Horror Channel Frightfest Review: Alone

Admittedly very rare for me, I suffered a genuine moment of real, sweaty-palm panic about two-thirds of the way through Alone.

Now it was nothing to do with anything graphic offered up on screen – the film is pretty tame in that regard and seems aimed at a teen audience in fact – nor was it due to any heartstopping moment of tension.

No, the panic was due to a dawning realisation that the film’s ‘reveal’ was going to leave me pretty pissed off.

In fact, I could even feel myself screaming ‘don’t you dare do it’ – internally of course….

Naturally they went ahead and ‘did it’ and in that instant Alone was lost to me, which is a bit of a shame as up until then it was a perfectly serviceable, at times creepy little thriller.

Riffing on everything from The Last Man On Earth to 28 Days Later ad most definitely Night Of The Comet (even The Walking Dead gets namechecked) the film follows a band of French kids who wake to find that they appear to be the only ones left in their city, with everyone else seemingly vanished.

Fun to be had I’m sure (we get the token scenes of trips to the shopping mall and the like), but there is a catch – a sinister wall of fog that surrounds their city, and the fog is closing in……

Astutely directed by David Moreau (who has Them and The Eye on his resume) and based on yet another graphic novel, this French offering has plenty going for it – the kids are OK, notably Sofia Lesaffre as lead Leila (although there is a flimsy attempt at romance that is actually so flimsy I’m not even sure it was intended) and there is a genuine air of unease and tension during the film’s excellent use of deserted streets and locations.

For some reason a supervillain is then thrown into the mix and then we get the ‘reveal’ – and that was me mentally checking out.

To be fair, you may not feel the same and may even be OK with it, but I wouldn’t put any of my money on it.