Panic Fest Film Festival Coverage
All Alone Together review.
A microbudget movie with a big bag of tricks, some interesting ideas…and a confusing message.
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
All Alone Together
Directed by Maximus Jenkins
Written by Alex Nimrod
Starring Alex Nimrod, Jordan Lane Rice, Brandon Whipple, Lisa Starrett, Devin Harris, Brandon Gilbert and Elizabeth Hadjinian
All Alone Together Review
All Alone Together pulls three great tricks. Each one changes our understanding of the story unfolding before us. Three inspired concepts that elevate the movie beyond its low budget constraints. The purpose of some choices can be a bit muddied, however. Its final trick recontextualizes things in a way that can forgive some of that. But you have to wait until the final image of the film to get there.
The first trick All Alone Together pulls is a slyly brilliant one. We watch as Tyler’s (Jordan Lane Rice) life falls apart around him. His dog is dead…he loses his job…and, oh yeah, there’s some kind of creature after him. This unfolds inside a constricted aspect ratio, shot with purposeful amateurishness. The camera then pulls back to reveal we had watched a movie within a movie. Glorious widescreen is back…and the (still) low budget All Alone Together looks a thousand times better. It’s a neat way of maximizing the look of your independent film. There are still limitations…but by comparison this now looks like Lawrence of Arabia.
There’s a deeper narrative reason for the opening, of course. It’s really the film’s director Lincoln (Alex Nimrod) whose story we are following. His movie, Accompany, is a festival hit. Next step…the world. Or, at least, the potential to get out of his job as the school janitor. A funny thing happens on his way to overnight success. While navigating through publicity, distribution and a manager who may or may not know what she’s doing…Lincoln begins to be haunted by a creature of his own.
All Alone Together has a lot to say about the stress of creativity. Lincoln buckles under the pressure to create a follow up…or even to promote his already finished work. His mental health is rapidly deteriorating. This is where the movie unleashes its second trick. Flashbacks to key moments in Lincoln’s life. Doesn’t sound like a trick, does it? Well…they’re presented in an innovative way that is truly genius. Instead of cutting away to something that happened long ago…scenes unfold naturally with the adult Lincoln dressed as a child…or whatever age he needs to be. The flashback enters the scene around him like a dream and plays out with Nimrod in the middle of it. It creates a surrealist feeling while deepening the connection between Lincoln and the memory. A brilliant choice.
How mental health is handled here is interesting as well. There’s a scene early in All Alone Together where Lincoln and his manager meet with a potential distributor. The distributor attempts to praise Accompany for its themes of mental health. Lincoln questions what the man is talking about. “I’m a scribe” he confesses in a later scene. He just writes down what happened. That he can’t see the mental deterioration represented in his work (as it happens in reality) is an interesting take presented in an equally interesting manner.
What the movie is trying to say about all of it, however, is a bit cloudier. We only see the world through Lincoln’s eyes. His vision becomes increasingly untrustworthy. It’s difficult to ascertain what the movie wants us to take away from this. A cynical reading would lead you to see an uncaring system that wants to use his newfound success at any cost. A fractured mind fully shattered by the stress of his situation. Haunted by a thing he can’t escape…just as the character in Accompany was. That’s fine. But the tone of All Alone Together never darkens enough to match that story.
The third trick, and final image, changes our understanding of this. We aren’t going to discuss what happens, but the final choices made by Lincoln and by the film itself hint at a circular nature of creativity and mental health issues. Something that the story never fully earns. As a character piece about a troubled man who breaks due to added stress…All Alone Together works even though the tone doesn’t fully match the story’s conclusions. When the final trick occurs, however, that story changes. Enough to strip the aspects that made the story work and introduce a much more confusing take about mental illness.
Whatever your reading of All Alone Together is…the movie gets a lot of mileage out of its story telling tricks. It’s clever use of narrative tricks keep the story interesting even if the message behind it becomes harder to read. An impressive work that defies budgetary constraints with structure innovation and intriguing concepts.
Scare Value
It’s hard to not be impressed with what Maximus Jenkins accomplishes in All Alone Together. From its opening twist through the full breakdown of its protagonist, the movie has no shortage of good ideas. The point of the story is a bit rougher around the edges, however. Still…its opening salvo, unique integration of flashback, and final image leave a lasting impression.
