A quiet but disturbed young man puts the life of a woman he's obsessed with under a virtual microscope in this independent psychological thriller. Amy (Ana Claudia Talancón) is an attractive young woman who has recently broken up with her boyfriend and is feeling a bit lonely. Amy isn't so sure she's ready to start dating again, but she keeps bumping into Doug (Colin Hanks), a geeky but friendly guy who goes out of his way to be nice to her and seems to have very similar tastes and interests.
Amy establishes a friendship with Doug even through he's awkward and not really her type, but Amy's best friend, Jennifer (Jordana Spiro), senses that there's something not quite right about Doug. And Jennifer is right -- Doug is a high-tech stalker who has wired Amy's apartment with a number of inexpensive security cameras and listening devices and constantly watches her, studying her tastes, her habits and her emotions as well as looking in as she sleeps and showers. Alone With Her is shot entirely from the perspective of Doug's cameras, so we see the film's events as he sees them, and are frequently made aware that each scene represents another invasion in Amy's privacy. Alone With Her received its world premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Alone With Her is a pretty engaging tale, and it's refreshing to see a well-acted, suspenseful drama made without a bloated budget or a lot of bloodletting.
Alone With Her has the kind of high ick factor that leaves you squirming -- not because Doug is so diabolical a creation, but because what he does to satisfy his pathology is so practical.
For all its technological ingenuity, however, the film is ultimately a fairly routine stalker thriller that soon becomes repetitive in its contrivances. And the footage, necessarily shot on digital video, is not particularly easy to watch.
A novel spin on an oft-told tale, Alone with Her is a fine little indie indeed. What could have been just another gimmick flick turns out to be a pretty intense ride.
Despite its cleverness, however, nearly everything is predictable; in a sense, this is a higher-tech version of The Collector, and it doesn't really take us anywhere we haven't been many times before.
Through Hanks' and Talancon's subtle, naturalistic performance [writer-director Eric Nicholas] cultivates a human dimension often missing from thrillers.
"Anytime. Anywhere. He's watching."In Los Angeles, the psychopath Doug stalks the sexy Latin woman Amy is a park and follows her.REVIEWShot entirely using body cams and spy cams, the movie attempts to explore the horror of the increase in stalking due to the advances in and availability of technology. The
movie begins with a stalker, played by Colin Hanks, filming women at the beach and at the park, obviously searching for a victim. He chooses a girl, played by Ana Claudia Talancón, and begins following her, planting cameras in her apartment and slowly inserting himself into her life, using the knowledge he gained from the cameras to find common ground. I could see what the writer/director was trying to accomplish, but it was not entertaining enough to hold my interest without taking breaks. The acting was mostly convincing, although there were some spells of poor acting. The ending seemed very film-school and amateur.
June 21, 2009
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
Super Reviewer
Stalker thriller where we are shoved right into the stalker's perspective. Shot entirely through secret cameras this is similar to other "real" films such as Blair Witch and Cloverfield. Hanks does well in the lead, but is also too recognisable to have the desired affect. He's pleasant, creepy and sympathetic. Many of
his plans work surprisingly well, which sometimes destroys the illusion. Though Amy is supposedly a naive and vulnerable soul, so it does make sense most of the time. The film checks all the boxes for any thriller and the only real difference is how it's filmed. Well made and engrossing for it's 78 minutes.
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