You know Tyler Posey. He’s the guy who spent years as the brooding Alpha in Teen Wolf, dodging hunters and supernatural drama. But back in 2020, he traded the claws for a baseball bat and a whole lot of isolation. People keep searching for the Tyler Posey zombie movie, usually because they saw a clip on TikTok or caught a thumbnail on a streaming service. The movie is called Alone.
Funny thing is, it’s not your typical "group of survivors in a mall" flick. It’s a claustrophobic, sweaty, and sometimes deeply depressing look at what happens when you’re stuck in an apartment while the world ends outside your window.
The Weird History of Alone and #Alive
If you feel like you’ve seen this movie before, you aren’t crazy. This is where things get kinda confusing. Alone (2020) was written by Matt Naylor. But here’s the kicker: Naylor also wrote the script for a South Korean movie called #Alive.
Both films came out in the same year.
#Alive actually hit Netflix first and became a massive global hit. Because of that, a lot of people think the Tyler Posey zombie movie is just a cheap American remake. It's actually more like a "sister film." They were developed around the same time using the same basic screenplay concept.
The Korean version is tech-heavy—drones, social media, very "Gen Z." Posey's version is a bit grittier and feels more like a traditional indie thriller. It’s fascinating to watch them back-to-back just to see how two different directors (Johnny Martin for Alone and Cho Il-hyung for #Alive) can take the same skeleton of a story and dress it up so differently.
What Actually Happens in the Movie?
Posey plays Aidan. He’s a surfer, a bit of a loner, and definitely not prepared for the apocalypse. He wakes up after a hookup to find that a "Screamer" virus is tearing Los Angeles apart.
These aren't slow, shuffling George Romero zombies. They’re fast. They scream. And most terrifyingly, they retain a tiny, flickering echo of their former selves. They repeat the last things they said before they turned. Imagine a zombie trying to eat your face while screaming, "Please, help me!" It’s haunting.
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Aidan spends the first chunk of the movie just... waiting. He vlogs. He rations. He almost gives up.
Then he sees Eva.
Eva, played by Summer Spiro, is in the apartment building across the way. They can’t reach each other because the courtyard is crawling with Screamers, so they communicate with signs and walkie-talkies. It’s a bit like a twisted version of Rear Window.
The Donald Sutherland Factor
Honestly, the biggest surprise in this movie is seeing Donald Sutherland show up. He plays a neighbor named Edward. Without spoiling too much, he represents the "human" threat. In every zombie movie, there's always a point where you realize the living are way more dangerous than the dead. Sutherland brings this eerie, soft-spoken menace to the role that really elevates the second half of the film.
Why This Tyler Posey Zombie Movie Hits Different Now
When they filmed Alone, nobody knew a real pandemic was about to happen.
The movie wrapped production just before the world went into lockdown in early 2020. By the time it was released in October of that year, the "stay at home" orders and the isolation Aidan felt weren't just horror tropes anymore—they were everyone's Tuesday afternoon.
Posey has been pretty vocal in interviews about how therapeutic the role was. He was going through some heavy stuff in his personal life, including the loss of his mother a few years prior, and he channeled that grief into Aidan. You can see it in his performance. There’s a scene where he’s recording a video message for his parents, and it feels uncomfortably real.
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The "Screamer" Rules Explained
If you’re watching this for the lore, here’s how these zombies work:
- Transmission: It’s the classic bite or scratch.
- Behavior: They are hyper-aggressive and incredibly agile. One scene shows them basically parkouring up the side of the building.
- Awareness: They aren't mindless. They seem to have a trapped consciousness, which makes killing them feel a lot more like murder than your average zombie-slaying spree.
- Physicality: Bleeding eyes and high-pitched shrieks are the main indicators that someone has turned.
Is It Worth Watching in 2026?
Look, it’s not a perfect movie. Critics weren't exactly kind to it, and it currently sits with a pretty low score on Rotten Tomatoes. Some of the logic is a bit "movie-fied"—like how easily the zombies can climb balconies one minute but get stuck behind a glass door the next.
But if you like Tyler Posey, it’s a must-watch. He carries about 80% of the movie by himself in a single room. It’s a physical, raw performance that proves he can do more than just the teen heartthrob thing.
If you want to check it out, it’s usually floating around on various VOD platforms or Prime Video depending on where you live. Just make sure you’re watching the 2020 movie directed by Johnny Martin, not the other half-dozen movies titled Alone that came out the same year.
Your Next Steps for Exploring the Genre
To get the full experience of this specific story, you should definitely watch the South Korean counterpart, #Alive, on Netflix. It’s a tighter film with better pacing, and seeing the cultural differences in how they handle the same apocalypse is a fun experiment for any horror nerd. If you’re a die-hard Posey fan, keep an eye out for his directorial debut, Sober House, which he’s been working on recently—it looks like he’s leaning even further into the dark, indie horror space that he started exploring here.