I Think We’re Alone Now (2020)

Directed by Jt Kris [Other horror films: N/A]

This is perhaps one of the most mind-numbingly horrible experiences I have had in my life. I mean, I am no stranger whatsoever when it comes to amateur horror movies, but this has got to take the cake, and every other imaginable pastry.

The plot of this one is simple – a mother and daughter are driving on a forested road. There’s a car on the side of the road, so the mother gets out to investigate. The mother get her throat slit by a mysterious masked man. The man then proceeds to chase the little girl. And chase her. And chase her.

I just took a deep breath, because I’m already frustrated. Most of this movie is a little girl running through a forest, sometimes finding a new place to hide (be it the ruins of a cabin or an old barn), and then the mysterious assailant finding her. The girl sometimes screams, and then runs away again. And the guy finds her. Sometimes there’s another person around (a man walking his dog, an old woman driving by, some drunk in a trailer), but these are all distractions, as none of them amount to anything, and the man is back to chasing the girl.

We never find out who this man is. Toward the end, the little girl pulls his mask off and screams, but she’s probably just screaming because that’s what she does for a good portion of the film. Truth be told, I felt bad for this girl (Junie Liv Thomasson), because while she’s not a great child actress (she looks into the camera a handful of times), she still has to submerge herself in water and sustain herself off stale Oreos.

There’s almost no dialogue in this movie. That might be expected, but there you go. Never once does the little girl say “Why are you doing this” or anything along those lines, which I can understand, as she saw him kill her mother, but with almost no dialogue, this movie is just tedious beyond all words.

Oh, and the audio isn’t really in sync. Whether it’s a scene of the guy pounding on a car door with the audio of the door being hit off from when the physical contact is made to the little dialogue there is being delayed a noticeable second from when it’s said, this was amateur hour all day long (so I guess 24 amateur hours).

Camerawork too was something problematic. I don’t have the vocabulary to really explain what’s wrong with it, but it’s not good. There are these little cuts that happen quite often, some random dimming; I don’t even know, it’s just all around awful.

And to top all of this off, this movie was an hour and six minutes. Now, 66 minutes might not sound like that long of a movie, but this definitely feels it’s length and more. Like I said, large swaths of this film have zero dialogue, and the amateur cinematography and out-of-sync audio will just give you a headache, provided you didn’t have one already.

What I can give this movie props for is the music. No, not the movie’s score, which was generally awful, but the songs that pop up in the film. Early on, when I thought this might have potential, A Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran (So Far Away)” played for a bit. Also, while I’m not a giant fan of the song, we also heard a little “Sugar Sugar” by The Archies.

Most of all, though, I Think We’re Alone Now utilizes the synthpop song “I Think We’re Alone Now” by Tiffany multiple times throughout the film. The killer listens to it in his car as he’s driving after the little girl. Now, I don’t know the song (it’s apparently a cover of Tommy James and the Shondells’ 1967 hit), but I enjoy 80’s music (why do you think I gave The Strangers: Prey at Night such a high rating?), so it was catchy enough to at least give me something.

Otherwise, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie as amateurly painful as this turned out to be. I mean, this was bad. You think you’ve seen low-budget horror before, and I know I certainly have, but if this isn’t one of the most amateur movies I’ve ever seen in my life, I’ll eat my socks and name myself Jim-Bob.

If you catch this free on Amazon Prime, I’m sorry.

0.5/10