Alone (2020)

Unless they’re homeless or evil, blind people in the movies invariably have perfectly pristine eyes. They also tend to have a seeing sidekick. Alone does the former but not the latter, pretty much throwing any pretension to authenticity right out the window. Emma (Elizabeth Arends) is a blind writer who goes to stay alone at a friends’ country house to finish a book and get over a miscarriage. A blind person can of course be an author, and I don’t want to say they can’t live by themselves, but should they? Moreover, would they? I mean, at least bring a seeing-eye dog with you. And though I think some sort of system is worked out, there’s no way she’s going to know for sure where everything is. Soon after arriving, Emma is raped; I’m not going to blame the victim, though — I’m going to blame the scriptwriters. There’s never any doubt as to who does the deed. There isn’t even any dramatic irony, because Emma has no excuse — not even her blindness — for not figuring it out instantly. Emma is then locked up in the basement, and for a movie called Alone, the cabin where Emma was supposedly going to enjoy unperturbed peace and quiet quickly fills up with a boatload of people. There’s Hailey (Sarah Anne), Jesse (Bailey Coppola, the spitting image of his uncle Nic), Nicole (Albina Katsman), and Luke (Dane Majors). Hailey and Jesse are the cabin owners’ kids; didn’t they get a heads up to stay clear of the place and leave Emma, you know, alone? Two more people arrive a while later, and then Alone turns into a Dead Teenager Movie. As for Emma, she turns into Jean-Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport’s Final Battle. Less than an hour ago, mind you, this bitch couldn’t even tell that someone was standing right behind her, practically breathing on her neck. This material is so wafer-thin that some scenes are replayed, but for whose benefit? The second time doesn’t reveal anything we might have missed the first time, but it eats up minutes, so why the hell not? Worst of all, however, is the parting suggestion that everything we’ve seen is all part of Emma’s book. Reminds me of Shirley MacLaine’s line in The Apartment: “I can type up a storm, but I can’t spell.”