By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The horrors of isolation become especially severe in this pandemic production.
Dark Star Pictures releases ALONE WITH YOU in theaters February 4 and on VOD, digital and DVD February 8. It was written and directed by Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks, and Bennett also stars along with Emma Myles, Dora Madison and genre fave Barbara Crampton. The synopsis: “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.”
“Coming from such different backgrounds and disciplines,” Bennett and Brooks say in a statement, “we both enter our directing partnership with a common starter–character. The worlds we create and the horrors we bring forward mean nothing if our audience cannot easily experience those things through strong and complex characters. Empathy is something earned in film, and we work hard to earn that suspension of disbelief.
“We created and filmed ALONE WITH YOU entirely during quarantine. Our goal was to bring you the horrors of the pandemic and what we were feeling without ever directly referencing the very real horror happening outside our door. Rather, it was the feeling of isolation and loss of identity that intrigued us. The anxiety of being trapped and ripped away from the people you love felt evergreen. Being left only to your own worst inner thoughts and insecurities felt truly universal. And so we went to work.
“Our characters have always been patchwork quilts of our collective fears and anxieties, and Charlie was no different. As writers, we used Charlie almost as our personal quarantine diary. A place to dump all these unwanted stresses and dark thoughts. A conduit for our true fears. Are we trapped? Is there an end in sight or are we doomed to this limbo forever?
“We’ve always been drawn to the horror films of the late ’70s/early ’80s. Films that played with the sanity of their characters such as DON’T LOOK NOW or THE CHANGELING. These films could almost be thrillers until they walked us deeper into the dark, like THE SENTINEL or POSSESSION. Those films bring the audience so close to their characters that we felt their madness and confusion. We are equally delighted by the current return to that form of storytelling in films such as HEREDITARY or THE LIGHTHOUSE. When writing alone with you we couldn’t help but think, ‘What if David Lynch directed THE LODGE?’ These films formed the primordial ooze from which we shaped our film.
“We love horror that creeps up on you and breathes down your neck. That nagging feeling that there is something waiting just beyond the dark. The feeling of true dread excites us and is always something we strive for in our films. We want to be haunted long after these films are over. We want to question our quiet hallways and the darkness creeping in the other room. Horror is universal because it is something we are all born into. The dreaded unknown. The terror of the void. The fear of being left in the dark. Alone.”
You can read more about ALONE WITH YOU in RUE MORGUE #204, now on sale!
