Director: John Hyams
Notable Cast: Jules Willcox, Marc Menchaca, Anthony Heald
As a big fan of John Hyams, particularly after the incredibly
underrated Universal Soldier films he crafted to reinvent the franchise as
dark, philosophical, ultra-violent works of existential debates, the fact that
he would tackle a survival thriller-horror had me all atwitter. With Alone,
he strips down the genre to its bare minimum and then perfects it, hammering
home the core emotional state of the situation rather than trying to slyly
inject an asinine angle on it. Only in the hands of a talented cast with a viscerally subtle director could Alone work as well as it does, but
Hyams brings together in an impactful manner that makes it one of the best
films of the year.