The first character we meet in We Die Alone is Aidan (Baker Chase Powell); he’s preparing for a date, and he’s nervous – so nervous that he is practising the same line, over and over. We never see him get to the restaurant; his nerves are so bad that he stands the girl up, receiving an angry voicemail as he trembles and self-loathes back at his apartment. This is, it seems, par for the course – and establishes one of the key themes of the film. It’s isolation, and the reasons why, in a hyper-connected world, some people find themselves so seemingly isolated.
Aidan goes back to his daily routine, working shifts at a thrift store and making polite, if friendly small talk with his co-worker Elaine (Ashley Jones). You get the impression that this could go on forever, but then by chance a new neighbour from across the hall named Chelsea (Samantha Boscarino) locks herself out of her apartment, asking for Aidan’s help to call the manager to let her back in. This, again by sheer coincidence, makes this the nearest thing Aidan has ever had to a blind date – perhaps in forever, given his behaviour. They even oddly hit it off via some shared interests. Aidan is then presented with a quandary: maintain the pretence of online dating, or take a shot at asking out his new neighbour – a woman he has at least already spoken to. Encouraged by Elaine, he begins trying to find a way to ask Chelsea out. But is a ‘yes’ really what Aidan wants or expects it to be?
Oh, my. You cannot help but feel an immediate sense of sympathy for Aidan: this is no incel, no entitled woman-hater, and in some respects he could be seen as an everyman figure for our times – nice, quiet, but in absolute turmoil just beneath the surface. However, for all that, he is unable to treat women like individuals. He learns one line, to parrot at every (or any) woman he gets near. You could imagine he’d be one of those guys who went on to say any girlfriend was ‘the female version’ of himself, so unable is he to see things from a different perspective than his limited own – women as proper equals are missing from this equation. In shades of Maniac (2012), he substitutes one girl’s face for another; the fantasy surpasses the potential reality. So in a very brief running time (just over twenty minutes, all in) We Die Alone successfully develops a nuanced character, vulnerable but flawed, sympathetic but teeth-grindingly wrongheaded. Similarly, you feel for Chelsea when her well-meaning friendly behaviour is misconstrued; you know something, something is going to give, and the film’s tight editing build and build this impression. It’s a tense watch.
On a deeper level, all the people in this film are in some kind of flux, and as such, it represents familiar aspects of modern life which offer fertile ground for horror stories. People are rootless, or lonely. They lie, or misrepresent themselves online. They want to use professional photos to generate ‘real’ connections. We Die Alone very successfully takes this modern malaise and plays with audience expectations, shifting perspectives and bringing different aspects of the story to the fore; to reiterate, this is a twenty-minute horror film which achieves what many features cannot. I can think of few films which riff so well on what at first seems a very straightforward set-up.
Utilising some deft touches and moments of repetition showing a clear sense of direction throughout, We Die Alone is a clever, economical short film. Its brutal pay off offers an equally deft punchline. Be careful what you wish for and be careful what you do in this world.
We Die Alone will be released to VOD on 21st August 2020. For more information about We Die Alone, please click here.