[Film Review] Alone (2020)

Jessica (Jules Willcox) is a grieving widow moving hundreds of miles across the Pacific Northwest to escape painful memories. On the road, she repeatedly crosses paths with another motorist, a man (Marc Menchaca) with whom interactions become increasingly ominous. He kidnaps Jessica and she must escape his remote cabin and the surrounding wilderness, using little more than the strength of her character and a will to survive.

Masterfully paced and directed by John Hyams, Alone is a relentless story of resilience and survival that hides a deeper emotional core. The film’s stark simplicity reveals truths about the lies we choose to believe and the empowerment that comes from accepting who we are when everything we know is stripped away.

Alone begins as many true crime stories do. Jessica encounters a man whose “nice guy” persona makes her feel uncomfortable. Though his actions raise her defenses, he’s ready with simple and familiar explanations. Alone confronts gender stereotypes by allowing it’s heroine to act on her instinctive fears. Jessica is as aware of the man’s manipulative tactics as the audience is. She listens to her intuition and responds to her vague feelings of unease in a way many true crime aficionados would like to believe they would in the same situation. It’s a refreshing change and empowering wish fulfillment to watch Jessica refuse to put herself in danger to avoid making him angry. She is more concerned with her safety than what he thinks of her and offers an emotional conduit for women tired of ignoring gut feelings of fear to avoid being seen as a bitch. Jessica rejects the lie of his good intentions, choosing instead to honor her instincts and accept what she knows to be true.

Jessica repeatedly evades the man and finds facades of refuge leaving her with nothing to turn to but her own resilience. The safety of her car, a means of escape in many horror movies, now makes her a target with it’s recognizable design and conspicuous U-Haul trailer. True to its title, Alone perfectly captures the feeling of being surrounded by “help” but still feeling helpless and reveals the limitations of our socially constructed ideas of safety. It’s a refreshing update to a familiar narrative, but also a frustrating indictment of girl power mantras and true crime empowerment. What good is a cell-phone if you can’t tell 911 where you are? What good is a car if there’s only one road? We’re left with the question of what Jessica could have done to avoid her fate and confronted with the fact that knowledge does not always equal safety.

What makes Alone so harrowing is the fact that Jessica’s awareness does little to protect her.

She does everything right. She listens to her gut. She fucks politeness. But she still falls into the man’s trap. He seems to predict her every move, suspiciously showing up at rest stops and roadside motels when Jessica is there. He is an ever present threat with a single-minded mission making visible the vague feelings of danger many women experience every time they leave their homes. Menchaca masterfully finds the right balance of unremarkable charm and thinly veiled menace, becoming a physical manifestation of gaslighting and rape culture. Once he finally captures Jessica, he drops this facade revealing the monster lurking beneath his unassuming disguise.

In his tactics, the man becomes a representation of the manipulative male predator. He uses the fact that women are trained to be polite at all costs to his advantage, trusting that his thin justifications will not be challenged. His goal is to make Jessica fear him, then doubt her judgement and character. It’s not enough for him to end her life, first he wants to break her spirit, getting off on the power her fear gives him. After learning about the tragic end of her marriage, he forces her to watch triggering videos, relishing in her suffering. He plays an interstate cat and mouse game just to unnerve her and see her squirm. And Jessica is not the only one who falls victim to his manipulation. A would-be rescuer struggles with his desire to believe the man’s lies over Jessica’s warnings accurately reflecting the many ways society will turn away from women’s truths to avoid being made uncomfortable.

The fact that the man’s turn from Nice Guy to Monster is not at all surprising and is perhaps the biggest societal construct Alone challenges. We’re conditioned to read this type of behavior as threatening and have seen so many examples that his unassuming presence almost seems to be a red flag in and of itself. Alone frames the dialogue as an evaluation of Jessica’s actions because we have so deeply internalized the idea that predatory men will not change. And this is the heart of the lie we must reject. Jessica does everything right by the standards we set for women, but the man gets to be a single-minded monster, his behaviors vilified but accepted as static. The fact that we learn his name so late in the movie reinforces this characterization. He is an avatar for predatory men and his actions are written off as part of the way the world is dangerous for women.

The film’s conclusion is cathartic, demonstrating the power of saying the truth out loud. Like most predators operating in plain sight, what the man fears even more than death is exposure. Jessica has seen the truth behind his lies and refuses to rest until the world sees it too. She knows that he values his image just as much as he values his own life and that shattering his “nice guy” persona will be as devastating to him as a knife to the heart. 

Alone is a harrowing commentary on finding the will to live in the most dire circumstances. Jessica’s story strips away our defenses and asks us to question not only the way we see the world, but the lengths we would go to survive. Who are we underneath our socially constructed images? What lies do we choose to believe and how will we respond when everything is gone but ourselves and the truth?

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