Alone (aka Final Days in the UK, presumably because Mildly Inconvenienced Indoors didn’t test well) is what happens when someone says, “What if we made a zombie movie set entirely in an apartment?” and then forgot to add… almost everything else.
It’s not the worst thing ever made; it’s just aggressively fine, like a mid-tier streaming movie you put on while scrolling your phone and occasionally think, “Oh right, zombies.” Unfortunately, it really wants to be deep, emotional, and intense—and watching it try is like watching a guy in flip-flops attempt parkour.
Aidan: The Most Boring Man in the Apocalypse
Our hero is Aidan, played by Tyler Posey, who wakes up after a one-night stand, looks around, and almost immediately walks into the zombie apocalypse. In a better film, this would be the starting gun for chaos. In Alone, it’s more like someone slowly dimming the lights over 90 minutes.
Aidan:
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Gets a quick info dump from the news
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Realizes people are turning into infected “Screamers”
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Fails to save his neighbor Brandon
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Gets one heartfelt text from his dad—“Stay Alive”—and decides that is now his entire personality
He then… stays inside.
And that’s the core of the movie: watching Aidan slowly run out of food, water, and reasons for us to care.
He tallies days on the bathroom mirror.
He records video logs.
He sits around.
He hallucinates.
He broods.
It’s like Cast Away, except instead of Tom Hanks and Wilson, we get Tyler Posey and crushing mediocrity.
Screamers: Zombies, But Make It Slightly Different
The infected in Alone are called Screamers, because branding is important during the collapse of civilization. They have:
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Bleeding eyes
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Rage
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Cannibalistic urges
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The habit of repeating their last words before turning
The script desperately wants this last part to be haunting: the idea that they’re “aware of what they’re doing but can’t stop themselves,” and their repeated final words are really begging someone to end it. In practice, it mostly comes off like:
“Babe… babe… babe… babe…”
“NO, GARY, I WILL NOT TEXT YOU BACK, YOU’RE DEAD NOW. LET IT GO.”
Sometimes it’s eerie. Sometimes it’s just funny. Often, it feels like the movie is trying very hard to be profound with creatures that are basically moody zombies who got a note saying “be symbolic.”
And for all the time we spend hearing about their tragic awareness, the movie never really uses that idea in any interesting way. It’s just window dressing on the usual “screaming, charging, bitey” package.
The Apartment Era: Isolation, But Somehow Still Boring
To its credit, Alone had the chance to be a surprisingly effective one-location horror movie: a guy stuck alone in an apartment during a global meltdown, cut off from family, slowly unraveling while things get worse outside.
Instead, we get a montage of:
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Eating through canned food
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Showering less
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Writing on mirrors
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Filming video logs like a man auditioning for a reality show no one will ever watch
There are flickers of something stronger—like when a Screamer crawls in through the air ducts and Aidan has to beat it to death in what should be a claustrophobic sequence. But even that feels weirdly weightless. He kills it, throws the body off the balcony, blocks the vent, and… we move on.
The emotional beats are text messages from Dad, then a voicemail from Mom saying his parents died. Aidan’s reaction is: one sad montage and a suicide attempt that lasts about 30 seconds before getting interrupted by the plot.
Which brings us to:
Eva: The Balcony Girlfriend DLC
Just when Aidan’s about to hang himself (truly, relatable), he notices Eva, a totally normal, uninfected woman on the balcony across the way. She appears like a side quest marker in a video game and, from that moment on, the film remembers it’s supposed to involve other humans.
They communicate using cue cards like a diet version of Love Actually if everyone in that movie had worse survival instincts.
Aidan:
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Offers her bottled water
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Raids Brandon’s apartment for food and climbing gear
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Finds radios so they can chat
Their “relationship” is basically, “Hi, I see you’re also not dead.” “Yes.” “Nice.” But the movie treats it like this grand, redemptive human connection. Which would hit harder if either character had much depth beyond “sad” and “hot” respectively.
