Expectations have been running high for new Thai horror film Alone. Not only is it the latest from the directing duo behind Shutter -- currently in the midst of a US remake, a film that I consider a minor classic of the Asian horror boom and the film that sparked the current wave of Thai horror -- but the pair actually shut down production on a pair of solo projects they had in development so that they could reunite on this picture. Those solo projects sounded quite interesting and I hope they get back to them eventually but they definitely made the right decision. Alone is quite likely the best pure horror film to come from Thailand since Shutter, with only the coming-of-age ghost story Dorm -- from the same production company, who are currently on a hot streak -- and Wisit Sasanatieng's The Unseeable challenging for the supernatural throne.
We begin with a stellar premise. Pim is a young Thai woman living in Korea with her husband Wee. At her birthday a friend reads her fortune with a deck of cards and informs her that there is happy news! Something she has lost will soon return to her! But some lost things are better off staying lost, really. You see, Pim moved to Korea partially to escape the guilt of being the surviving half of a pair of conjoined twins. Her sister Ploy died after separation, a separation that Pim insisted on largely because she was in love with Wee and the guilt of choosing her husband over her sister and her sister's resulting death has plagued her ever since. Much as she would prefer to avoid it, however, Pim soon has no choice but to return to her childhood home when her mother is felled by a stroke and -- sure enough -- it isn't long before the spirit of her dead sister begins to angrily intrude upon her life.
Shutter was as successful as it was for two primary reasons. The men at the helm know a good story when they see it and they are masters at manipulating tension, so much so that they can playfully telegraph what's coming in certain scenes and still make you jump when they deliver the goods. Alone has both of these strengths in spades along with one benefit that Shutter never had. Thanks to their previous success they know have a decent budget to work with and the film looks fantastic as a result. Beautifully shot largely in a grand old mansion slowly going to seed Alone has an environment designed perfectly to bolster the story. And the story is very strong, the first half playing as a series of straight up, very effective jump scares before it moves into the real meat of the story on the back stretch. Once again the directors succeed in taking some of the basic tropes of the Asian ghost story, already well familiar to audiences, and then subverting them into something slightly different, something new and fresh. Thematically Alone shows, once again, that the duo understand that the best horror is built upon universally recognizable emotional ground, this time drawing on themes of sibling rivalry, family guilt and romantic jealousy.
There are enough minor little flaws in Alone to prevent it from jumping right up into the top tier of Asian horror titles -- one baffling moment where the diabetic Wee opts to stop for a shot of insulin rather than making his much needed escape comes leaping to mind -- but it's not far off. Not far off at all. A very, very strong sophomore effort.