Alone with You

Alone With You is a film that makes you wonder how anything could be so filled with cliches. Are the creators that bad, or are they just ignorant and believe that the cliches they have assembled together here are innovations?

The standard isolation paranoid being driven mad cliches are all in place. Mysterious voices. Friends and associates manifesting bizarre behavior. And of course the concluding spiral to the revelation of the hidden guilt/fear.

Well these types of films can be enjoyable, (A Fantastic Fear of Everything starring Simon Pegg and the Wolf hour starring Naomi Watts come to mind) this feels like somebody lifelessly filled out a checklist while writing the script.

On the positive side there are a few nice shots that have no context or really place in the story in any way. They feel more like the director saying "look at my eye". And again, nice not beautiful. The lead performance isn't offensive but it doesn't stand out. They also managed to get an appearance from B-movie queen Barbara Crampton, which was legitimately a Skype call.

And that's about it for the positives. Negatives would be a severe lack of story, coherence, or originality. Also a 5-minute call from a drunk friend at a club. Yes it lasts for 5 wonderful exposition laden minutes. Yet somehow after taking the time for that in an 83 minute run time they managed to rush the ending, if you could even call it that.

This thing is a piece of crap. I watched it so that you wouldn't have to so don't.

Your first clue that it's going to be a terrible movie, Emily Bennett wrote, directed and stars in the movie. You need to be a Steven Spielberg or even a Sylvester Stallone caliber director to pull that off successfully and Emily Bennett is not.

I stumbled upon the 2021 thriller "Alone with You" in 2022, by random chance. And with this being a movie that I hadn't already seen, and it having Barbara Crampton on the cast list, of course I opted to sit down and see what writers and directors Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks had to offer here.

And I will say that "Alone with You" started out quite nice, and it kept being interesting a good long way through its run time. But then the movie just shifted into the absurd and becoming very chaotic and disharmonious, and providing little sense to me. Sure, I was getting that this might be something about a foray into Charlene's troubled psyche. But it became really annoying really fast, and the chaos ended up taking away the enjoyment from the movie.

The acting performances in "Alone with You" were good, and lead actress (and writer and director) Emily Bennett really put on a great performance in portraying the troubled Charlene character. I was disappointed that Barbara Crampton was hardly in the movie at all, especially since I was looking forward to seeing her in a thriller.

Visually then "Alone with You" starts out interesting enough, slowly building up the suspense, but eventually the whole thing became too chaotic for my liking.

It was a shame really, because "Alone with You" was off to a great start and there was so much potential for a great thriller right there. But ultimately then directors Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks ended up delivering a movie that fell short of thoroughly entertaining me. Sure, the movie was watchable, but it was just too much of a scrambled and chaotic display.

My rating of "Alone with You" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Let's get this out of the way; this movie isn't scary. At all. Creepy? Yes. Atmospheric? Definitely. But scary? Not even close. There are some elements that definitely are goosebump inducing if you are in the mood for it, but other than that, this movie is about as fear inducing as an episode of Ghost Hunters. Anyone looking to be frightened or even mildly creeped out by a movie should really look elsewhere. There isn't much to see here....

That being said, the acting is SUPERB. The entire cast is talented, delivered their lines believably and it seems like everyone had great chemistry. At times it didn't even seem like I was watching a movie. My TV was a giant window and the movie was me looking out through it. If more films took the time to really bring together a dynamite cast like this movie did, Indie films would be elevated to a much higher status.

To summarize; stay for the acting, but don't be surprised if the movie ends with you uttering, "MEH." loudly when it's over like I did.

Lucky to catch this gem at it's LA Premier. Top notch performances, technically flawless, and very, very creepy. One great jump scare, but that's not what it's about. Definitely chilling and a good companion for classic women psychosis movies like IMAGES, THREE WOMEN, POSSESSION, DARLING, or REPULSION. It may be the best horror flick I've seen since IT FOLLOWS. Definitely seek this one out!