Alone Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: After her mother has a stroke, a woman returns to her childhood home in Thailand where she comes face to face with the ghost of her dead twin.

Review: Let me first say that this shouldn't be confused with a Korean movie also made in 2007 called "The Evil Twin" because the two do bear a resemblance. From the writer and director duo of my favorite horror film, "Shutter," is this followup attempt that does a decent job at maintaining the same level of scares. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near the level of awesomeness despite becoming a bigger financial success. The main faults reside within the story as it follows the same approach and most of the same themes as "Shutter" but in a significantly weaker manner. The plot is straightforward as a couple living in Korea, named Pim and Wee, are informed that Pim's mother had a stroke which leads to the couple returning to Thailand to resolve various issues. The drama comes from the fact that Pim has not spoken to her mother since the death of her twin sister, Ploy. Pim and Ploy had been born conjoined twins, and so there is a lot of emphasis on their strong bond to each other; however something happened between the two leading to surgical separation and resulting in Ploy's mysterious death. You will notice early on that the story is presented through various flashbacks building up to the surgery, and whatever happened to Ploy, while strategically building tension in the present. The flashbacks do provide an interesting way to hype the mystery as you know Pim is holding back the worst memories as well as the truth. I should note that the many twin actresses, especially the one playing the ghost, and the lead, played by Marsha Wattanapanich, do a fantastic job presenting the many stages of Pim and Ploy's life together while successfully engaging the audience in their relationship. Speaking of said ghost, she does look pretty damn scary with strong makeup effects worthy of rivaling "Shutter." But while I understand they wanted to provide a different look, this ghost is not as scary as Natre, nor as relentless, with her appearances much more limited. Regardless, the ghost is most certainly the highlight and strongest aspect to the film. Anyway, it is established that Pim is essentially the good one and Ploy was the bad one with typical reasons for her behavior like jealousy, false sense of betrayal, etc. I would have preferred more complexity to the dynamics of their relationship, but I understand the necessity to keep it simple. In the present, Pim begins to see Ploy haunting her while falling apart mentally from obvious guilt. Wee thinks that it is just her bottled up emotions coming out since it has been so long since she was home and decides to call up a psychiatrist friend. At first Pim is reluctant, but after accidentally running over their dog and seeing more of Ploy, she reconsiders. At this point we learn that Wee was the wedge that drove the two sisters apart because he liked Pim and obviously Ploy was jealous because she also liked Wee. The closer Pim and Wee became, the more enraged Ploy became trying to sabotage their efforts to be together. The final event to divide the two was a picture Wee drew of Pim "alone." I'll be honest, some of Wee's actions seem messed up considering he knew how jealous Ploy was, but they were just teens with a crush at the time so I can forgive his idiocy; likewise, Wee does feel guilty he drove the two apart since he was apparently oblivious to the turmoil in the girls' relationship. At this point, Pim is starting to go off the deep-end at the exact moment the mother awakens long enough to tell Wee a little revelation. Okay, this twist is not surprising in the least, you could see it coming a million miles away, and there are way too many clues given in the film that I find it hard to imagine someone would not figure this out: Pim is actually Ploy, and Ploy took Pim's identity to have Wee for herself. After Ploy went crazy and strangled Pim, the two had the surgery to remove Pim's dead body which led to her moving away, and later meeting up with Wee, all the while the mom refused to ever speak with Ploy. This level of predictability really hurt the film for me because it's as if they're beating you over the head with it all film long. Every time the ghost appears it is on Pim's side when they were conjoined, "Pim" is holding back the truth but what could she possibly be hiding other than this, she replaces the dog with the exact same dog breed and gives it the same name, her crazy tendencies aren't like the Pim we see in flashbacks, and just everything begs the audience to figure this out too early. Now that Wee knows this, Ploy plans to kill him because he won't accept her as his girlfriend/wife (it's never clear) any longer. Amidst this chaos, the house is lit on fire and the two take quite a beating until Ploy gains the upper hand which leads to Pim's ghost intervening and scaring Ploy. Wee drops a large cabinet on top of Ploy trapping her as he escapes and Pim's ghost holds her in place until she burns. The film ends with the two reunited in death at the same grave playing Ploy's favorite song. There are a lot of strong points to this film because it is scary and there are some creative scares even when subtle like "Pim" walking on the beach with a second set of footprints beside her. There is a nice flow to the pacing and the flashbacks do provide an interesting presentation to the mystery. The acting is strong and the relationship of the characters felt tragic and invests the audience. But the ending and twist were predictable to the point that it was detrimental to the film as a whole; I honestly would have rated this much higher had it been more original or less obvious at least. At the same time, it follows "Shutter's" formula too closely with the same focus on 3 characters: the oblivious spouse, the liar, and a rightfully vengeful spirit, among many other similar aspects. I hate to compare it to "Shutter" so much because that's not entirely fair, but it's necessary to address the high expectations one would have after seeing "Shutter." This is most certainly worth a view or more because it's a solid horror film with some great scenes, but be weary of the predictable twist.

Notable Moment: At the end when the twins reunite so to speak. That look on ghost Pim's face is priceless in the most disturbing way.

Final Rating: 6.5/10