You Won't Be Alone (2022)

"Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be" - Grandma Moses

I'm sure the people who tuned in anticipating a medieval feature on witches were shocked to their very conscience. The first act might resonate with familiar feelings that of a horror-centric set-up. The second act on the other hand sponsored a sudden change of course and heart in the core direction as well as in its style of narrative.

To summarize, "You Won't Be Alone" is not your ordinary tale revolving around some den full of witches nor does it have to do anything with their origination, those characteristics are merely used as backdrops to a much larger objective at play. To put it mildly, the story speaks of possibilities, of choices, all from a perspective of a young woman who's just been given the invaluable opportunity to look into her surroundings and her life itself.

With her innocent, compassionate gazes, we can see the world, the people, and all that is around her through a much simpler lens. Reflecting the very foundation of life itself that is fraught with pain, suffering (here it is symbolized through the toxic patriarchy), and everyday hardships, which are fairly synonymous for all human beings, irrespective of their genders or their sexual identities.

Yet, amidst all these inconveniences, there are moments worth cherishing, and there is love worth fighting for, even after so many nasty experiences, we are still left with the people whom we can trust, whom we can spend our whole life with, in those particular facets lies the true significance of living, the unreal feeling of existing, the incredible feeling of being Alive.

And I strongly believe, that's what the film wants to convey. We often make things too complicated for ourselves, we more often than not make things much more difficult for us as well as for our loved ones. At those peak moments of disquietude, and hopelessness, we might wanna take a look from a different perspective, we might wanna bring back our inner child, which is long forbidden. Perhaps, that childlike innocence, that very naivety would help us in those dire circumstances, maybe that is what we need, that is what our situations call for.

Fmovies: After making a covenant with the witch who came to take her baby girl, a mother hides the girl away ... until the fateful day arrives.

I spent the first twenty minutes silently noting that movies need action, even the meaningful kind of movie - especially the meaningful kind. Then I fell under a spell, and this thing just glided by in all its glory. The fairy-tale effect gradually gains substance, until the sense of life in death and death in life winds around itself.

I suppose it's a picaresque tale, cycling through to the original scene, but rather than move from situation to situation, it's from body to body. The obscure voice-over seems to have a similar function to the score, which itself is subtle and interesting. And there really is nothing more fascinating on screen than the human face - and here the camera hardly ever leaves it as we switch through the actors.

Folk horror is not my favourite, and The VVitch I found kinda tedious, but this is way superior. It may just be that I dig the Slavic vibe of peasant macabre: The Viy, Come and See, III, even Valerie and Her Week of Wonders - all fascinating in their way, and this is up there with them.

Performances, camera work, sound design are all excellent, and the sense of mucky enchantment in the landscape is nicely done. So, despite my inability to explain what this is all about, I give it the full recommendation.

This is a movie that I got turned on to when looking at movies that were horror and playing at Sundance Film Festival. I put it down on a list of potential movies to see. When I saw that this was coming to the Gateway Film Center, I asked my wife if she was interested in seeing this one. She confirmed, so we went opening night. I had read her the synopsis coming in so that was about the extent of what I knew. For this movie, we are in an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia where a young girl is kidnapped and then transformed into a witch by an ancient spirit.

To preface this, we don't get a lot of dialogue. What we do is mostly given through voice-over narration. We start with a cat that journeys to a village. A group of children are playing hide-and-seek. They annoy a woman who lives and she sends them away. She has a baby that I believe is named Nevena. Things take a turn when Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca) appears. She is a local witch who is covered in scars. We learn what caused them later. The mother pleads with her to leave the baby until she is sixteen. From that point on, she can have the child. Maria agrees to these terms. Before she goes, she injuries the infant. Jaime wasn't sure what happened here, but I believe she rips her tongue out.

The mother then hides her child in a sacred cave. There are drawings on the wall so I'm guessing this is a primitive church of sorts. She leaves the baby there and then goes into the village, calling out that a wolf ate her child. Nevena grows up to be played by Sara Klimoska. She is dancing around this cave as her form of entertainment. She is limited in not being able to leave. Her mother visits her, bringing her food. Nevena wants to go with her mother but is scolded. She fears for what will happen if her daughter does.

