You Won't Be Alone is built on a delicate balance of contradictions. Writer-director Goran Stolevski's feature debut straddles the line between horror film and life-affirming coming-of-age drama, drawing on age-old folk traditions to tell a story that is at times enthrallingly new. That ambitiousness is its greatest asset; it is also, fittingly, its biggest flaw. As strong as the movie can be when committed to the specificity of its characters and setting, it asks too many of the big, unanswerable questions at the heart of the human condition, and the further You Won't Be Alone reaches for the universal, the more chafing its grip on the viewer becomes.
Set in the 19th century Macedonian countryside, the story begins, as any fairy tale might, with a misbegotten bargain. Finding her house invaded by a witch (or "Wolf-Eateress") known as Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca), who has come to feed on her newborn, a mother strikes a desperate deal: if she spares the infant, when the child turns 16, Maria can claim her as the daughter she has always wanted. The witch agrees but, out of a cruel desire to have their agreement struck in blood, leaves the baby mute. A quick flash-forward reveals the woman's bid to outsmart her mythical tormentor by raising the girl in a hallowed cave was all for naught, and when the teenaged Nevena (Sara Klimoska) is finally let out into the wider world, it is as a witch herself.
This prologue promises a story more firmly rooted in horror than the one You Won't Be Alone has to tell, and viewers will come to associate this feeling with Old Maid Maria's presence. The elder witch is a complex, tragic, even sympathetic figure, but she remains a monster, and if she had her way, this film's outlook would be entirely dark and cynical. Nevena, however, is not so sure the world is worth giving up on, and with Stolevski mostly committed to her perspective, the camera imbues everything with a sense of childlike wonder. Desperate to learn more about these humans Maria is so confident will hate her, the young witch infiltrates a village by doing what the locals fear most about the Wolf-Eaters - killing a woman (Noomi Rapace) and stealing her likeness.
Once this element enters the story, the true brilliance of You Won't Be Alone comes into focus. This is the first in a chain of transformations, and the result is a character acted by committee, with each performer (Klimoska; Rapace; Carloto Cotta; Anastasija Karanovich; and Alice Englert) having to embody a person experiencing life for the first time. Just this concept makes for compelling viewing, but the script artfully creates continuity through Nevena's voiceover, as each body she inhabits is seemingly rendered as mute as her own (her description of her silence signals Jane Campion's The Piano as a potential, if unexpected, touchstone). This conceit also allows Stolevski to deconstruct the societal norms that Nevena essentially learns from scratch. Thematically, the movie is at its strongest when meditating on humanity's social relationships, and their profound ability to both hurt and heal.
However, You Won't Be Alone aspires to be an exploration of why life is worth living, and the movie's musings have a tendency to go a step too far. In these moments, its style begins to work against it. The camerawork goes from a representation of how Nevena sees things to how the movie seemingly wants its viewer to see things. Mark Bradshaw's score, which once played the role of a necessary counterpoint to the horror of Old Maid Maria's intrusions, becomes guilty of telling the audience too forcefully how to feel. There's a certain artfulness to You Won't Be Alone, but there are times when that aesthetic feels more put-on than earned, which is frustrating from a film that is so often inventive.
Luckily, these moments do not overwhelm the viewing experience, and each time things begin to drag, Stolevski throws in some new narrative wrinkle that pulls the viewer right back in. Its subject matter and period setting are sure to earn some (perhaps unfair) comparisons to Robert Eggers' The Witch, also somewhat of a horror/coming-of-age hybrid, though prospective viewers shouldn't begin a screening of You Won't Be Alone expecting a similar exercise in atmospheric filmmaking. Instead, come to experience a very promising debut from a director who seems poised to join Eggers as one of today's great practitioners of folk horror, whose first movie, while flawed, is already more than just an artistic stepping stone.
You Won't Be Alone releases in theaters on Friday, April 1. The film is 108 minutes long and is rated R for violence and gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, and sexual assault.
