• _Here Alone_; _Z for Zachariah_

    From septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to All on Mon Apr 26 21:33:41 2021
    Lucy Walters is sensational in _Here Alone_ as Anna, a lone
    survivalist camping in the woods in a post-apocalyptic
    America overrun by flesh-eating zombies. The zombies first
    appear halfway in the film; they are more deus ex machina
    that evoke the destruction of our sense of community than
    willful villains out to get people (they are just as happy
    eating corpses). The zombie affliction is caused by a
    virus/bacteria, which leads to the few uninfected humans
    wearing mask when running into strangers. But the film
    was made in 2016 and the virus, instead of a 2% mortality
    rate, causes all patients to violently attack others and rip
    apart our social fabric. (So it is more Sean Hannity/Fox News
    than COVID.) And the film is more tragic drama about a woman
    seeking redemption than outright horror. Having said that,
    the conditions in which she live are horrific by any civilized
    standard: she smears herself with excrement when invading
    deserted houses to steal food so as to avoid detection by
    zombies. The physical exertion needed for this role must
    have been unbelievable. In the past actresses aspired to be
    Meryl Streep, but Streep never had to deal with the ultra-
    physical stuff that Jessica Chastain, Charlize Theron, and
    now Walters have to shoulder in their recent films. Still,
    Anna has a car that shields her from the constant, miserable
    rain (this is upstate New York?), which is more than can be
    said of the father/step-daughter pair than she rescues. Soon
    sexyak tension erupts among the trio, but unlike in horror films
    it is forgiveness -- for the villain, and for Anna herself
    -- that is the main theme. Anna's backstory is only slowly
    revealed to us via flashbacks. I have rarely seen a film
    where flashbacks are so well-paced and used so effectively.
    It is not just the fates of her husband and child that are
    mysteries; it is revealed that she proposed marriage to
    her husband, who went to get drunk and buy her a wedding
    ring from a pawn shop that night! Walters depiction of
    her character fits this backstory perfect. The actress is
    just marvelous, better than 99% of her better-known peers.

    It is singularly unfortunate that I saw the similar-themed
    _Z for Zachariah_ immediately afterwards. Margot Robbie
    plays an innocent girl holding the fort in her homestead
    after a nuclear holocaust. Two men wanders in and we have
    the same sexual tension in _Here Alone_ all over again.
    But Robbie is rosy-cheeked throughout and never has a hair
    out of place. Her house is more spotless, inside and out,
    than mine has ever been; she even has a tractor for farming,
    and a private lake for swimming. The film is a Hollywoodized
    _Here Alone_, and it just doesn't work. Robbie affects an
    accent that could be either West Virginia (where filming
    took place) or her native Australia, while no one else has
    any accent; she tries to act young but her veteran
    seductress moves inevitably slip out. One can only wish
    Lucy Walters will get the roles that Robbie is being
    offered by default these days.

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  • From septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 28 10:13:36 2021
    _Here Alone_ evokes the iconic image of a woman's face
    smeared beyond recognition in Neil Marshall's _The Descent_.
    Lucy Walter might have her pick of horror film roles in the
    future, but she is much, much too good to be limited to one
    genre.

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