Alone with You

I have a high tolerance for overused horror tropes, but there's one I simply can't stand: when mental illness (or a psychological "break") is meant to explain all the bizarre goings-on. To be fair, I've seen a few movies that have made this work well. "Alone With You" is NOT one of them... Self-indulgent, repetitive for no good reason, and utterly lacking in any originality whatsoever, this movie takes that trope and says, "How hard can we beat our audience over the head with this idea?" VERY hard, as it turns out. At every turn and in every moment, we are beleaguered by the writers/directors team who clearly cared very little about bringing something new to the table. Worse, their kitchen-sink approach means we get all kinds of horror staples without any point or purpose. Lights flicker, shadowy figures pass by in the background, technology malfunctions, doors won't open, religion is shoved down a character's throat... None of it sticks together, and none of it has one iota of a payoff. But worst of all (to me) is that this is all played off as a complete mental breakdown without any thought to how or why the character might perceive ANY of this stuff during a psychotic fugue. I'm not expecting reality here, just for the story to make sense. At all.

I thought Alone with You was sufficiently disturbing because the main character is so confused and seems to be slipping in and out of a dream state. Of course, I know this is NOT how mental illness works - it would never be this detailed of a hallucination, nor go on this long, this movie is more of a vivid nightmare. If you can accept it as a vivid nightmare, it's really unsettling. The situations that Charlie faces are all ugly - cheated on, rejected, trapped in her apartment and can't get out, and that horrific scene with the cat I could have totally done without. Still, I would have given this movie a higher rating if there were some kind of explanation or sense of reality by the end. As it stands, Alone with You is totally surreal and open to interpretation. Also, Charlie - the main character - is obsessed with this ugly, mean girl named Simone, that's one of the most irritating things about the movie. Her girlfriend (or rather ex-gf....or dead gf?) is weird looking and has a selfish, abrasive personality. So that makes the whole thing even yuckier, I wondered if that was intentional or if I just perceived the characters that way.

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