When the world collapses, what is it that you’ll cling to?
Written and directed by Lowell Dean, Die Alone tells the story of Ethan (Douglas Smith), a young man deeply in love with his girlfriend, Emma. However, when he awakens, Ethan discovers that his love is missing (just like his memory.) With each day feeling like his first, Ethan scrambles to find his lost love. However, his primary contact is with Mae (Carrie Ann-Moss), an older woman with fight in her eyes.
Best known for his cult classic, horror franchise Wolfcop, Dean has created something downright soulful with Die Alone. Yes, there’s a certain element of ‘creature feature’ inherent to his story but it’s clear that Dean has more on his mind. This is a film that lives and… ahem… dies on the back of the relationships that he builds between characters. In doing so, he’s able to explore ideas with a certain level of empathy that seems out of character for a film such as this. And that is to the film’s benefit.
Told through from the perspective of his amnesiac main character, the film takes a fractured form of storytelling that feels like it’s part Memento and part 50 First Dates. While that feels like a blend that shouldn’t work, I assure you that it’s not the case. There’s a certain humour in watching Ethan meet Mae repeatedly, yet Dean never fully leans into the comedy. With each morning, Ethan rediscovers the worst aspects of the world that he (doesn’t) know and we feel the weight that it puts upon him. (After all, can you imagine waking up every morning, only to discover that it’s the worst day of your life?)
Even so, while Die Alone takes place within a post-apocalyptic world, the film’s setting only augments the film’s more emotional themes. Even though he’s left reeling from the loss of Emma every morning, it also becomes his fuel for life. Ethan’s determination to find his lost love spurs him forward. Everything in his life feels out of place, until he can find her and put the pieces back together.
In this way, Alone is very much a film about the plague of loneliness and the type of connections that keep us going. Ethan quest to reconnect with Emma has torn a piece from his soul. But he’s not the only one. In fact, each one of the other characters suffer from the same sense of loss. Though she sees the world through a steely glare, Mae’s isolation has pushed her to the brink. The death of his wife has left Tom a seething mass of hatred. Even Grillo’s Kai seems somewhat lost underneath his (inherently wise) mistrust of the world around him.
In Alone, loneliness is the real virus.
By extension, Dean portrays the most valuable currency as our connectness with others. In a world where people are disappearing (or worse), the love between people is something that must be fiercely protected. These characters feel every moment apart from others and hold fast to their time together. (Yet again, Kai is an excellent example of this as he keeps strangers down the barrel of a gun in order to keep his family safe.)
It is worth noting that Dean’s vision for a post-apocalyptic world is also entertaining. By putting the emphasis on nature’s fight back against humanity, he has offered us a unique vision of the End of Days. (When was the last time that we saw ‘plant-based’ zombies?) But, while there’s definitely conversation here about man’s treatment of the environment, the soul of the film lies within its exploration of human relationships.
After all, even in a post-apocalyptic world, its love that keeps the human heart beating.
Die Alone is available in Canadian theatres now.
