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.