The magic of film never ceases to fascinate me. It is a truly universal medium and it has always intrigued me to watch foreign movies for their take on standard genres such as horror. Sadly, in our own country right now the medium is suffocating under the weight of remakes, reboots and huge budget effects heavy plot like blockbusters.
Imagine an American director being given a budget of $200, one actor, no spoken dialogue and a running time of just two minutes to tell a scary story.
Go ahead fan boys, think of all of your favorite directors…how many could succeed?
More to the point of this article, how many could succeed as brilliantly as director Tofiq Rzayevs. The short horror film Alone opens with a man sitting down rolling a cigarette in a small apartment, he appears to be completely alone. Cue creepy music, he catches a glimpse of a pale figure standing behind him in the reflection on the dark screen of his small television set.
Of course, when he turns around nobody is there.
Things get just a little twisted after that….
This movie is dark and creepy and should serve as the directors calling card to Hollywood, imagine with me boys and ghouls what he could accomplish with a bigger budget, speaking roles and a longer running time. I for one am deeply impressed and fervently hope to see more work by this man.
For the second time in the last few months, I have found myself paying more attention than usual to the score of a film, perhaps because in this case, the music, which was scored by Gergo Elekes has to take up the slack of the complete lack of dialogue. The music for Alone is a fairly standard issue for a horror movie in tone but is perfectly paced to ratchet up the tension of what is going on up on the screen.
If it fails to impress you that a director told a solid horror story in two minutes I offer this bit of information.
It took me longer to type this review than the running time of the movie.
Bravo to all involved in this project…Alone gets Five full bananas! [Editors Note: Check out the film yourself below.]
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