New Life

This movie was on sale on iTunes for five dollars so I figured I would give it a chance. The trailer was good and within the first minute or so I turned it off since trailers tend to spoil the whole movie. I started watching it and was pleased throughout the entire movie. It was engaging and original. You can tell it isn't high budget movie but the production values are exceptional and the soundtrack was top notch. There is nothing that feels "low budget" about this film. I am not a film school snob. I have no knowledge on any of that stuff. I typically have an extreme distrust of reviews, especially critic reviews, since there's a huge disconnect between the rotten tomatoes website when it comes to audience scores and film critic scores. The audience scores usually are substantially lower than the critic scores, and vice versa. I don't wanna spoil anything about this movie but I assure you if you like dystopian style movies that have a creepy mysterious twist then you will thoroughly enjoy this movie. There's only a few scenes that have mild jump scares so this is not a horror movie in any sense of the term horror. Every actor in the movie did an exceptional job. I highly recommend. This is a 10/10 for limited budget movies and my scoring is just a general one that judges everything and I use the same criteria for all movies. So, my 7/10 is quite good. I would actually be happy to watch this movie again and plan on doing so with a friend. Please be kind, this is my first IMDb review and I was too lazy to spell check. Sorry not sorry. Best wishes with your quest to find a good movie to kill some time with! -Brandon.

John Rosman's New Life tries to breathe exactly that into the zombie genre, and only somewhat succeeds. This is a film with some good atmosphere, scenery and genuinely disturbing special effects but it's consistently unclear in narrative, distracted by its own weird subplots and never quite grounds itself in anything wholly cohesive. A young girl (Hayley Erin) is on the run from the director (Tony Amendola) of a nefarious institute who has hired a mysterious fixer (Sonia Walger) to track her down and eliminate her. Why? Well I've already mentioned zombies earlier which isn't a secret the film really keeps too well from the outset, so there you go. The film is at its strongest when it focuses on the young girl evading her pursuers, seeking food and shelter from a kindly farmer and his wife, the simplicity of moving from place to place. When the story pivots back to the fixer is when it sort of loses momentum; Walger is a great actress whose work I love in LOST, but she's saddled with an odd arc here. Too much dialogue and a bizarre subplot about her early onset ALS do nothing for the story at large and just muddy things up. It also suffers from a jarringly abrupt ending and a general lack of focus.

"New Life," directed by John Rosman, recalls David Cronenberg's early films like *Shivers* and *Rabid* with its blend of grotesque disease, dangerous infected, and a hint of corporate conspiracy. The story tracks Jessica (Hayley Erin), a fugitive harboring a lethal pathogen, pursued by Elsa (Sonya Walger), a fixer with ALS linked to a shadowy organization. Its slow tension builds to unsettling, Cronenberg-inspired horror, with practical effects showing bodies twisted by a primal plague.

Rosman echoes Cronenberg's knack for unease and bodily betrayal-think less *The Fly*'s transformation, more the raw paranoia of his earlier works. Jessica's flight and Elsa's fraying resolve add human weight, while the conspiracy lurks subtly in the background. The Pacific Northwest setting lends a stark chill, and a mid-film shift keeps it engaging, though it lacks Cronenberg's deeper bite.

"New Life" is an interesting watch, particularly for its nods to Cronenberg's early style. It's a solid debut with strong performances, offering a fresh take that fans of that era might appreciate, even if it doesn't fully match its predecessor's intensity.

I almost skipped this movie after reading the extremely negative reviews it got on here, certainly the ones stating I shouldn't trust the first ratings as most often those are biased, a thing I totally agree with. But a friend watched it and told me it wasn't that bad so I gave it a shot and I'm glad I did because it was entertaining. Maybe not the best in this genre but still worth a watch if you like that kind of stories. I sure do. Hayley Erin and Sonya Walger play the main characters and we're both convincing. Sure there are no Oscar winning performances, neither for the script that feels like a déjà-vu but it's just easy entertainment and sometimes that's just all that I need.

Agent Elsa Gray is tasked with tracking down Jessica Murdock, who's on the run and heading for The Canadian border. Unbeknown to Elsa, Jessica is hiding a deadly secret.

The short running time appealed to me, and that was both good and bad, good that I could squeeze it in one afternoon, bad because at times it felt a tad rushed.

The opening is simply bizarre, you won't know who's who, or what's happening, it really does take time to work out what's happening, the trouble is, when it does, and the action starts, it's not long before the credits roll.

Some good action sequences, and a few jump scares, there's nothing new here, nothing we haven't seen several times before, but there is some originality here.

The twist, when it comes it unexpected, it really did catch me off guard, a story I simply wasn't expecting.

Nicely acted, good visuals, with some rather effective makeup, overall a decent watch. I don't find myself saying this very often, I just wish it was longer.

6/10.