Saskatchewan-filmed Die Alone, starring Carrie-Anne Moss, Douglas Smith, Kimberly-Sue Murray and Frank Grillo, takes the concept of a zombie film and combines that with a time loop story in an interesting approach to an apocalyptic film. Written and directed by Lowell Dean, the Canadian filmmaker was particularly happy to shoot this movie in his home province.
“I got such phenomenal support from the Saskatchewan crew,” Dean told Yahoo Canada. “There haven’t been a lot of movies of this scope shot in Saskatchewan, which is where I’m from, and I genuinely didn’t believe we’d shoot in Saskatchewan.”
“[That] almost became a superpower when we went back to Saskatchewan to make it, because there are communities … where people work a lot in film, … so it’s just a job, they just do the thing. But it was like a love affair. It was passion. Every department — I was always blown away by how hard people would work for the movie. And there were moments where I was like, ‘I don’t know if we can pull this off,’ and 15 people were doing other things. They built that house, basically the whole interior from scratch in a two-week period.”
What is ‘Die Alone’ about?
Die Alone is set in the near-future when Ethan (Smith) wakes up disoriented after a car crash with a cast on his arm. Ethan has amnesia and he’s trying to find his girlfriend Emma (Murray).
Navigating this apocalyptic world with roaming zombies, Ethan meets Mae, a survivalist successfully navigating how to not be infected by the zombies at her home. Mae takes him in, despite the challenges of his amnesia, but there’s a twist that reveals an interesting connection between Ethan and Mae.
“The initial idea was just wanting to get away from technology and society, and fantasizing and romanticizing the idea of apocalypse,” Dean said about how he developed the initial concept for the film. “Then quickly realizing that wouldn’t be so great.”
“This one took more like a decade of shaping to finally become what it is now.”
But crafting a twist for the audience near the end of the film is something that Dead described as a “tough tightrope to walk” for Die Alone, figuring out exactly how much to tease before the reveal.
“I kind of went back and forth between thinking the whole movie is a linchpin for these reveals, versus this should just be a good movie that stands on its own about character,” Dean said. “While we were shooting it I was very obsessed with having great breadcrumbs, because … I’m someone who loves, when I watch a movie that I know is a mystery, paying really close attention and thinking every raised eyebrow, every wink, every close up of an item could mean something.”
“So I really wanted to let the movie hopefully be a story that you could just turn your brain off and enjoy. But if you were that kind of person, like me, who was obsessed with detail, when you watch it the second time you’d say, ‘Oh, they did so much for me.'”
‘She’s not just a great actor, she’s a great woman’
When it came to working with Moss on this movie, Dean called it “the best experience ever.”
“I was very nervous, obviously, because she is someone I heavily admire,” he said. “I also started thinking about all the other parallels, like Memento being like a brilliant film about someone with memory loss that she was in.”
“But I will say she immediately set me at ease. She’s just so down to earth and she’s not just a great actor, she’s a great woman, and I feel like she integrated so well. She came to Saskatchewan. She was out literally in the middle of nowhere, like an hour away from even Regina, and she seemed like she was having a blast. So it was a dream collaboration.”
Moss also played a significant role in Smith playing Ethan, after previously working with the actor.
“I didn’t know that they had worked together, but she was cast first and then when we were looking to cast Ethan, his name was on a list of people we should consider,” Dean explained. “Carrie-Anne was very involved in the film, so she would get to see the options and she was so excited when she saw Douglas’s name, because she’s like, ‘Oh, I love Douglas. I’ve worked with him.'”
“That was already a huge thing for me, because they need that instant familiarity and kind of awkward chemistry, because they spend so much of the movie together.”
‘I’m really fascinated by not putting a movie in a genre box’
Movie and TV lovers will be tempted to compare Die Alone to other zombie-related productions, particularly the popular series The Last Of Us, but Dean is well aware of the likelihood of that comparison and didn’t block that out himself in the development of this film.
“I didn’t block it out because I’m a consumer of these things and I’m aware of the marketplace,” Dean said. “It’s impossible not to compare it.”
“It actually just legitimately forced me to, I think, try and do better with our creatures, or try and do better with our world, or try and step left or right and not just do the same thing. And the biggest gift, I’d say, … for the movie coming out how it is now, it’s not really a zombie movie. … That’s the window dressing for the story.”
While the creatures in Die Alone may be an attention-grabbing aspect of the film, it’s really a story about love and pushing humans to the limits of their hope.
“My influences for this cinematically were like [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,] Harold and Maude, things like that,” Dean said. “I just wanted it to be something I hadn’t seen before and I’m really fascinated by not putting a movie in a genre box.”
“I think life is messy and I’m more interested in films that make you hopefully laugh loudly one moment and then like 30 seconds later you’re nervous, and then you’re seeing something you don’t ever want to see again. And then maybe you’re kind of sad. … So I love the roller-coaster of human emotion.”
Die Alone in now in select Canadian theatres