Panic Fest 2026 Coverage
Loner review
If nothing else, Loner is aptly named.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Loner
Directed by Charlie Robb
Written by Charlie Robb
Starring Charlie Robb
Loner Review
We’ve seen a lot of independent horror movies lately turn towards the mockumentary/found footage hybrid method to tell their stories. As a result, I’ve written a lot about the mockumentary/found footage hybrid method of late. Loner, as a result of a fairly big shift in popular styling, feels like a bit of a throwback. Sure, there are still straight up found footage about someone in the woods stories out there…they just tend to feel antiquated with the recent deluge of variations and attempts to recontextualize the format. Antiquated is one way to describe Loner. “Waiting around for something to happen” would be another.
Man goes into the woods. That’s your plot for this one. A familiar one, to be sure. Angus (Charlie Robb) is a vlogger who heads into the forest to share survival tips. Once there…he finds himself lost and possible trapped by an unseen and unexplainable force. Loner doesn’t feel like a full on found footage movie…though it has all the trappings of one. We watch most of the film through cameras Angus has arranged around his little cabin in the middle of nowhere. Being a vlogger gives him a reason to keep filming at all times. I’m pretty sure it cheated the format on occasion, but I guess a camera could have been placed for every situation if you felt like defending the point.
If “waiting around for something to happen” doesn’t sound like the most exciting description of a movie…you’re going to want to skip right by Loner. It’s a choice that the movie commits to. You’ll get a lot of Angus talking to the camera…eventually about how strange his predicament has become. He’s alone on screen for almost the entirety of the film…which makes Robb’s performance pretty impressive given the amount asked of him while, effectively, nothing is happening. You can view the experience as a slow slide into madness if you want to…but he’s probably reacting to his situation the same way anyone would.
Something does eventually happen in Loner. It saves most of its interesting ideas for the end, of course…that’s why you’re waiting around for something to happen. I found the final moments of the story to be its most interesting. The story makes a move that found footage in the woods stories don’t normally take…and then finds a pretty interesting resolution to build out of that. Whether that’s worth the time sitting around watching Angus deal with almost nothing is up to you.
For the sake of reviewing the film…I think Robb and co-director Douglas Tawn did a commendable job keeping their slight horror story as engaging as possible. There’s only so much you can do with the set-up…but there are a few neat camera tricks and innovations used along the way. The problem with found footage movies always comes from knowing that no amount of effort will matter to the large section of people who simply don’t care for the concept. Loner isn’t going to offer them anything to win them back. For everyone else, Loner is interesting enough to (mostly) overcome its “one character with not much happening” mindset. Which makes it feel like more of an experiment than an experience…but there’s an audience for everything.
Loner left me thinking about its resolution more than anything else. When you watch so many hapless people lost in the woods with a camera…everything eventually bleeds together. But Loner does find itself heading in an unexpected direction in its final minutes. I can’t even say that I fully understood the direction it chose or what its ultimate comment on the situation was intended to be…but it was a little different than 99% of these stories end up…and it’s appreciated.
The production value was notably good here too. Sure, it’s not the most ambitious movie you’ll ever see…but it looks crips and clean and does a good job making you forget that you’re watching a found footage movie. There are moments of the shaky camera in the woods cliché…but Loner makes them feel like the most exciting part of the movie instead of making them its standard trick. You’d be surprised how much that helps a movie flow. Even one about a guy who might be trapped in the woods with nothing much going on.
Scare Value
The tagline for Loner is “two’s a crowd”. That’s a brilliant line. Unfortunately, it mostly only describes the content of Loner in an abstract way. It’s really just about a guy sitting in the woods for the most part. There’s nothing wrong with that…it’s worked before and it works well enough here. The brief moments where Angus isn’t completely alone are exciting…but they’re incredibly sparse. The ending may be of interest to people who have watched a ton of this type of movie…but nothing in the movie itself will be for those who already know it isn’t for them.
