Nerdly » Popcorn Frights 2024: ‘All Alone Together’ Review

14th Aug2024

Popcorn Frights 2024: ‘All Alone Together’ Review

by Jim Morazzini

Stars: Jordan Lane Rice, Lisa Starrett, Brandon Whipple, Alex Nimrod, Elizabeth Hadjinian, Devin Harris | Written by Alex Nimrod | Directed by Maximus Jenkins

Spearheaded by a quartet of USC students, All Alone Together was shot for a mere $15,000 with a cast and crew comprised of mostly other USC students and alumni. But before you read the film’s plot and write it off as just another pretentious student film, remember that this was also the same school and process that resulted in John Carpenter’s first feature, Dark Star.

As the film opens, we watch Tyler (Jordan Lane Rice; And They Lived Happily Ever After, Breathe), an unhappy-looking individual going through his life before ending up at work, where the even less pleasant Fiona (Lisa Starrett) goads him into losing his temper and getting fired. Back at home, things become even worse as he finds The Thing (Brandon Whipple) waiting for him with more sinister intentions than just getting him fired. At this point, we realize we’ve been watching the final minutes of Accompany, a low-budget film by Lincoln Arreto (Alex Nimrod; Function at Strawberry Junction) which is playing at a small festival.

Unlike Scared to Death, another of this year’s Popcorn Fest films, All Alone Together isn’t a horror film about making a horror film. Instead, writer Alex Nimrod and director Maximus Jenkins (The Morning Brew) focus on the aftermath of making a film and the fears and anxiety over its reception, getting it distributed and ultimately the filmmaker’s own ability to maintain that level of success with their followup project, that they bring.

What makes All Alone Together a horror, or at least horror-adjacent film is that, like those of his protagonist, Lincoln’s fears seem to be taking a physical form as well. Or is it just his own self-doubt and self-destructive tendencies spiralling out of control? And he does seem to be his own worst enemy, arguing with not just Sloane (Elizabeth Hadjinian; A Shattered Reflection of a Woman, When the Gun Talks) the agent he hires to find the film a distributor, but potential distributors as well. Similarly, he turns an interview with a local TV station into a disaster.

The result is a film that walks a line between being a dark drama and a work of psychological horror. One that keeps the lines blurred as it highlights the parallels between Lincoln and Tyler, even as he denies them. As the film goes on, I wasn’t just questioning if the creature stalking him, referred to as The Haunting (Devin Harris), was real but if some of the more mundane parts of his life only existed in his mind and I was seeing through the eyes of a very unreliable narrator.

There are a couple of points where the script’s attempts at keeping the viewer uncertain as to what is and isn’t real goes a little too far, and it actually becomes confusing rather than just disorienting. It does recover itself, and by the time it reaches its effectively unnerving conclusion, you should know just what is going on.

Being a microbudget film, don’t expect a lot of effects from All Alone Together, there are a few scattered through it though, and they get their point across, even if they aren’t exactly state of the art. This is a psychological film, more driven by dialogue and performances than effects. And the performances are sharp, despite many of the cast having rather limited credits on IMDb. I’m guessing that, like Nimrod himself who is excellent, they were theatre majors and had plenty of experience acting, just not in front of the camera or in student films that didn’t qualify for an IMDb listing. That certainly has to be the case with Kaleb Manske whose cinematography looks great but has no other credits listed.

While it’s not a film to put on unless you’re able to give it your full attention, All Alone Together will reward those who give it just that. It’s a smart, twisty and at times disturbing film that will resonate the strongest with creatives but will also feel familiar in parts to anyone who has started any kind of business or other project.