Alone (2020)
★★½ — Alone (2020)
There's a version of this film that could've been genuinely great. One man, one apartment block, the world rotting away outside the window. Strip a zombie story back to its bones and you've got something raw and potentially terrifying. Final Days (released in some territories as Alone) knows that. It understands the premise. It just can't quite do enough with it.
The setup is exactly what it sounds like: a lone survivor barricaded in his flat as the infected swarm the streets below. Distant screams through the walls, dwindling tins in the cupboard, the clock ticking on how long he can hold out. It's claustrophobic by design, and for a good stretch of the runtime, that claustrophobia works. The film opts for psychological dread over splatter, which I respect. Watching a person's mental state erode when hope starts to feel abstract is genuinely unsettling territory, and the production leans into it with some smart visual choices. Tight framing that makes the apartment feel like a coffin. Natural light that shifts and dims as the days blur. It's a low-budget production and it knows how to use that limitation rather than fight it.
The sound design earns a particular mention. Silence is deployed with real discipline here, so when something does crash or shriek, it lands. The sequences where the protagonist edges out into the hallway or risks a neighbouring unit carry proper tension. You feel the weight of every step.
So why does it land at two and a half stars? Because decent isn't enough when the bar has already been set so high by a film doing almost exactly the same thing. #Alive, the 2020 Korean zombie thriller, treads this same ground with far more confidence and emotional pull. And it's not a coincidence they feel like cousins. Both share a screenwriter in Jo Il-hyung, and you can feel that DNA running through every scene of Final Days. The trouble is, #Alive balanced its survival mechanics with real character work. You cared about who was trapped. Here, the protagonist feels thinly sketched, and when you don't fully invest in the person doing the surviving, the tension has nowhere to go. The stakes feel vague rather than urgent.
The ending is where it really stumbles. After building a modest but genuine head of steam, it deflates rather than detonates. A zombie film doesn't need a tidy resolution, but it needs to leave you with something, some feeling, some image, some question that lingers. This one just sort of stops. I sat there waiting for a final gut punch that never came.
I keep coming back to isolation horror as a subgenre because when it works, it works on a primal level. The world shrunk to four walls. Every sound a potential death sentence. I loved Moshari for exactly that reason, a film that wrings extraordinary dread out of a similarly confined, desperate scenario. Final Days has flashes of that same instinct but lacks the follow-through.
What we're left with is a film that's watchable, occasionally tense, and atmospherically competent. If you're a zombie completist or you've got ninety minutes on a quiet evening and low expectations, it'll do the job. But it exists in the shadow of a better film built from the same blueprint, and that shadow is long. A stripped-down sketch where there should've been a fully realised picture.
Two and a half stars. Solid rental. Not essential.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-02-15
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Channel 4 Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Amazon Prime Video · fuboTV · Philo
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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