Dir - John Hyams
Overall: MEH
Playing off of tired road thriller/cat and mouse motifs, Alone from director John Hyams and screenwriter Mattias Olsson has its moments of suspense and a few genre subversions thrown in to justify its existence, but it still ends up being a miserable viewing experience. Not to be confused with Johnny Martin's zombie movie of the same name which was released the same year, this one is broken up into one word "chapters" and starts off as yet another variation of Steven Spielberg's Duel. Switching gears for the second act where Marc Menchaca's odious, backroads scumbag stalker gets the upper hand, Jules Willcox's widow then has to spend the rest of the movie trying to escape her kidnapper's clutches on foot. Some of our protagonist's behavior is questionable, but much less so than normal for films that are ripe with moments for the audience to yell at the screen when characters do things that we of course would never do if in their predicament. Wilcox' successful survival instincts give the movie a more agreeable angle to work with, but this is still an ugly affair where we are expected to endure an uninteresting, one-note villain tormenting a poor woman who already has enough trauma on her plate.
Dir - Zu Quirke
Overall: MEH
The full-length debut from writer/director Zu Quirke and the fourth film in the Welcome to Blumhouse series of releases, Nocturne side-tails much of its horror elements while getting lost in a nebulous narrative about sacrifice, sibling rivalry, and ambition as it pertains to teenagers who are on the verge of young adulthood. As a set of child prodigy twins, Madison Iseman and Sydney Sweeney turn in solid performances, especially the latter who is the main protagonist that is caught up with her own competing struggles while simultaneously trying to understand how an occult musical transcript is manipulating her life. This is where Quirke's screenplay fails to hold itself together, as it introduces some cryptic details yet fails to follow up on any of them. Significant enough portions of the movie go by without even addressing the supernatural goings-ons, as if Sweeney's character has forgotten about them due to her own crippling anxieties about one-upping her sister in a graduation showcase. As a result, all of Quirke's stylistic mood-setting is wasted on a story whose otherworldly elements come off as a lazy afterthought instead of something propelling things along, as is told to us yet not convincingly portrayed outside of a couple of schlocky drawings in a "scary" notebook.
Dir - Josephine Decker
Overall: MEH
A deliberate, historically inaccurate biopic on celebrated author Shirley Jackson, the apply titled Shirley features command performances from its two leads and is a refreshing deviation in the sub-genre, yet it is unremarkable otherwise. Based off of Susan Scarf Merrell's novel of the same name which told a fictionalized version of her subject's life around the writing of her 1951 book Hangsaman, it utilizes such a historical period to examine Jackson's mental illnesses such as agoraphobia, anxiety, and imposter syndrome, yet it does so while stylistically adhering to some of the atmospheric dread found in the author's work. It is as much a fake story about Jackson as it is her live-in nurse/muse, played by Odessa Young who is undergoing her own bouts of trauma concerning her newfound motherhood, love-hate-relationship with her employer, and her husband's infidelity. Various mind games are played by both Elizabeth Moss in the title role and Michael Stuhlbarg as her husband, (literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman), which depicts each of them as cruel and eccentric, something that has not been substantiated by those who knew the couple in real life. Fitting to the story at least which exists in a psychological haze of angst, it all meanders to a point without saying much about its subjects besides highlighting their antagonistic quirkiness.
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