2022 Directed by Goran Stolevski
In an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, a young feral witch accidentally kills a peasant. She assumes the peasant's shape to see what life is like in her skin, igniting a deep seated curiosity to experience life inside the bodies of others.
Нема да бидеш сама, No Estarás Sola, 女巫不孤單, Você Não Estará Só!
Horror, the undead and monster classics Intense violence and sexual transgression scary, horror, creepy, supernatural or frighten horror, creepy, eerie, blood or gothic horror, creepy, eerie, frighten or chilling horror, gory, scary, killing or gruesome cannibals, gory, gruesome, graphic or shock Show All…
It’s like a Terrence Malick film except every five minutes someone fangoriously butchers a donkey while a foley artist crushes a grapefruit directly onto a hot mic.
You Won’t Be Alone is a wondrous meditation on life and humanity. Gorgeously tranquil cinematography and performances that capture earnestly every human experience and emotion. A story told primarily through poignant, internal dialogue. Slow pace drags but the journey is one to behold.
Sundance #12
“It’s a burning, breaking thing. This world.”
The bittersweet human condition.
A shapeshifting Freddy Krueger-esque [im not kidding] witch marks a newborn to be her own when she turns 16. The now feral teen is mute and lives isolated in a cavern in protection from the witch, shortly found and is forced into a world she has never seen. The newfound witch travels through 19th century Macedonia discovering her new shapeshifting abilities, her sexuality and the meaning of life, and death.
Goran Stolevski’s visual poem of a feature debut, You Won’t Be Alone is a dark folk-horror tale at its most tranquil Terrence Malick, every bit of this is a slow moving entrancing picture that is narrated with a soft voice-over.…
I laughed, I cried, I died a little inside.
What a magical adventure horror, that says so much with so little dialogue.
A beautiful, melancholy meditation on life and humanity, one of those movies you really need to be in the right mood for. Somewhere between folk horror and a dark fairytale, You Won’t Be Alone wants you to think about how beautiful life can be, but also how cruel. Humans are strange. It's certainly not going to be for everyone, but those who connect with it will really enjoy it - it definitely spoke to me.
The cinephile in me wants to praise this like others have been, but I can’t run away from the fact that I was extremely bored for most of the runtime. I’m also not one for folk horror, but I think calling it horror is a stretch, the actions of the center character are just a bit grotesque. Good practical effects though.
I appreciate the massive themes Stolevski is trying to tackle, and there are certainly beautiful/provocative moments, but for a film about practically everything under the sun it felt daunting and repetitive. The way it carries itself borders on annoying because of how empty its suggested platitudes feel. I’m not wanting to praise it for attempting to say something about…
First up, this isn’t a horror film. It’s more of a meditation on existence, sex, gender, love, and the cycle of life, albeit one that happens to involve a hideous, seemingly ageless witch with black claws and a taste for blood.
It doesn’t have a horror film’s pacing either; it flows dreamily. When the transitions between sequences involve some bloodshed, mostly we just see the aftermath.
Instead, the tone is pastoral, the voiceover that of someone never taught proper language skills, so it’s a fragmented poetry. The motivations for the main character are rooted in connection, family, and sacrifice. There’s a beauty to the main character’s journey — a mythic quality too.
Visually, it recalls Eggers’ The Witch (unsurprisingly) by…
How we even manage to survive daily in a world full of cruelty, dishonesty, indifference, and suffering is a painful miracle.
A very different horror film in which horror is mostly the cruelty of the world. Beautiful and haunting more than haunted, this was nothing like I expected it to be although I’m not sure I really had any expectations going in.
A witch escapes her witch guardian(?) in order to inhabit human bodies and experience life from several different points of view. If you’re looking for any traditional horror tropes then you’ll be very disappointed. There is some gore, but it’s not intended to hit you the way a Saw movie would.
Noomi Rapace was my biggest draw and it turns out she’s only in one part of the film, but she does a fantastic job here and so does the…
You Won't Be Alone and its story of witchcraft in the mountains of the Balkans seems like an interesting film, with a unique premise. Yet I found it an absolute slog. It was difficult to get through. It is often dull, and really hard to invest in. It takes far too long to tell its story, and ends up slow and repetitive rather than precise and lean in the way a better film would be. It is like Under the Skin, in a way, since it explores what it means to be human from a horrific, outsider perspective. It is about a witch who becomes a human and faces the reality of peasant life. She discovers nature, food, sexuality, work,…
What a unique horror experience. You Won’t Be Alone is the perfect balance of storytelling and style, and is a great showoff for a directorial debut.
An arthouse horror that aims more to inspire than to scare, You Won’t Be Alone completely flips the witch subgenre with a perspective never done before. Following a young witch's foray into the human world in 19th-century Macedonia, it almost feels like a Terrence Malick tribute with its surreal sensitivity and rich style, yet unlike Tree of Life, it never sacrifices a juicy script for anything else. Thanks to a solid international ensemble, the story is marvelously presented to its full effect.
Guided by a curious witch's perspective, You Won’t Be Alone is as…
Sundance 2022
I was already expecting a great film, but You Won't Be Alone is beyond great! A truly philosophical horror that takes you to places few stories are able to, this outstanding film is a unique examination of humanity through time, space, and gender.
Visually amazing and full of incredible performances, this is a film like no other. It will haunt you forever, but not for the usual reasons!
