YOU WON'T BE ALONE

 Sara Klimoska     Anamaria Marinca     Alice Englert     Noomie Rapace

            This is a movie for hard-core horror fans and those who savor Terence Malick films.  It takes place in 19^th Century Macedonia, where witches were well known by the village populace as living for centuries and feeding on infants and animals to maintain their life-blood.  We meet the witch “Old Maid Maria” (sometimes called the “Wolf-Eateress” who was burned at the stake, but still roams around in a dessicated body) in the home of a mother of a newborn who is crying plaintively.  The mother recognizes the witch as one who has haunted her village for 200 years, panics, and begins bargaining with the witch not to take her child, named Nevena.  They finally hit upon a deal whereby the mother can keep the child for 16 years, at which time the witch will reclaim her.  The witch marks the baby by scratching out its tongue, thus rendering the child mute.

            The mother hides the child in a cave and sure enough after 16 years the witch reappears to claim the Nevena (Klimoska).  Now, of course, the witch is not much of a mother as she herself acknowledges, so she treats Nevena poorly.  Nevena tries to get back at her once by throwing a stone at her back, but then is severely punished by the witch’s almost drowning her.  Part of the beauty of this film is to see the natural curiosity that Nevena shows as she becomes aware that there is a world of humans “out there”, and she would like to learn as much about them as possible.

            The old witch has taught her how to shape-shift by means of “witching spit” in which she zaps the being she wants to enter and imbibes its organs, shoving them into her chest, and sucking on the wounds of the victim.  (I had to turn my head away at this part.)

After Nevena accidently kills a young peasant girl, she enters her body, and being curious, she wants to see what human life is like.  In the story she takes on various shapes:  the body of an abused wife, Boslka (Rapace, who also plays Navena #2), a male attacker, a village hunk who introduces her to the joy of sex, and others.  What she sees is that the world in her language is “a burning hurting thing…a burning breaking thing.”  

You Won’t be Alone is dramatically interesting, but the combination of a very dark screen and a complex script without much explanation means the viewer must work hard to understand the plot.  The very end provides some explanation, particularly about Old Maid Maria and how she came to be.

A dark and chilling tale about an old witch in 19^th Century Macedonia claiming a child when she becomes 16 and turning her into a shape-shifting witch.

 

Grade:  B                              By Donna R. Copeland

THE SECRETS WE KEEP

Noomie Rapace     Chris Messina     Joel Kinnaman     Amy Seimetz

     The filmmakers really double down on “secrets”, the word in the title.  In the story, secrets are nested in layers, and although I think it’s intended to increase the mystery, it simply became off-putting to me in the end.  Noomi Rapace as Maja brings her ability to exploit a sense of intrigue as she has done so well before (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, Prometheus, and Sherlock Holmes:  A Game of Shadows).  Here, as Maja, she’s apparently happily married to a doctor (Chris Messina), but her eyes are always alert on those around her.  One day in the park with her young son, she thinks she sees someone she recognizes—someone from her hidden past.

     When they met in a hospital, Maja told her husband she was Romanian and after falling in love they ended up married and living in a small town, USA.  She has given him no details of her early life, and even when she thinks she recognizes the man she saw in the park, she says nothing to Lewis (Messina), although she keeps tailing the man.

     Once, when in a glimpse she sees his face clearly, she is convinced he is a part of her past.  She pursues him relentlessly, and manages to kidnap him, whereupon she must tell Lewis more about her past.  The movie continues to give him (and us, the audience) bits and pieces, until finally it comes to more than one showdown.

     The big question for us to answer for ourselves as we watch The Secrets We Keep is whether Maja’s claim is based on fact, or whether it is a case of mistaken identity.  (Easy to do after 15+ years).  This part of the movie works well, although I still became impatient with characters not using simple logic time and again.  

We get torn between fact and coincidence throughout, and the ending is a deus ex machina.  It doesn’t come logically from anything that has gone on before.

     Rapace is as brilliant an actress as ever; her ability to persuade others is convincing, and she maintains her mystique, even when she is in everyday types of conversations.  Chris Messina as her husband is less well played, not showing the expected temperament of a physician and with a bewildered expression much of the time.  Joel Kinnaman and Amy Seimetz as the other couple are perfectly cast and lend a nice balance to the production.

 

Horror arises when the past impinges on the present.

 

Grade:  C+                                    By Donna R. Copeland