On March 6, Ukrainian audiences were treated to another low-budget horror film that no one asked for — «I Will Never Leave You Alone». The original title, however, does not say a word about a house or witches, but we have what we have. To find out how scary it was during the screening, and whether it was scary at all, as usual, read the review below.
Genre horror movie, psychological thriller, drama
Director D.W. Medoff
Starring Kenneth Trujillo, Catherine Eichenberger, Christopher Genovese, Emma Ann Wedemeyer, Kimberly Maxwell, Pierce Leckie, Katie Wilson, Malik Jones, Alex Parkinson
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
To be fair, the movie does feature both the creepy dirt and the old abandoned shack. It is there that Richard Marwood, who has been released from prison on parole, finds himself guarding the dubious property for six days before selling it to superstitious buyers. Rumor has it that some terrible things have happened in the house and that the ghosts of the dead remain there.
Not wanting to go back to prison, and having the opportunity to get some good money, the man agrees to the terms and moves into the house. He is not allowed to leave, but soon he faces an incomprehensible nightmare — the ghost of a sinister witch who begins to terrorize the temporary newcomer. Will the sufferer manage to survive these days without falling victim to otherworldly evil?
Today, to follow the typical genre trope of «haunted house» and use it as the basis for a plot, you either have to be James Wan. Or try to deviate from the standard formula and somehow refresh the view of dusty horror clichés. Director and screenwriter D.W. Medoff, to his credit, tried to meet this challenge, but he lacked the experience, ingenuity, and resources.
«I Will Never Leave You Alone» only pretends to be a horror story about a supernatural evil that constantly creaks the floors, leaves cryptic messages and promptly appears around the corner in a darkened frame for the sake of another screamer. However, in reality, this is a story about the pain of loss, the guilt of a former alcoholic, severe psychological trauma, and, oddly enough, postpartum depression (for reference — the latter does not apply to the protagonist).
And, of course, it’s about the alienation and loneliness associated with Richard’s tragic past, when he lost the most precious thing he had. And this is where the film clearly resonates with a recent, also bad, movie, «Restless Waters, Shivering Lights», in which a man and his daughter were trying to cope with the deaths of their wife and mother, respectively.
The problem is that watching the endless mental torment of a lonely sufferer in an old, remote abode of evil, which, like the lighthouse in the aforementioned film, symbolizes the character’s inner state, is a kind of screen time. And it’s hardly possible to feel his tragic fate, because the filmmakers have to constantly switch to some horror, which severely destroys the already shaky drama.
The narrative is full of numerous flashbacks that conflict with the attempts to scare. But the memories shed light on Richard’s past, and in one of them Medoff allows himself a forbidden technique that not many people dare to do, which makes «I Will Never Leave You Alone» as gloomy, depressing and pessimistic as possible. It’s hard to imagine who in their right mind would want to watch this in a movie theater today.
From the very beginning, everything that happens on the screen looks a bit ridiculous and resembles a mission of some survival horror video game: the hero has to survive for a certain time in a confined space with otherworldly forces, armed with a hammer that is useless as a goat’s milk. There is even an episodic NPC.
But it’s one thing to look for a way out of a difficult situation when the interactivity is cranked up to the maximum, and quite another to be an outside observer of a not very exciting action. After watching the movie, it’s hard to get rid of the idea that the plot for a short film (or a couple of cutscenes, if we’re talking about gaming) was stretched for an hour and a half for some reason.
Due to a vocal cord injury, Kenneth Trujillo’s character does not speak, so the lead actor had a difficult task to perform — the depressed emotional state of his Richard had to be conveyed without words. The actor coped with this challenge really well, but it still didn’t save the movie.
«I Will Never Leave You Alone» — another cheap semi-horror that unsuccessfully tries to seem like something bigger and more substantial than it really is. There are only two locations and a few characters in the frame, two of whom are literally overwhelmed by guilt, in particular because of their craving for the bottle. On the other hand, what else could a man named Medoff make a movie about?
