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I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE, directed by DW Medoff, is about Richard (Kenneth Trujillo), a mute ex-con whose first job out of prison is to spend six days isolated in a "haunted" house to ensure the removal of its spirits. His realtor boss says the job's as easy as lighting a candle and saying a prayer each night. Has she ever SEEN a horror movie?
Richard's traumatic past blends with local myth to create a disturbing cocktail. In the house, every creak and shuffle is heard. Every noise requires investigation. Richard often catches a glimpse of a masked presence or a putrid hand, the kind of sight horror hounds associate with a musical sting. There's little surprise to these scenes (though I've got to applaud Medoff on one scare that cleverly frames the jump just outside of my eye line).
When Richard isn't searching out sounds, he's plagued by flashbacks to life with his infant son and wife (Katerina Eichenberger), newly post-partum. These scenes, devoid of color, reveal a severely depressed woman calling for help and a husband coping with his inability/unwillingness? to be emotionally present, masking with substance abuse. These affairs are often more painful to watch than the ghost stuff.
I'd be fine with this dynamic but the movie goes down shocking avenues whose tone (...darkly comedic?) takes me out of the movie. Ari Aster's HEREDITARY or Scott Derrickson's SINISTER handle this juggling act better by maintaining a more consistent balance between the vicious family drama and ghoulish scenes. In I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE, the balance comes off as choppy.
Trujillo's confident, nuanced performance keeps most of these troubles at arm's length and I see it doing as such for others. He's carrying six long life-changing years on his back; his gait carries such burden. Richard surveys every space he's in with suspicion, even before he enters the house. The flashbacks reveal a more rash, more easily wounded man whose hedonism offers a false sense of macho security. But throughout the story, Trujillo's eyes remain the same: a tender man who, at his core, wants simply to be a good example, someone worthy of redemption, of hope.
Does this movie work for me? No. The choppy tone combined with a formulaic approach to the horror keep me at arm's length. But I can see how others could cling to it and its descriptions of substance abuse, emotional unavailability, life-altering guilt and pursuit of a life where such pain can be properly managed. I hope, in that sense, it'll never leave someone feeling alone.
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