Alone is a remake of a Swedish film written and directed by Mattias Olsson, (here the scriptwork is still handled by him) about a woman wonderfully played by an actress I've not had the pleasure of seeing before named Jules Willcox, who is packing up a U-Haul and taking off from something. On the way, she encounters a pyschopath who plays mind games before abducting her. The film takes a great tension building path getting you to the crux of our heroine's distress. It's pretty hard to guess the direction this will take initially, and the obvious clear stress Willcox is under before her antagonist goes to work is nicely, and delicately handled. She's an impressive performer.
Willcox' character is smarter than your average bear. She's not in any mood for these types of male on female violence shenanigans. I'll let you savor the ingenuity of her character, her guts, toughness, and smarts. Our nutjob antagonist is played by Marc Menchaca, who many will recognize as one of Ruth's stupid, confused uncles on the Netflix stunner Ozark. He's terrific on Ozark, and that role is nothing like the individual he plays here. There's a sociopathic emptiness behind his eyes, which belong to a face that carries with it the utter definition of benign. But isn't that what they say about all serial killers and victimizers?
Alone is directed by John Hyams. Some would consider him a journeyman director in a sense, but a closer look reveals great success in the direct-to-dvd action arena, and is given credit for breathing new life into the Universal Soldier franchise, to the point where they've gotten critical praise and were regarded among the straight to home video best of their year. Hyams is a second generation filmmaker, whose father I've written about before here. Peter Hyams never really made any huge box office smashes, but his films were successful enough to warrant 40 years of regular work on high budget fare like Capricorn One, Outland, Running Scared, The Relic, etc. His son is also a very good filmmaker himself, and after doing mostly action, he shows a flare for suspense and tension that bodes well for future films.
This is a good Halloween choice, as tension, scares and suspense are here in great quantity. It is a distant cousin to Don Coscarelli's short film Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, starring Ethan Embry, and based on Joe Lansdale's short story. That one goes more for straight horror, and I also highly recommend it.
Check out Alone, but maybe don't watch it that way.
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