It's Alive

A very pleasant surprise. Extraordinarily serious psychological horror (unlike my expectations of entertaining B-movie silliness) with an unsettling atmosphere and good performances. It doesn’t have any annoying teenagers or stupid heroes whose behaviour is impossible to comprehend, but living characters with credible behaviour and motivations (though the character of the mother would be very easy to hate with another actress). But you shouldn’t expect gore, that’s not what this is about – there are a couple of blood splatters and corpses, but no more than that. Josef Rusnak gets a lot of out of the premise, delivering a film made with ambition that may not scare you (though there are a couple of moments), but that has plenty of tension. The CGI child monster is fortunately shown only once, and it would have been even better without it, because it looks very bad. Otherwise, I’m very satisfied, it’s better than the recent Grace. (12.09.2009)

It's Alive suffers not only from its literalness but also from the fact that its individual phases aren't fully developed. The massacre in the hospital almost fizzles out, but it's still bearable. Most of the characters exist only to end up dead, which makes the film feel unnecessarily stretched out. As a remake of an average film, it's passable, although it doesn't surpass the original in any way. (29.07.2014)