Alone Parent Guide

The world comes to a grinding and bloody halt when a global pandemic erupts, turning all the infected into ravenous, psychotic killing machines, hell-bent on eating their living neighbors – and it’s not even an election year. For Aidan (Tyler Posey), this means months barricaded alone in his apartment, with the other tenants in his building trying to beat the door down. Running low on food, water, and the will to live, Aidan is ready to give up when he sees Eva (Summer Spiro) in the building opposite. Realizing that they might not be as alone as they thought, Aidan and Eva start to work together to find solutions to their problems – but not all problems can be solved that easily.

Alone has a weirdly consistent problem with remembering what it’s doing. At least three of the major plot developments make almost no sense when you remember anything else that’s happened in the story. Without spoiling too much, at one point Aidan breaks into a neighbor’s apartment to scrounge for food and supplies. Thankfully, said neighbor is a rock climbing enthusiast, and Aidan finds a climbing ax and a length of high-quality rope. Despite these useful discoveries, the next time Aidan needs rope, he ties bedsheets together. What’s even dumber is that the reason he needs rope is because he’s decided he can’t throw an item the same distance he’s thrown others before without a problem. It’s like the movie was written by three different people who had only a vague understanding of what the other writers did.

As zombie flicks go, this one is pretty inoffensive. Those familiar with the genre are used to a certain amount of gore – and while this film certainly has some blood and chewed remains, it doesn’t seem to want to show off the blood and guts. I have a sneaking suspicion that this has more to do with budgetary constraints impacting the quantity of prosthetic and makeup work rather than an aversion to violence, but the end result is the same. This still isn’t a film suitable for children, but older teens would likely not have a problem with it.

Alone is a humbling reminder that even Donald Sutherland has to pay rent – I can’t think of another reason why he’d be here. Worse, he’s only in the film for the last 15 minutes or so, which is especially tragic because he’s the best part. This isn’t the worst movie I’ve seen this month, but that’s in no small part because I saw Hubie Halloween last week, and Adam Sandler is always doing his best to irritate. Instead, Alone joins the shambling ranks of bland, unremarkable zombie flicks looking for a ripe, living market…