By Nia Edwards-Behi
The promotional bluster for I Am Alone makes some quite grand claims which had rather the opposite effect on me than what I presume was intended. Rather than make me think, ‘oh wow, this film must be great!’, the claims that the filmmakers “reinvented the [found footage] subgenre of horror” made me roll my eyes and settle in for the same old things I’d seen a hundred times before. This was in part also thanks to the synopsis: a reality TV presenter is lost in the woods when a viral outbreak turns the local population into, well, zombies, obviously, and when his footage is discovered the CDC think he might hold the key to finding a cure for the virus which is infecting people in their droves.
Now, in fairness, I was a little bit misguided. I Am Alone certainly does not reinvent anything, but it does have a couple of innovations which make it stand out. The dominant use of GoPro cameras and accessories for the main ‘found’ footage, along with CCTV and surveillance footage elsewhere, means that the look of the film is relatively different to the usual shaky cam. The film does concern a reality TV crew, and thankfully they are not paranormal investigators – their use of GoPros and similar equipment at least gives them an air of modern believability. Of course, GoPro footage can be just as nausea-inducing as regular shaky cam, so sadly that aspect of the film doesn’t solve any issues with that. It takes a while for the film to get entirely generic – the unfolding of the viral outbreak is quite nicely presented, if a bit convoluted, so the first portion of the film is just about watchable, but sadly it loses this grip on tension-building fairly sharpish. The ‘infected’ themselves are at least kept a bit interesting because they shuffle around like ‘walkers’ but they look and sound more like ‘runners’. There’s also no faffing around trying to ‘name’ them, which is quite refreshing, but the film probably could have done with a bit more knowingness of where it stands in relation to the genre as a whole – especially if it wants to make claims at reinventing it.
I Am Alone’s filmmakers claim that in order to make their main “character’s journey feel raw and authentic” they “used different storytelling techniques and employed various shooting formats”. Now, what they might have wanted to have done is spent a bit more time on the story and the script to achieve that, not faff around with a mix of vlog-style reality TV, surveillance footage and documentary. It doesn’t make one tiny bit of difference what your shooting formats are if you haven’t actually bothered to fully realise your characters and your narrative in the first place. Gareth David-Lloyd is a good actor, and he manages to ground the somewhat less than convincing dialogue he’s given early in the film as he attempts to purposefully get lost in the Colorado wilderness for his TV show. But even he can’t save the dialogue at the film’s tail-end, when hamfisted attempts at pathos are injected into proceedings and he has to react to video messages sent to him from his wife – because naturally that’s what you’d do in the zombie apocalypse, not call, or at least try to Skype or Facetime given as your in-the-wilds husband still has battery and, apparently, signal to receive video.
Ultimately, this film falls prey to the same tedious mistakes that many other found footage films do. The ‘wrap around’ segment, of a CDC scientist and one of the other TV crew members watching back through the footage, is a mess, neatly summed up by the fact that they’re watching GoPro footage on a CRT television which is surrounded by other out of date tech. There are moments where the shots captured make no sense (and it seems like everyone has CCTV cameras installed, conveniently), and the fact that the film has music playing over it doesn’t help matters either.
In short, Colin did the whole slow-descent-into-zombie much better back in 2008, and 2013’s The Borderlands does a much better job of using CCTV, video diaries and helmet-cameras to scare the audience and tell a good story. I Am Alone ultimately feels like a very long intro sequence to a computer game, which is underscored by the film just abruptly ending just as things are kicking off in the ‘present day’ scenario. While I Am Alone is by no means the worst found footage film I’ve seen, it has very little to recommend it.
I Am Alone is currently screening at festivals.