A man (Thomas Cocquerel) and a woman (Camille Stopps) wake up strapped to a gurney, with no memory of who they are, as a sadistic doctor (Angus Macfadyen, Equilibrium, Saw IV) experiments on them. Alive is a 2019 horror film directed by Rob Grant.
+ both Cocquerel and Stopps were fine, and somehow familiar in some way, but looking at their IMDb page shows nothing of note for me. Macfadyen is the true highlight, as he walks the line somewhere between overly sweet kidnapper and crazed doctor (and he reminded me a lot of Nick Frost, with his random English-esuque accent)
+ the dirty hospital makes for an effective environment. It’s dark and abandoned-ish, but never falls into many of the tropes that plague hospital-set horror movies
– from literally the first scene, I was able to pick the movie’s twist and nothing was ever done to convince me otherwise. There are some allusions to the twist as portrayed in other media, but the movie must really think you are an idiot, because the final shot really hammers it home
– I have a lot of unanswered questions, and the fallout of the twist could basically be a movie in and of itself. It felt like there were two ideas here, and just the first made the bulk of the film
> What are the odds that the most recent movie I reviewed was by the director of Saw IV, in which Angus Macfadyen starred? Six degrees of Kevin Bacon indeed. I don’t do this on purpose
Should you see this film: This was nothing ground breaking, and astute horror fans will recognise a lot from other movies, but overall I had fun watching it. It did not bore me like so many others, and cliched or not it was more than competently made. Give this a watch
MoshFish Reviews 