Kenny Selko’s Alone posits a less-than-arresting plot as two-thirds of the characters are lethargically drug onto the screen before the director stumbles upon a haphazard moment of inspiration seconds before the film ends. What is left is the insinuation that the project was approached from the offset as a mere stepping stone, thus the necessary bastard child of what the director would ultimately like to forget as he dreams of walking up to receive his Oscar.
Ellen (Mandy Amano) has been left alone in the Alpah Chi Omega sorority house. Just as her paranoia begins to set in, Detective Wiley (Guy Nardulli) knocks on the door, announcing that a killer has been spotted three houses away and questions whether or not Ellen is by herself before requesting entry into the residence. After having Wiley provide identification, Ellen reluctantly asks the detective to leave. Shortly thereafter, Taylor (Jerod Edington), a fraternity brother, knocks on Ellen’s window, reiterating that a killer is at large and requests sanctity inside the sorority house. After rash deliberation, Ellen permits Taylor in but has she just permitted the killer into her room?
Two things come directly to mind when thinking of Selko’s horror short, Alone. First, the storyline comes across as trite, if not overtly cliché. The scenario that the typecast “last female”–which I’ll give the director credit for, he established quite cunningly considering his time frame–as she is forced to make a decision between two individuals, either of which may be the killer at large, seems rote at best. Yet, it is established during the opening sequence that the starlet doesn’t have everything quite in order upstairs via a stream-of-conscious voiceover. My quibble here is whether or not her mental instability is merely the filmmaker implementing an arbitrary obstacle for his heroine in that, if a mentally stable person where placed in Ellen’s situation, the person would have equal difficulty making a steadfast call as to who to allow into the house considering there is nothing to contrast the information the character is being given in order to legitimize her verdict in either direction.
Secondly, the characterization and acting titter back and forth, producing an uneven presentation. Amano does a good job, especially considering how much she has to convey in so little time and does so most effectively via her body language more than by anything she says or thinks. I would be inclined to tip my hat to Selko’s directorial abilities her but I am forced to revert back and issue the forthcoming credit to the actress because Nardulli and Edington’s roles are pure amateur performances which are in desperate need of an authoritative finger. To put it simply, the former visually appears as Ed Harris’s character of Parcher in Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind (apparently wardrobe supervisor Emily Padilla called in sick that day). Unfortunately, Nardulli’s acting is the polar opposite of the famed actor’s as the football player-cum-soap opera star is vastly out of his element in this medium. To make matters worse, Selko has Ellen comment on this aspect of Wiley’s character, thus highlighting the cinematic faux pas. Before I cite that Edington’s role as a fraternity brother is also dumbed down as he pops up in a letter jacket, I will admit that such visual cues save time, but there are many other methods which can establish who and what such characters are and do without being nearly as didactic (i.e. leaving Taylor with his mention of the Greek social).
Yet, however much gruff I give the production, I openly applaud one particular moment at the climax of the film in which the killer’s identity is revealed. Jasper Randall’s surprisingly well crafted score is expertly aligned during this would-be pedestrian horror epiphany, yet the combination of directing, acting, and sound culminate into a surprising, albeit it uneven, moment which brought a sparkle of admiration to my eye, natch, right as the film closed. But alas, then there’s the preceding seventeen minutes which one must contend with.
Alone is Kenny’s Selko’s foray into the horror genre. Though the viewer may want to grant the director benefit of the doubt, the filmmaker misfired in his selection of storylines. Though Alone is a short film, this does not serve as an alibi in which to justify a trite narrative that horror fans yawn and roll their eyes at in their sleep. After watching the film, one is left with the feeling that the standard attitude toward horror, that is, a less than engaging plot in which the characters are typecast and poorly depicted before a less-than-revelatory twist ending, is exactly how the director feels as he put together what appears to be an attempt to create the genre no-no: a work which will garner the filmmaker enough girth to move onto what he really wanted to make in the first place, a.k.a. “a serious film.” (His previous effort was titled A Sentimental Princess, a four minute ditty about a hood fantasizing about her former life as a princess, hardly horror fodder.) Bottom line, if you don’t have anything to say (and aren’t quite sure how to say nothing), then it is better to keep quiet than to waste your audience’s time rambling incoherently.
-Egregious Gurnow
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- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
