Among the Living

Watched this hidden tale of a movie tonight by a recommendation and I throughly enjoyed it!

👀At first glance, it plays out like an extended episode of "The Last of Us", versus a full movie, as it centers around a young man and his sister traveling across the open country, following a global outbreak. If you're a fan of simple stories, with a few characters to keep track of and character development, this one works great. Oh, and there's zombies!

As mentioned, this one really centers around the character relationships and is able to accomplish empathy for them in the short amount of time it's given. I genuinely was interested and engaged in a very short amount of time.

While movies of this kind can be known to drag, this one as paced perfectly and did not waste a second.

Bonus points for an excellent soundtrack and score!

Is it pumping with horror? Not exactly, but think of it as a slower level of a horror video game, where it's still looming, but there's some time to focus on the characters for a bit.

Recommend!

I happened to stumble upon the 2022 horror drama "Among the Living" by random blind luck. And with it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, and it sounded like a zombie movie of sorts from the synopsis, of course I had to sit down and watch watch writer and director Rob Worsey had to offer.

"Among the Living" is not an archetypical zombie movie. No, it is more of an infected human type of movie, though there is no explaination given to the infection, the cause of it, or how it started. So in that aspect writer and director Rob Worsey followed the blueprint of most zombie movies.

The storyline in "Among the Living" was adequate. Sure, it was a watchable movie, but the storyline was a little bit too uneventful for my liking. There was a whole lot of just milling about without anything much exciting happening throughout the majority of the movie. And it was a shame, because that approach to the narrative was sort of holding the movie back.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Among the Living", but they had gotten a handful of interesting and talented actors and actresses together for the movie. Dean Michael Gregory (playing Harry) and George Newton (playing Karl) really carried the movie quite well with their performances.

Visually then "Among the Living" was okay. It is not a movie that makes use of an excessive amount of blood, visceral gore and mayhem like many other zombie movies. So if you're expecting a zombie movie with special effects rivaling "The Walking Dead", you'll be sorely disappointed. The make-up was adequate for the infected beings that were in the movie, though the black shark-like eyes made no sense. It looked cool, but it made no sense. Nor did the growling sound that no human throat is capable of producing make any sense. Or the fact that the infected could smell blood from a long distance, much akin to the ability of a shark sensing blood in the water.

"Among the Living" made for an adequate, albeit something bland, viewing experience. It definitely had its moments, but the overall impression after having sat through 85 minutes is that of it being a somewhat mediocre movie.

My rating of "Among the Living" lands on a five out of ten stars.

This film is worth the watch if:

• You enjoy watching low budget films
• You're open to a blend of genres (drama on a horror back drop)
• You like a slow burn

Among The Living includes thought provoking moments and steers away from stereotypes - this is not your typical horror zombie movie.

The film showcases some amazing locations, which contrasts the grim reality of living and surviving in a world in crisis. This film brings an element of social realism to the horror genre that isn't often seen.

Although this film doesn't include loads of gore or zombie action, it presents the realistic threat of other humans.

There some iconic scenes in zombie movies - 'Dawn of the Dead's' shopping mall full of staggering corpses, Cillian Murphy wandering round an empty London, Rick on horseback riding down a deserted freeway towards a desolated city. All of these work well because they're all normal settings we're all used to, only turned on their head so that they're absolutely horrific.

Now we come to 'Among the Living.' Have you ever walked through a wood and thought, 'This is like a zombie apocalypse!' Probably not. Because you can walk through a wood right now and it would be like you're on the set of this movie.

Yes, there are some nice landscape shots of the British countryside, but the budget (or lack of) prevents the story from ever becoming anything truly terrifying. It's about a man and a younger girl (brother and sister - presumably to move away from the far more famous plotline of 'Last of Us' travelling across the countryside in order to reach their family.

It tries to ramp up the tension when a zombie appears (and there's rarely more than a single ghoul on screen at one time) by dramatic music, but not enough happens to justify the score. Plus the zombies operate on weird rules. Maybe I missed a single line of dialogue where zombies are afraid of light, because everyone seems fine with shining torches in the dark and even creating pretty light shows with lanterns without fear of getting eaten. Plus the undead seem to operate on random rules. Are they totally braindead, existing purely on instinct? Or do they retain some form of human logic? Sometimes they act like mindless beasts, other times they'll stalk and hunt their victims - mainly on what the plot dictates at the time.

There's long periods of talking where not much happens, but then that could be a good thing as the actors are hardly top quality and don't get me started on the two child actors. I know it's difficult for kids to act sometimes, so many films don't rely on them too much. This one did - and it probably shouldn't have. Then the adult actors play characters who aren't that likeable in the first place.

Overall, there are so many zombie films and TV shows there are dozens that are better. This one might have been more novel if it came along almost twenty years ago. Now it's a dime a dozen. There was a nice scene midway through with some decent dramatic tension when someone had been bitten was trying to find a 'way out,' but apart from that there really isn't much here to recommend.

Was so slow I picked up a book, read, and taught myself hot to crochet while watching it only in hopes that I didn't waste money renting it. It reminded me of a family movie that was given Steven Spielberg's theatrical background music to try to infuse the movie with some hope in action. Hope died.

The actors were good. The directing was good. The plot was slow.

I can not say more about this movie not much happened. So enjoy steps to crocheting to meet the required amount of characters needed to warn you:

Chain a multiple of 3 plus 4. To begin the blanket stitch, you will need to make a chain of the amount of stitches needed plus an additional 4 stitches. The additional 4 stitches will provide some slack for working the first double crochet stitch.

Make your chain as long as you think it will need to be for your project. For example, if you are making a blanket, then you will probably need to chain at least 90 stitches, plus 4, for a total of 94. Or, if you are making a washcloth, then you can probably just chain 18 stitches, plus 4 for a total of 22.