie trappings, and comes out with a winner that offers some real surprises along the way. — [Carrie-Ann] Moss, in a rare lead performance, steals the film as Mae, a complex character whose mystery is slowly worn away over the course of Die Alone — In a sea of formulaic zombie films, it’s a gem that truly breaks the mold” – Jason Pirodsky / The Prague Reporter

– Quotation montage by Night Visions 2024

AA: Lowell Dean's Die Alone is a philosophical horror movie, an existential vision of a post-apocalyptic world, a dystopia, a zombie flesh-eater movie, a gore and splatter movie and a movie about amnesia.

Ethan (Douglas Smith) is a man without a memory. The film starts in a confusion of sensations as life flashes by. Only in the finale, after an odyssey in jumbled chronology, we begin to realize what it is all about. Although Ethan has no long-term memory, he still has an identity and a self-awareness, which enables a final solution.

Ethan's hold on life is Mae, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, memorable in The Matrix and Memento, now in a role with even greater substance. Mae is a doctor, and she has turned into an action heroine. 

In genre terms - as an action film, horror film and science fiction film - Die Alone delivers. It is also an original dystopian vision, with dimensions worthy of Ingmar Bergman (Shame), Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker) and Alex Garland (Civil War).

Infected by an unknown virus, mankind is reverting to the state of the vegetable kingdom, fighting a rearguard battle as flesh-eating vegetable zombies. The tale is about "nature purging itself from mankind".

Even more than an action film, Die Alone is a visionary film and an imagist film. With his cinematographer Mark Dobrescu executing his ideas in glorious scope, Lowell Dean displays an original vision of post-apocalyptic desolation. Based on negative aesthetics, he shows Mother Nature's Revenge.

Visually, Die Alone has affinities with Gothic and Neo-Gothic currents, German Romanticism and the aesthetics of destruction in modern and contemporary art. There is also an Archimboldo - Jan Svankmajer - Quay Brothers lineage in the vegetable monsters.

The film starts and ends in montages of confusion. Ethan finds a way out. But it is not for us.