Producers: Kristina Ceyton and Sam Jennings Director: Goran Stolevski Screenplay: Goran Stolevski Cast: Alice Englert, Anamaria Marinca, Noomi Rapace, Carloto Cotta, Félix Maritaud, Kamka Toćinovski, Sara Klimoska and Marija Opsenica Distributor: Focus Features
Grade: B
If Terrence Malick were to direct a horror film set in nineteenth-century Macedonia about a shape-shifting witch, it would probably look a good deal like this debut feature from Australian writer-director Goran Stolevski. Actually, “You Won’t Be Alone” isn’t so much a horror story as a fairy-tale as grim as anything the Grimm Brothers ever set down (a newly-fashioned fairy-tale, it must be emphasized, not one simply lifted from ancient legend, though Stolevski made use of his boyhood memories—he was born and raised in Macedonia until he was twelve, when his family migrated Down Under—to craft it). But while the narrative echoes genuine folk stories, the alternately jittery and rhapsodic style will definitely remind you of Malick’s work.
The film opens in a small Macedonian village, where peasant woman Yoana (Kamka Toćinovski) is aghast when the horribly disfigured figure called Old Maid Maria, the wolf-eateress (Anamaria Marinca), approaches her to demand her new-born, Nevena; Maria feeds on the blood of infants. Desperate to save her daughter, Yoana makes a bargain. She will provide another child for the witch, if she will allow her to keep Nevena until she is sixteen. Maria agrees, but before departing renders the child mute.
Yoana hides Nevena away in a sacred cave, where she grows up feral and unaware of the outside world apart from the glimpse of sky and clouds in an opening in the ceiling. Of course on the girl’s sixteenth birthday Maria arrives to claim Nevena (Sara Klimoska) and lead her out of the cave. The girl is now left with the dubious companionship of the person she calls, in the fractured syntax of her thoughts we hear in voiceover, as her “witch-mother,” as contrasted with her now-absent “whisper-mother.” And Maria quickly transforms her into a “me-witch” with a bloodletting ritual that endows her with a power glimpsed in her new parent, of becoming another, whether animal or human, by tearing out and consuming the victim’s internal organs and thus its corporeal form—a very sanguinary, borderline repulsive, kind of shape-shifting.
It’s through this means that Nevena learns about the world. Coming upon Bosilka (Noomi Rapace), a peasant woman with a newborn, she becomes her, but assumes only the woman’s body, not her mind or memory. As a result she’s thought mad by her family and fellow villagers, the result of beatings by her abusive husband. She adopts the guise of a dog for a time to observe the subservient attitude women must take to men, before allowing Boris (Carloto Cotta) to introduce her to sex before assuming his form. That’s the window to an experience of masculine dominance, which is followed by her assumption of the person of Biliana (Alice Englert), in whom she finally embraces something akin to the fullness of humanity with her husband Yovan (Félix Maritaud).
But Maria, who has been reappearing periodically to castigate her surrogate daughter’s fascination with mortals, intervenes again, and in doing so reveals her own history via the introduction of the witch (Marija Opsenica) who endowed her with the blessing—or curse—that she then handed down to Nevena.
“You Won’t Be Alone” can thus be described as a peculiar, indeed unique, coming-of-age tale, a girl’s journey of self-discovery in the guise of a period horror fairy-tale, marked by a production design by Bethany Ryan and costumes by Sladjana Peric-Santrac that almost allows you to feel the muck of the Macedonian wilds and cinematography by Matthew Chuang that gives all the images a degree of tactility that’s almost palpable, whether striving for a look of rough, often grim or gruesome, reality or shafts of sudden, uncommon beauty. Luca Cappelli’s jagged editing emphasizes the abrupt shifts, while Mark Bradshaw’s moody, meditative score accentuates the sense of pervasive strangeness.
The performances throughout emphasize authenticity and commitment to Stolevski’s singular vision. Rapace is the best-known of the leads, and brings a sense of wonderment to Bosilka, as does Klimoska, but it’s Englert who is most memorable as Biliana, Nevena’s final iteration, whose riveting turn reveals the character’s fuller understanding of what it mean to be human and the extent of her yearning. But one should not overlook the actress who appears from beginning to end, periodically return to badger her surrogate daughter over the girl’s desire to learn what her real mother’s decision to lock her away had robbed her of. Though for the most part encased in heavy old-age makeup, Marinca makes the menace show through.
“You Won’t Be Alone” is most easily categorized as falling into the recent movement of “elevated” or “arty” horror, showing perhaps the closest connection to the work of Robert Eggers (“The Witch,” “The Lighthouse”). But the comparison shouldn’t be taken too far. Stolevski’s voice is his own, and while it won’t appeal to everyone, or even most people, it’s something different to hear for those willing to listen.