I Will Never Leave You Alone - New Release Review
Director: DW Medoff
Starring: Kenneth Trujillo, Katerina Eichenberger, Christopher Genovese, Kimberley Maxwell, Emma Anne Wedemeyer
Written by: DW Medoff
Produced by: Stephen Beehler
Cinematography by: Blake Studwell
Original Score by: Chris Campbell
Synopsis:
After being released from prison, a brooding man is hired to stay in a haunted house to clear it of spirits.
Thoughts:
Richard has served six years in prison for involuntary manslaughter but according to his parole officer he is a good man. One thing we do know for sure is that Richard is carrying around some dark thoughts in his head. Thoughts that hinder his sleep and even worse, his speech. Whatever trauma Richard went through before his sentence has impeded his ability to speak but we'll find out more about that trauma as the film progresses.
As part of his contract of release, Richard has been hired by a realtor to be locked in a haunted house for six nights to vanquish any spirits that may still be dwelling there. The house is thought to be a hongza, a cursed building that harbours an evil curse that will eventually spread if not dealt with in the correct manner.
Richard will be paid nicely and if he survives he is a free man for good. If he leaves the house for any reason then he must return to prison. It doesn't take long for Richard to experience the crone who is haunting the house, as she forces Richard to face his dark past.
Kenneth Trujillo has to carry the majority of the film on his own as the lead and he does a fantastic job at portraying a haunted man struggling to come to terms with life outside of prison. It isn't so much that the world has changed, it's that HIS world has changed and through the power of flashbacks we become aware of what his life was like before tragedy fell.
Ironically he has left one prison and become ensnared in another, only this one is vehemently more dangerous. Much of the film is filled with "hallucinatory" sequences and we are left to ponder whether anything we see is actually real or a figment of Richard's imagination. The flashbacks, though important to the story, do get a bit laborious after a while but when I tell you there's a sequence in this that absolutely floored me. Two scenes that sort of come out of nowhere that hit really hard. I won't spoil anything here but I promise you will not be expecting either of them.
There's been a number of really good postpartum horror films the past year or so that have dealt with new parent relationships. 'The Coffee Table' and 'Mom' come to mind with the former being particularly traumatising. DW Medoff's sophomore feature film explores that theme and while he doesn't exactly bring anything especially new to the table, he definitely reinforces the difficulties that surround being new parents and the trauma that it can cause, both mentally and physically.
'I Will Never Leave You Alone' is quite bleak and harrowing with a few decent jump scares and some visceral violence in the second half of its runtime. And the crone that's haunting the house has some pretty good practical make-up effects. There's a little bit of dark humour there too that surfaces just at the right time but at the heart of the film is the heartbreaking story of a broken man longing to repair a broken relationship but sometimes things don't always end the way you want them to.
Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
-Gavin Logan
'I Will Never Leave You Alone' is released on digital via Dark Sky Films on October 18th
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