Alone With You is an intense thriller that despite its short runtime, feels like it waits far too long for the big reveal.
Alone With You is an intense thriller that, despite its several faults, is a brilliant work of art. It is visually stunning, suspenseful, and has a great story at the core of it all. Clocking in at just under ninety minutes, it is a quick watch, and something that fans of the genre are sure to appreciate for several reasons.
This movie starts off with Charlie (Emily Bennett) getting ready to celebrate her anniversary with her girlfriend, Simone (Emma Myles), who is returning from a business trip. As time goes on things start to get very weird, very dark, and very creepy. What follows is an intense thrilled that is taken to the next level but its visuals and lead performance, but pulled back down because of pacing issues, predictability, and poor dialogue.
Alone With You doesn’t just star Emily Bennett, she is also the writer and director — and herein lies the problem. I don’t want to say that perhaps she bit off more than she can chew, because Bennett clearly shines throughout this less than 90 minute long film. The camera is almost always focused on her, as she is in literally every scene of the movie.
Sprinkled throughout the story she has others share the screen with her — her girlfriend, a friend, and her mother (both the latter are seen only through video chat). This movie is Bennett’s to carry, and she does a great job as Charlie. The longer the movie goes on the more unwound she gets, which can be seen in her mannerisms, her eyes, and even her outfits.
That said, the dialogue has a hard time bringing Alone With You to its full potential. Bennett is the writer here, so it is unclear how much of this is from the pages of the script and how much of it changed and evolved while filming. For such a short runtime, this film feels far longer than it should, which is in part due to the messy dialogue, but also in part because viewers have to wait until the final few minutes for the big reveal.
The worst part about that wait is it is fairly predictable about twenty minutes before it is put out there. And that is being generous. Many viewers will be hanging on just to see if they were correct or not, and even if they haven’t figured it all out, they will likely have part of it correct.
Charlie’s mother makes a couple of brief appearances, and her role is clearly to further traumatize Charlie. It is obvious from the start that she does not approve of Charlie being a lesbian, and even refuses to call Simone anything but a roommate. She brings in the religious aspect to the movie when asking for a cross necklace back, saying it never should have been given to Charlie in the first place.
Perhaps this is in order to give Charlie some self doubt about her faith and lifestyle, but it just feels like a bit of a throw away, and honestly, an unnecessary part of the story. While the necklace does end up being somewhat important, it really didn’t need to be. The conversations with her mother pulled me out of the intensity of the movie, especially the second one.
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The majority of the visuals help to heighten the suspense, however all of the beach scenes, as important as they are, completely take the audience out of the film It would have been much better and more effective if the entire film took place inside that tiny and claustrophobic apartment.
There is a lot to praise here, and since the movie is less than an hour and half, it is more than worth checking out if you are into the thriller genre.
A fairly predictable thriller with some messy dialogue and creative missteps, but it delivers and incredible lead performance and some stunning visuals.
Rating: 3 out of 5
About Alone With You
As a young woman painstakingly prepares a romantic homecoming for her girlfriend, their apartment begins to feel more like a tomb when voices, shadows, and hallucinations reveal a truth she has been unwilling to face.
Dark Star Pictures will release the horror film  ALONE WITH YOU in Theaters February 4, 2022
and On Demand, Digital and DVD February 8, 2022.
Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.