Alive: An Undead Survival Series is like RC Cola in that it is a ripoff of a much more successful brand, mimicking its source material in every conceivable way except for quality. Alive wants so badly to be The Walking Dead that every attempt at quality suffers for it. The theme song, characters, and plot all feel like someone trying to remember and imitate things about The Walking Dead and failing miserably. There is no budget, but that isn't damning; rather it's the lack of good shot composition, acting, sound quality, and general talent that destroys the series. Dialogue feels improvisational, and not in the good way, but even if the script was top notch there isn't an actor in the series that could deliver it.
The zombies in Alive are the expected level of garbage, given that they seem to be random people without any acting experience or skill. Zombies fall over on main characters and chatter their teeth, trying to imitate zombies from other, much better shows.
There are actors in Alive that I want to see more of. Daniel's actor in particular seems like he's at least trying to pretend that he's in a zombie apocalypse, even if the shoddy sound and camera work covers up his efforts. Other than a few standouts, however, the side characters are forgettable and badly acted. Carl, played by the writer/director/producer/editor Ty Cheman, is constantly on screen and has nothing to do but circle the name Buffalo on a map as though he forgot what city he was in. Carl is given too much attention and no plot points to deliver, aside from burying a zombie that laughs when dirt is shoveled on it. As writer/director/producer/editor, Cheman seems to have gone completely unquestioned, to the detriment of the entire project. He consistently uses bad takes and makes bizarre cuts, making the actors look like amateurs, which to be fair, they are. The script is the sort of middle-school tripe that college kids find in their attics and burn so it can't be used as blackmail. The only way this series could be more transparently an ego project is if Cheman cast his friends as main characters, which he appears to have actually done.
There seem to be three leads in Alive, though it's hard to tell given that there are far too many characters to care about and still somehow not enough to interest me. The first of the Three Musketeers of failure is Officer O'Brian, played by Phill Beith. Naturally, your mind is filled with questions. What's O'Brian's first name? Why are all cop characters created by hack writers Irish? Does O'Brian have a single character trait other than spouting lines someone thought were badass as they scribbled them on a napkin at Starbucks? To answer those questions and more, I kept watching Alive. It was a mistake. Officer O'Brian, as far as I can tell, has no relations to any other characters, and his main contribution to the flimsy plot is to occasionally be dog-piled by over-acting zombies so the editor has an excuse to put "To Be Continued," on the screen. I assume we're supposed to care about O'Brian, but since he's a cardboard cutout cliché collection of half-remembered cop show characters, I'm not sure how anyone could feel anything but contempt for him. Beith sneers half his lines and Christian-Bales the rest, so that even if you struggle through the awful sound you still can't understand his hackneyed dialogue. His part appears to have been written and acted by people who have seemingly never seen a police officer represented in television or film.
Our second lead is Michael, played by Billy Nemi. He goes places and does things, but none of it accomplishes anything. He tries to act so hard that his face scrunches up into a raisin. After watching the series once, I didn't know this character's name. Since Nemi's idea of acting seems to be whining improvised tripe, he's hard to find likable in any meaningful way. When his character gets into a car wreck at the end of episode 4 (spoilers ?), I found myself hoping that he was dead. But since I'm apparently in Hell and Alive: An Undead Survival Series is my punishment, Michael survives unscathed aside from being splashed with fake blood. Although he is put in peril before the abrupt and unearned "To Be Continued," at the end of the four-episode season, I have no reason to doubt that he'll be back in the next episode to bland-up the already painfully boring plot.
Our third lead, who might be the antagonist, is Captain Marcus, played by Norm Queeno. While O'Brian and Michael's attempts at acting are mildly painful, Norm Queeno's acting is like a first year theater student's parody of a bad actor, and the sound of his voice is like having nails hammered into your ears. His high pitch and thick accent bring to mind side characters from Fargo, and I found myself giggling uncontrollably as he delivered lines that were supposed to be serious. My personal favorite line of the entire series is presented here phonetically; "The ziti beelongs to the deed naow." Queeno seems incapable of making any acting choices that would develop his character, instead delivering every line as though he was imitating a piece of plywood. He refuses to emote, even when murdering people and generally being a mustache-twirling villain. His crowning moment, however, is that in the middle of a dialogue scene in a moving truck, Queeno puts his turn signal on and stops at a stop sign. It's the apocalypse; who is he watching out for? Why would he stop at the stop sign at all? He's heavily armed, and the only cop in Buffalo is sneer-growling his way through a list of lines that twelve-year-olds wouldn't be impressed by.
