You Won't be Alone * * *

This is a film with a surprising background. When the posters and trailer came out a month or so ago I thought it was going to be an interesting horror film from Scandinavia or Europe. It's actually made by an Australian.

I don't know why, but some critics seem to think the idea of a witch who can kill and take on the form of other beings is original or amazing.  Personally,  I don't think the idea is that unique, but that's okay.  Not many ideas in the genre of horror or supernatural are original - it's how you handle them that makes the difference. 

You Won't be Alone tells it's story in a persuasive but plodding way. There is plenty of gore but not much suspense.  It is set some time ago in rural Macedonia.  Everyone is a peasant from the village, they work all day in the fields.  A village woman  who has recently given birth is visited by Maria, a witch with third-degree burns.  We get the impression the village is indebted to Maria for what they did to her years ago (burning her alive and all that) - and now she gets to choose a baby as an understudy every few years.

Teenage witch Nevena: Not quite Sabrina.

Knowing that Maria the witch has marked Nevena, the mother hides her away in a cave, thus Nevena is raised in isolation. The only human Nevena knows is her mother. However, when Nevena is a teenager Maria comes for her anyway.  Maria kills Nevena's mother and takes her form.  Then she takes Nevena off to show her how to do the same trick and how to live as a witch. 

Nevena doesn't take too enthusiastically to this new life and proves to be a poor student, so Maria lets Nevena go she can  find out for herself how miserable life as a human can be. And in a way I guess that's the moral of the story - Nevena wanting to learn if there is such things as love and beauty. 

Unfortunately to be a human she has to kill a human, which she does by accident at first but she soon gets quite adept at it. Thus she becomes a young housewife in a village, who is treated like crap by a brute of a husband (as are all the other women).  She then decides to be a man to see what that's like, and then a child.  

In each instance though, becoming a human is a challenge for Nevena as she has no idea what she is doing.  She really is incompetent at it. Fellow villages simply think she is the same person who's body she has assumed and that person has gone mad. To add to her woes, old witch Maria re-visits her from time to time to taunt her.

I can't say I enjoyed it, and I certainly wasn't thrilled, (if it were a book it wouldn't be a page-turner),  but I was quite fascinated by it at times. It's spoken in old Macedonian with weird English subtitles which complicates simple statements.  

Just as fascinating to me is how the darn thing came together. Some young man in Melbourne of Macedonian heritage (Goran Stolevski), gets the finance for a film and takes the crew and most of the cast to the Macedonian countryside to make it.  He even recruited Noomi Rapace to play a major part as the witch-possessed young housewife. She gives  an outstanding performance incidentally.  In fact all the cast do well. 

As for the title, although it might refer to Maria always being by Nevena's side, I'm afraid it didn't prove to be true when I went to see it. I was very much alone.  I hope it does better. Though once you got a Sundance Award (as this has), bums on seats don't seem to matter anymore.