Butler's Cinema Scene

“ALONE” My rating: B

96 minutes | No MPAA rating

The woman-in-peril plot has been so overdone that we’re due for an industry-wide embargo.

Before that happens, though, I’m happy to have seen “Alone,” John Hyams’ superior thriller that with a minimum of fuss leaves the nerves tingling.

We meet Jessica (Jules Willcox) packing up her belongings in a U-Haul trailer. She’s leaving Portland; her destination isn’t disclosed, not even to her parents who dun her with phone calls. Basically she heads northeast, into the wilderness.

The first hint that things might not go well comes on the first day when she is nearly run off the road by a jerk in a Jeep.  (Echoes of Spielberg’s “Duel.”)

Next morning, as she’s preparing to pull out from the motel where she spent the night, Jessica is approached by a stranger (Marc Menchacha) who announced he wants to apologize.

This doofus-looking dude (sandy Fu-Manchu ‘stache, oversized aviator glasses) tries to start up a friendly conversation but Jessica wisely isn’t having any of it. She’s suspicious even of the sling in which he keeps one of  his arms.

But getting rid of the guy is a problem. In the wee hours he shows up at a highway rest stop where she’s taking a break; when she gets back on the road she discovers that one of her tires has been slashed.

Nervous yet?

All this has been pulled off by director Hyams and screenwriter Mattias Olsson with a minimum of dialogue. In fact, with the exception of a few voices on the telephone this is a two-person movie.

Mark Manchaca

Whether the guy is a genuine threat or just an over friendly dope is soon resolved when our heroine awakens with a  roofie headache in the cellar of a rural cabin.

She tries to plead with her captor. His response is chilling: “Do you think you’re the first one to say that?  Take your clothes off.”

Using her wits and determination to survive, Jessica organized an escape; the entire second half of the film is an elaborately staged chase through the  forest primeval during which time she is briefly aided by a hunter (Anthony Heald) who find her bruised, bloody and barefoot.

“Alone” has been organized into chapters (“The Road,” “The River,” “The Rain,” “The Night,” “The Clearing”), though these labels aren’t particularly useful.  I mean we can see — and sense — what’s going on here. Basically this is a survival drama set in a lush landscape of firs, ferns, raging cataracts and dripping rain.

This sort of thing doesn’t usually generate acting superlatives, but you’ve gotta give Willcox and Menchaca props for keeping us on the edge of our sets. Without overstating things this minimalist thriller tells us all we need to know about these characters to generate a truckload of suspense.

| Robert W. Butler