Alone review

category: review, dvd, foreign

I'll say right off the bat that I had high expectations for the new Thai thriller "Alone" from the directing duo that brought us the phenomenal and truely frightening "Shutter" film.

The story consists of two girls who were born siamese twins; joined at the hip.... errr.. actually with a flab of skin that connects to the middle of their stomachs but stretches far enough that they can sit side by side? Anyways, the story begins with one of the twins grown up after having been seperated years earlier and we find out that one of the twins had died. So, living in another city now, we find out her mother is ill and she needs to travel back home with her husband to tend to her. Well it appears the dead sister is not so happy and is doing some good ol' fashion asian horror jump scares to freak her and her mother out. I say jump scares because there may be one or two creepy moments but this film plays mainly to the quick jump scares. It trys to build the characters and obviously is building to a twist as they all must do. Problem here is the twist is quite obvious and I was able to figure it out within the first quarter of the movie. So I spent the rest of the movie waiting for the inevitable to happen between a mildly entertaining story and the occasional jump scare. The film itself looks good, well filmed... in my opinion it seemed like the directing team was going for the Tale Of Two Sister's feel with the direction, setting, cinematography and even the story to an extent. It's not a terribly bad movie, in fact, it's better than most j-horror type movies. It's just that it's all been done before and done better. No new ground covered here.

Worth a rent whenever it becomes available in the U.S. but not worth the price to order the R3 Hong Kong version like I did as I don't think i'll be watching this again.