Movie Review: Alone

Do you remember how more than several years ago Asian cinema was gaining popularity in the horror genre? It started with 'Ringu', and moved on to other films like the 'Ju-On' series. At the time, Japan was the main competitor. As the years went along, South Korea began to show their strength in scaring with the 'Whispering Corridors' series and 'A Tale of Two Sisters' before veering off into different genres. Hong Kong also made a mark with the ghost story 'The Eye.' While this was all going on, one country that really didn't make much of a peep was Thailand.

That soon changed with Banjong Pisanthanakun's 'Shutter.' It came out in 2004, and the word on it spread quickly. Quite a few people got pretty scared by it, but others (including myself) thought that it was just a run of the mill Asian ghost movie that we've all seen a hundred times over by now. Still, 'Shutter' got a nice amount of praise from audiences and it won't be too surprising if a remake is soon to be on the way.

It also won't be surprising if there will be a remake for Pisanthanakun's new film 'Alone.' Like 'Shutter,' it follows a lot of the basics in having a dark-haired female ghost running around for the film but there are more things going for this movie than the former film.

The film starts off with a slideshow of siamese twins (I have no idea if the images were real, but considering the ghost pictures in Shutter were I would think that these would also be true). We meet Pim, the surviving half of a set of conjoined twins. Years ago, she got an operation to separate her sister Ploy (joined to her from the chest) but Ploy died during the operation. Pim feels guilty for what happened since she was the one who demanded the operation while Ploy refused, and soon after she left for South Korea where she currently lives with her boyfriend. They receive a phone call saying that Pim's mother is dying, and they catch the next flight out to see her. Pim already feels nervous about going, and when she gets there her feelings aren't exactly eased. It appears that Ploy's ghost is pissed off and immediately begins to haunt the crap out of Pim. If you're already getting visions of your dead sister lying next to you in bed and your operation scar bleeding profusely within 48 hours of arriving, you know that someone means business.

So for the rest of the movie we really just follow Pim along as she gets haunted by Ploy and bits of her past are revealed to us more and more. Things of course aren't always as they seem and soon enough the truth is revealed which leads to some tragic results for some.

Now, I really did enjoy the premise of 'Alone.' I think that if it really didn't treat itself as a horror film first and focused more on a dramatic aspect, the movie would have been great. Conjoined twins hasn't really been explored too much in horror, and it's refreshing to see something different come out but there were just problems in the execution. The main problem is that it just isn't very scary. Almost all of the 'scare' moments are the generic jump scares with loud bursts of sound and music. There was a nice amount of tension, but the payoff just stunk. Another problem was with the plot twist revealed about three quarters of the way in. It explained a few issues I had beforehand, but it really felt like it just got thrown in to add shock value. If they just focused on Pim being someone emotionally damaged and unsure whether or not they're actually wracked with guilt to the point of hallucinating or really being haunted, things would have been better. The idea of Pim just being all crazy is touched upon, but it doesn't work. This is mainly because we as the audience know that she is actually being haunted. The scenes focusing on it really just dragged the movie along.

So overall 'Alone' is really just the movie that could have been. I'm just imagining that a 2 hour drama/horror with the first half focusing on the backstory with the twins and the second being about the hauntings would have worked a lot better than an 88 minute jump scare fest, but I can't really dislike a movie on 'Could haves' and 'Should haves.' What's there is just average. Average scares, a bad plot twist, and cliche after cliche of any J-horror flick to come out in the last seven years. It looks like Thailand might have missed the boat on the Asian horror craze, and now it's just too late to capitalize on it.