Everything changes when a hawk comes into the cave. When Nevena's mother shows up, she believes it to be Maria. The mother chases after it and we hear a noise. Maria then appears. She takes Nevena with her. During their travels, Maria curses this younger woman and then tries to teach her the ways that she survives. This repulses Nevena and Maria abandons her. Nevena learns through spying on Maria how to shape-shift. We then see Nevena taking the form of a woman, a man and even child to survive. She also learns humanity that she missed out on due to her isolated upbringing. She also learns heartbreak.

That is where I'm going to leave my recap. There isn't a lot to the story as it is more of following Nevena as she takes the form of a few different people. I debated going a bit deeper into things here, but I don't want to give things away. Personally, I don't think it would hurt to know. Some people who read my reviews like to come in knowing as little as possible, which is why I'm playing this closer to the vest.

Where I will start then with my breakdown is that this is an interesting time. We don't know for sure, but as the synopsis stated, we are in the 1800s. The people that we are following are peasants. Their lot every day is to ensure they have food. We see Bosilka (Noomi Rapace) give birth then at once go back into the field to work. This is a hard life. It is a shame to have a vengeful witch like Maria praying on these people as they don't have much. Maria is an interesting character that I will circle back to.

I will focus first though on Nevena. She is cursed as a baby. First by her mother to protect her. I thought it was interesting that she woul

You Won't Be Alone fmovies. YOU WON'T BE ALONE (2022) *** Sara Klimoska, Noomi Rapace, Anamaria Marinca, Alice Englert. An outstanding horror film that is more of a think piece folktale/Grimm's fairy tale, than genre flick that takes place in 19th century Macedonia where a witch makes a pact with a woman to spare her baby until she reaches her 16th birthday and then comes back to claim her debt which in turn has the feral girl experience a truly unsettling life experience. Filmed with elegiac imagery and a poetic pace thanks largely to the creative talents of its filmmaker Goran Stolevski in his directorial debut and Matthew Chuang's painterly touch in cinematography.

Greetings again from the darkness. Perhaps you are a normal movie lover and have never wondered what it might be like if director Terrence Malick delved into the horror genre. Well, the first feature film from writer-director Goran Stolevski gives every indication that he has spent entirely too much time with such thoughts. This arthouse folk horror film will likely frustrate many with its unconventional approach, odd narrative, and spiritual narration that hardly contributes to the characters in the story.

Opening in a remote mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, we witness a 'Wolf-eatress" witch named 'Old Maid Maria' (Anamarie Marinca; 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, 2007) visiting a mother (Kamka Tocinovski) and her newborn baby. It turns out Maria has a taste for newborn blood, but the mother negotiates a deal which would allow her to raise her daughter Nevena until Maria takes her in teen years. The child is then hidden away in a cave, isolated for years and mostly feral when Maria returns. Teenage Nevena (Sara Klimoska) knows nothing of the outside world and sets out on her journey of life lessons, guided by Maria, a witch who may or may not have her best interests at heart.

Shape-shifting, or assuming the form of their victims is a trait that Maria passes along to her protégé. This process is quick and brutal, and we see it played out along the way as Nevena takes over a local mother (Noomi Rapace), so as to get a taste of normalcy, a wolf (just because?), a man (Carlota Cota) so as to absorb power and experience sex, and a young woman (Alice Englert) in order to give birth to a child. This shape-shifting is referred in the movie as "dressed in corpse", which is a spot-on description. The Wolf-eatress follows closely, but does give her new daughter the space to explore humans, though Maria does not share the appeal.

There are some excellent scenes in the film, but it leaves the impression of trying too hard to come across as Malick doing horror. Still, with some similarities to Robert Eggers' horror gem, THE WITCH (2015), there is enough atmosphere of terror to keep us engaged and working through the often-confounding narration. As a bonus, it leaves us with the perfect final line, "And yet ..." Opening in theaters on April 1, 2022.

You ever have a fancy meal that you can appreciate but it's just not what the doctor ordered? That's how You Won't be Alone left me feeling. It's a beautiful film, that is about witches, and life and other stuff. It's not really a horror movie, even though it's about witches, so if that makes no sense, I can't help you much. I'm not mad at this movie for trying to be something bigger than it is, but I think I'll stick to the tried and true horror tropes instead.