Alive: an Undead Survival Series is unacceptable, even by B-movie standards. Skip it.
The zombies in Alive are the expected level of garbage, given that they seem to be random people without any acting experience or skill. Zombies fall over on main characters and chatter their teeth, trying to imitate zombies from other, much better shows.
There are actors in Alive that I want to see more of. Daniel's actor in particular seems like he's at least trying to pretend that he's in a zombie apocalypse, even if the shoddy sound and camera work covers up his efforts. Other than a few standouts, however, the side characters are forgettable and badly acted. Carl, played by the writer/director/producer/editor Ty Cheman, is constantly on screen and has nothing to do but circle the name Buffalo on a map as though he forgot what city he was in. Carl is given too much attention and no plot points to deliver, aside from burying a zombie that laughs when dirt is shoveled on it. As writer/director/producer/editor, Cheman seems to have gone completely unquestioned, to the detriment of the entire project. He consistently uses bad takes and makes bizarre cuts, making the actors look like amateurs, which to be fair, they are. The script is the sort of middle-school tripe that college kids find in their attics and burn so it can't be used as blackmail. The only way this series could be more transparently an ego project is if Cheman cast his friends as main characters, which he appears to have actually done.
There seem to be three leads in Alive, though it's hard to tell given that there are far too many characters to care about and still somehow not enough to interest me. The first of the Three Musketeers of failure is Officer O'Brian, played by Phill Beith. Naturally, your mind is filled with questions. What's O'Brian's first name? Why are all cop characters created by hack writers Irish? Does O'Brian have a single character trait other than spouting lines someone thought were badass as they scribbled them on a napkin at Starbucks? To answer those questions and more, I kept watching Alive. It was a mistake. Officer O'Brian, as far as I can tell, has no relations to any other characters, and his main contribution to the flimsy plot is to occasionally be dog-piled by over-acting zombies so the editor has an excuse to put "To Be Continued," on the screen. I assume we're supposed to care about O'Brian, but since he's a cardboard cutout cliché collection of half-remembered cop show characters, I'm not sure how anyone could feel anything but contempt for him. Beith sneers half his lines and Christian-Bales the rest, so that even if you struggle through the awful sound you still can't understand his hackneyed dialogue. His part appears to have been written and acted by people who have seemingly never seen a police officer represented in television or film.
Our second lead is Michael, played by Billy Nemi. He goes places and does things, but none of it accomplishes anything. He tries to act so hard that his face scrunches up into a raisin. After watching the series once, I didn't know this character's name. Since Nemi's idea of acting seems to be whining improvised tripe, he's hard to find likable in any meaningful way. When his character gets into a car wreck at the end of episode 4 (spoilers ?), I found myself hoping that he was dead. But since I'm apparently in Hell and Alive: An Undead Survival Series is my punishment, Michael survives unscathed aside from being splashed with fake blood. Although he is put in peril before the abrupt and unearned "To Be Continued," at the end of the four-episode season, I have no reason to doubt that he'll be back in the next episode to bland-up the already painfully boring plot.
Our third lead, who might be the antagonist, is Captain Marcus, played by Norm Queeno. While O'Brian and Michael's attempts at acting are mildly painful, Norm Queeno's acting is like a first year theater student's parody of a bad actor, and the sound of his voice is like having nails hammered into your ears. His high pitch and thick accent bring to mind side characters from Fargo, and I found myself giggling uncontrollably as he delivered lines that were supposed to be serious. My personal favorite line of the entire series is presented here phonetically; "The ziti beelongs to the deed naow." Queeno seems incapable of making any acting choices that would develop his character, instead delivering every line as though he was imitating a piece of plywood. He refuses to emote, even when murdering people and generally being a mustache-twirling villain. His crowning moment, however, is that in the middle of a dialogue scene in a moving truck, Queeno puts his turn signal on and stops at a stop sign. It's the apocalypse; who is he watching out for? Why would he stop at the stop sign at all? He's heavily armed, and the only cop in Buffalo is sneer-growling his way through a list of lines that twelve-year-olds wouldn't be impressed by.
Alive: an Undead Survival Series is unacceptable, even by B-movie standards. Skip it.
