By Simon Thompson
Director Maximus Jenkins and writer Alex Nimrod’s All Alone Together is both visually beautiful but a frustrating watch at the same time. Despite how pretty the movie is to look at, from a narrative standpoint it never gets out of second gear. This is truly a shame, because I wanted to enjoy this movie far more than I actually ended up doing.
The plot of All Alone Together follows Lincoln (Alex Nimrod), a frustrated, psychologically burnt out filmmaker who finds that his own life has become more and more uncannily intertwined with the horror film that has directed. As the frustrations of Lincoln’s professional life continue to build up, his grasp over what is fantasy and what is reality fall apart piece by piece, gradually decaying his overall sanity.
What All Alone Together truly does have going for it is gorgeous cinematography. Kaleb Manske does a stellar job using a muted colour palette and very sparse interior locations in an attempt to build a ominous atmosphere.
Alex Nimrod gives a solid performance as Lincoln, playing it nice and subtle. Nimrod, through carefully positioned body language, conveys the inner turmoil of the character without resorting to loud and expressive gestures to sell it to the audience for the most part, save for the final half an hour or so.
Where the film falls flat however, is in two major categories- the supporting characters and the horror itself. Getting down to brass tax, the supporting characters are not particularly interesting at all, from Lincoln’s flatmate Tyler (Jordan Lane Rice), to his agent Sloane (Elizabeth Hadjinian) they feel drastically underdeveloped in comparison to Lincoln, to the extent that All Alone Together would have been a far better movie if it were simply a solo character study.
Despite Manske’s cinematography doing the heavy lifting in building a creepy atmosphere, the horror itself, to compliment Manske’s good work, feels drastically lacking by contrast. Without veering too much into spoiler territory, none of the reveals in Nimrod’s script feel particularly scary and waste the potential of a premise which should directly result in some of the most nightmarish imagery this side of Jacob’s Ladder or The Adventures Of Mark Twain.
Despite Maximus Jenkins’s demonstrable technical skill as a director, and Alex Nimrod’s clear ability to set up interesting ideas,. All Alone Together, is an all round disappointment that squanders an interesting set up, through an aggravating combination of lacklustre horror, dull supporting characters, and sluggish pacing devoid of any urgency whatsoever.
Bloody Flicks 