Alone

The cat-and-mouse-hunting-in-the-forest subgenre of the horror/thriller genre is a well-explored vein, and very infrequently is there any innovation to be seen. There's just only so many twists one can put on one person chasing another through the forest. Alone's attempt at innovation is go as minimalist as possible, and I do mean minimalist. Not counting voices heard on a phone or the one actor seen in a video reel on an iPad, this movie has three characters. And one is only in the movie for 5 minutes. It is carried almost entirely by two people, Jules Wilcox (playing Jessica) and Marc Menchaca (playing The Man). I will give credit where it's due in that both of these actors work their asses off to keep this movie alive. Menchaca's phony charm and casual malevolence are the monsters every woman fears when approached by an unknown man, something this movie even touches on in the first fifteen minutes or so. He introduces himself as just trying to be a nice guy, but it is clear from the first moment he's bad, and Jessica has every reason to listen to the red alarms going off in her head. Wilcox, meanwhile, brings to Jessica a strength and resilience that doesn't rely on YASSS QUEEN girlboss cliches. Jessica simply is a strong woman, resourceful, and determined to fight until she can't. But that's where the positives stop. Because while Alone is well-acted, and Jessica is a great character, the movie itself painfully paint-by-numbers. Going minimalist, and having the fight become more and more elemental and primal, aren't selling points when the movie is so damned routine. When there's movies like What Keeps You Alive or Significant Other that use the framework of a hunted-human movie to tell a different kind of story, Alone's back-to-basic approach feels more bare bones than anything. Sure, it does a good job with ratcheting up the tension, and the final confrontation has a gritty, visceral feel to it, but the supporting structure of the movie is so lacking in anything but the base premise, it feels like lipstick on the skeleton of a pig. And it seems to think this bare minimalism is some badge of honor, but no, it's not. It just feels like someone made a movie out of the TV Guide summary instead of the script. I don't think the average person will have a bad time with Alone. It does a good job with suspense, The Man is a sufficiently creepy, slimy bad guy, and Jessica is a great protagonist. Alone is entertaining, but it's also so non-descript amid a sea of similar movies, it's practically designed to be forgotten by the next day. Ironically, though its name implies singularity, it is most definitely just another movie in a crowded field.