Efficient and effective, Alone is an impeccably well-crafted, minimalist descent into horror that wisely never tries to be something it is not. Traversing familiar motifs of the horror genre such as 'woman in peril' and 'survival horror', Alone doesn't take the easy way out by attempting to expound any theme or message, it instead opts to largely regulate thematical elements to subtext, understanding that the mere exhibition of brutality in the name of survival itself provides ample opportunities for thematic engagement. Taut and immersive, Hyam remains an impressive and underappreciated genre filmmaker whose general cinematic language in Alone beautifully enunciates the understated tension and voyeurism of its premise with simple, yet effective visual constructions. The formal precision, particularly in the film's opening act - a cat-and-mouse game between our female protagonist and our male antagonist - is masterfully constructed, an uneasy display of negotiations and unease between two characters which leads to attempted subjugation, violence, and ultimately the primal nature of survival. While alone struggles to maintain the opening acts immersive atmosphere of unease, the film's back half of survival horror still delivers the goods, providing a lean-and-mean little thriller in which one woman suffering through grief and trauma finds herself forced to fight back, in order to survive
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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