Die Alone

The stark title of this film by writer-director Lowell Dean really does not do it any favours. A futuristic dystopian thriller, Die Alone drops the viewer into a global environmental crisis in which human beings are being attacked by some kind of virus that turns them into plant zombies. At first the filmmaker seems to be drawing some kind of parallels with Covid, as newspaper articles speak of riots and resistance.

But then the film goes off in another direction. A young man called Ethan stumbles from his car and searches for his girlfriend Emma. A woman called Mae (Carrie-Ann Moss) takes him in and looks after him. As he gets in a number of scrapes, his amnesia prevents him from remembering those around him. Mae seems to be some kind of survivalist who carries a gun and has to keep her cranky generator running. Very few human beings are left after the plant attacks but there is one skeleton called Myrtle that hovers in the background.

Suffice to say Ethan and Mae are linked in some way and there is a massive twist toward the end.

Preposterously intriguing or intriguingly preposterous, Die Alone tries to be a sci-fi thriller and love story and perhaps also a warning of the damage human beings are wreaking to the planet. The zombie angle is not really pursued to any satisfaction. Why do they attack some things and not others. What happens to the people turned into plants? Do they decay and die or live forever? Who was Myrtle? I wish the film had filled in some of these details as the premise is solid. But it does rather let itself down. Great to see Carrie-Ann Moss being a badass but something is missing. Not so much Die Alone as To Die or Not to Die.

Trailer

Die Alone will be available on Home Entertainment from 10th March 2025