Still, Eva at least gives the story a direction: get to each other, survive together, look good in dirty T-shirts. It’s something.
Edward: Because We Needed a Side Boss
When Aidan decides he’s going to help Eva get to his apartment, he has to cross the building again via air ducts. He winds up in a mysteriously well-stocked apartment that looks too good to be true.
Eva warns him over the radio: if the room’s barricaded and empty, it’s probably a trap.
Aidan responds by… not leaving.
Enter Edward, played by Donald Sutherland, who has the decency to bring some actual acting into the movie. He’s an elderly survivor whose moral compass has been boiled down to “I will feed strangers to my zombified wife so she can keep shambling along.”
He knocks Aidan out, ties him up, explains his plan, and basically turns the movie into a brief stage play called What If Misery, But Diseased and Low-Budget?
This stretch could’ve been a highlight: a clash between two survival strategies—Aidan’s fragile morality vs. Edward’s “everyone is just meat now.” Instead, it’s rushed. Aidan escapes thanks to a radio distraction from Eva and feeds Edward to his wife like it’s a karmic punchline. Then we move on.
Edward, like everything else good in this movie, is underused and tossed aside so we can get back to Aidan being generically distressed.
Final Level: Balcony Parkour and Fake-Out Infection
The third act finally drags itself out of the apartment and gives us some actual physical stakes.
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Screamers swarm Eva’s place.
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Aidan rappels down using bed sheets because apparently everyone in apocalypse movies has a minor in improvised climbing.
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He fights off Screamers on the ground level.
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He reaches Eva, and they have to fight back to his apartment together.
These scenes are okay—solid enough action, decently tense, but nothing you haven’t seen done way better elsewhere. It’s like watching a student remake of 28 Weeks Later but without the budget, energy, or emotional punch.
Right when they almost make it, Aidan shows a bloody mark on his shirt and assumes he’s infected. He immediately decides he has to jump to his death to save Eva. This man has zero chill and even less diagnostic skill.
Eva, instead of saying, “Maybe check under the shirt before swan-diving, genius,” cries and begs him to stay. When he finally takes the shirt off, surprise: no bite. Just blood.
They celebrate not being idiots too badly, shove a fridge against the door, and dramatically vow to “survive together.”
Which is sweet. But also hilarious because we’ve just watched 90 minutes of Aidan barely surviving alone. Adding another person doesn’t magically make his plan better than “vibes and canned food.”
Emotion by Shortcut, Tension by Default
The film really wants you to feel things:
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For Aidan losing his parents.
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For his loneliness.
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For his connection to Eva.
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For the Screamers’ lingering consciousness.
But it mostly tells you these things instead of showing them in any meaningful, sustained way. Real grief and isolation are replaced with:
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A tally on a mirror
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A couple of “I’m losing it” laptop logs
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One half-hearted noose attempt
It’s like the CliffNotes version of loneliness.
The zombie apocalypse itself is background noise, heard mostly through news broadcasts and distant screams. That can work in a tight, character-driven chamber piece. Here, it just makes the world feel small and empty in the wrong way.
Final Verdict: Not Terrible, Just Terminally Generic
Alone isn’t offensively bad; it’s just aggressively forgettable. It’s the cinematic equivalent of instant oatmeal: technically food, technically filling, absolutely not the meal you remember later.
What it has:
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A decent central idea
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A few solid tense moments
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Donald Sutherland briefly elevating the whole thing by simply existing
What it lacks:
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Strong character development
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Interesting use of its “aware zombies” concept
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Any real bite—pun very much intended
If you’re desperate for yet another “guy in an apartment during zombies” movie and you’ve already watched [REC], #Alive, and every low-budget Shudder exclusive, this will pass the time.
Just like Aidan, it’s doing its best to stay alive.
Unfortunately, unlike Aidan, it probably won’t stick in your memory long enough to matter.
