If you’re looking for a mental health & horror movie this season—you might enjoy All Alone Together. I’ll openly admit, this movie seemed *totally awesome* to me, partly because, probably, I thought it would have been “totally awesome” for me to watch as a twenties-something college student. And, in full disclosure, this feature film seems to have been made by twenty-something college students, so it’s pretty much the Platonic ideal of that.
That being said, what this film lacks in terms of any technical proficiency, it makes up for in spades with imagination. I still feel like among six years of Mental Filmness entries, the first 15 minutes of this film stand out as being particularly magical. Not only because it’s one of those filmmaker’s illusions or “tricks,” but because it also succinctly lays out the roadmap for the rest of the film. It’s a pretty layered script. We learn everything we need to know about the character in the beginning, and the rest of the movie is just exploring those demons—alcoholism, the death of the character’s parents (and dog), the filmmaker’s culpability in it all, and the pressure of changing. What is “the haunting” to you?
The ending of this film might seem like another bookend to the whole “trick,” but to me, it felt appropriate. I loved that this film was nuanced and confident enough to work within its own weird logic without ever fully explaining anything. It creates its own fantastical reality where a student short has Hollywood-like moguls clamoring after it, and the filmmaker moonlights as a night janitor at an elementary school having 2 a.m. conversations with a kid who had an after-school club that ran for 6 hours. What does all of this represent? His desire to capitalize on own tragedy, his pressure on himself to write himself out of it, or his overall desire to change the outcome? The film leaves you questioning all of those things and, if you’re the right audience, surrendering yourself to its spell, and that’s what I loved about it.
Watch All Alone Together in the virtual festival for FREE until 11/3: https://watch.eventive.org/…/play/67021027a7ee110082cf2d9b
Tell us what you think here: https://mentalfilmness.com/forums/forum/all-alone-together/
