ALONE LANDS A TECHNICAL KNOCKOUT

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Most times when there is a movie that involves some serial killer/stalker/creep who is looking for his next victim, there is usually something missing that makes it belong to that “It’s one of those films” category.  There have been classics such as Silence of the Lambs, Fear, American Psycho and most recently The House Tha Jack Built but the film Alone is one that has exceeded expectations from the very beginning the film rolls.  Recently screened at the Fantasia Film Festival, director John Hyams, of Universal Soldiers: Regeneration, makes this serial killer genre in masterclass form.  If you have to think if there was something about this film that is missing then you would have to look hard.

Jules Wilcox stars as Jane who is ready to start her new life by leaving for her hometown.  She gets into her car and all her belongings are thrown into a U-Haul trailer.  Her family is not too pleased with what she is doing and her mother thinks that it is a bad idea.  Stubbornly, Jane has made her decision and sticks with it.  Jane begins to start her new life by travelling on the roads of the Pacific Northwest where she tries to overtake a random jeep on the two-lane highway.  The man in the jeep does not let her and accelerates while a log carrying truck is oncoming.  Jane has to speed up faster than her counterpart to survive a brutal three-way accident that would have left her dead.

As she tries to continue her journey, she eventually meets the man, played by Marc Menchaca who has all the characteristics of a serial killer.  Aviator glasses, thick moustache, wilderness gear and a jeep are enough nuances to give any woman the creeps and Jane becomes anxiously creeped out.  The man begins to show up coincidentally in areas along the Pacific Northwest which start to terrify Jane as she has completely accepted that she is being stalked.  The cat and mouse journey between the two lands them into the wilderness of Oregon which has Jane go against the elements.  This is what brings the best out of Jules Wilcox is her physical endurance of playing a stalked woman who is in dire need of help and is near delirious.  Wilcox carries the whole film and gets the audience to side with her and engage with her pain and the joy of when she fights back against this man.  Whenever she hits the man you want her to hit him more and harder the next time and you are getting up and encouraging her like Rocky.

What brings this film to the next level is the cinematography of Federico Verardi that allows for this saturated narrative to blossom. Against the beauty of the wilderness of Oregon, the darkness of this duel between Jules Wilcox and Marc Menchaca is staged so brilliantly.  The shallow focus shots are one of the best instances in this film as well as those Hitchcock type of shots like peeping through a keyhole or looking under a door.  At those points where you feel like you are Jules on the run, it heightens your tension and anxiety but also puts you in stealth mode because you want to escape.  Ironically, there is a point where Anthony Heald, who played Dr. Frederick Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs, makes an apperance in the fim which leaves the audience dumbfounded because you don’t know what he is going to do because of this past role.   It’s a WTF moment.  When you get to the final moments of the film you realize how much of a ride that John Hyams and his crew have put you on and that it could never be repeated.  The first time is always the best.