In a dark but perhaps predictable turn, many viewers of Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks’ horror/thriller Alone with You will find themselves living through the feeling of isolation explored in the film, which is being released amid the newest wave of lockdowns and social distancing brought upon by the omicron variant.
Though not an ideal situation for a theater premiere, there is a certain cruel irony in the fact that the pair’s first feature film, which was conceptualized and produced during quarantine, is being released when many are once again hunkering down alone at home — much like the film’s protagonist, Charlie (played by Bennett).
“We were using the pandemic to open a much wider door into what we all struggle with in our day to day just being lonely creatures,” Brooks said.
“We often joke that this film was our therapy throughout the pandemic; that all of our anxieties, all our fears, all our sadness went into this poor character and she had to fight her way through a movie because of it.”
The world of Alone with You is mainly confined to the walls of Charlie and her girlfriend’s Brooklyn apartment, chronicling the hours Charlie spends awaiting the return of Simone (Emma Myles), who is on a work trip. As the clock ticks on, an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia constricts both the character and the audience. Hallucinations, voices and shadows begin to creep in, becoming worse the longer Charlie is trapped within the apartment and her own mind.
The writer-director pair, who are real-life partners, set out to capture the emotional experiences they were undergoing in quarantine without ever referencing the virus overtaking the world during the film’s creation.
“Unlike a lot of people, we wanted to mainly avoid everything about what was happening outside our door,” Brooks said.
“We weren’t interested in telling a story about a pandemic or a sickness, but rather the things that were happening emotionally to us and to a great deal of our friends during that time; that being that sense of isolation, that loss of self.”
Originally, the two had “an entirely different feature” planned for their debut, but shifted course to create Alone with You when, in Brooks’ words, “the world shut down.”
The shared writing process for the horror picture fittingly began in a graveyard.
“We found a graveyard that we could actually walk around in during the day just to get outside, out of our apartment,” Bennett said.
“And walking through this graveyard — perfect place to come up with a horror film — we would talk and spitball ideas.”
After working on two short films, they began tackling a feature-length project, creating an overarching outline in May and passing scenes back and forth to perfect the writing in June. Shooting began July 1.
The film’s entire timeline was “pretty breakneck,” Bennett said, noting that the screenplay was only 60 to 62 pages.
On their walks, Bennett and Brooks would work on character development, sharing their thoughts and uncovering facets of the characters that would eventually make their way into scenes. Because Bennett also plays the lead role, the duo could workshop different lines on the spot, a process Brooks described as “almost black box theatre.”
The closed nature of a pandemic production also necessitated a character change that pushed Bennett and Brooks to explore loneliness through a different lens: the isolation that can come with being LGBTQ in a heteronormative society.
Originally written as a man, Charlie’s character was rewritten as a woman so Bennett could play the role within the limited production “bubble” demanded by the pandemic. Shifting the romantic relationship to one between two women created a different kind of friction between characters, such as the relationship between Charlie and her mother (played by Barbara Crampton).
One of the few people from the outside world we get to see in the film, Crampton’s character gives several signs that she is visibly uncomfortable with her daughter’s queerness, such as when she refers to Simone as Charlie’s “roommate.” These subtle barbs contribute to the atmosphere of loneliness Charlie experiences.
Alone with You is “a feminine film,” Bennett says, citing the fact that every character is female and every word (including in the soundtrack) is communicated by a woman, “which we found to be so crucial to the overall messaging and story of this film.”
“There was a story of isolation in being a queer character that I don’t typically think a straight person experiences from day to day,” Brooks said.
“And being able to add that on top of the other horrors of the film really kind of strengthened its themes and its understanding of the character.”
Though they poured themselves and their anxieties into their main character, ultimately Bennett and Brooks could not “go easy on Charlie” because “frankly, we as artists — and as people — needed a catharsis,” Bennett said.
“We needed somewhere to put this anxiety and the fear that we’re all feeling.”
As the film premieres amid yet another spike of coronavirus infections and lockdowns, Brooks says, “I hope an audience sees this and finds almost a kinship in its storytelling, knowing that these feelings and these understandings of isolation and this loss of self, that they’re not alone in that.”
Alone with You will be in theaters on Feb. 4 and On Demand, Digital and DVD on Feb. 8.