Directed by Jordan Noel
Written by Hudson Phillips
Starring Belle Adams, Sophie Edwards, Carrie Walrond Hond, Lau'rie Roach
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes
Available digitally

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Filmed over ten days for $30,000, This World Alone makes some interesting and admirable choices within the confines of its budget. The film takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, the origins of which are told in voiceover by Sam (Belle Adams), a twenty-something who doesn’t know what the world was like before “The Fall.” Aged photographs, pictures from advertisements, drawings, greeting cards, and other images are used to illustrate the story. Some twenty years ago, sudden and unexpectedly, mankind (or the United States, it’s not entirely clear), lost all power. Things necessary for survival, like calling 911, were no longer available. Also gone were modern conveniences, like microwaves, and modern necessities, like telephones. Most importantly, gone is human connection. This is the only world Sam has ever known, living in an isolated mountain home with her mother Connie (Carrie Walrond Hond), and Willow (Sophie Edwards), a woman in her mid-30s whom Connie took in during the beginning of The Fall. Together, the three women live as a family.

The film’s location, the North Georgia Mountains, is stunning. The buzzing sounds of nature serve, in many spots, as the film’s only soundtrack. Shots of insects, trees, and sunsets convey a natural beauty amidst a world in collapse. Like many-a young person told that the world is a scary place and to never leave home, Sam wants to leave home. Soon the need to leave home becomes driven by tragedy and not angst; as Connie tries to train Sam how to fight, Willow gets knocked over and impaled on a piece of scrap metal and needs antibiotics to fight infection. Sam must travel to the nearest village, called New Macedonia, and hope that someone is willing to accept the bullets her mother gave her as a trade for medicine.

The film’s lack of music can feel absent at times. A film’s score is, in many ways, as a guide for us on How to Feel, or to amplify what we’re already feeling. It would have helped scenes of melodrama carry more weight, but as-is they fall flat. The strongest performances in this film are from Edwards, who delivers a moving monologue about Connie and the habits of mother bears, and Lau'rie Roach as Dart, a young man Sam befriends on her journey. It’s a nice touch that The Fall seems to have reacquainted nearly every young person with literature. Dart, for example, does not like his given name and has named himself Dart after D'Artagnan from The Three Musketeers (although he mispronounces it “Dart-ag-non”). Sam names her pet pig Wilbur after Charlotte’s Web. Willow, Connie, and Sam play-act scenes from Peter Pan. Without electricity to watch films or listen to music, literature becomes our only possibility of escape, of imagining a world beyond our borders.

Belle Adams as Sam is a bit inconsistent. She never feels like the wide-eyed young person we’re told she is. Carrie Walrond Hond never feels like a tough, survivalist mother bear, either. Together, we never feel their mother-daughter dynamic. They act and talk like two people who just met. When Connie “trains” Sam, their fighting is awkward and clumsy, and not like it’s meant to be (it also goes on for longer than it needs to). Jordan Neil, in his feature length debut, shows promise. A particularly clever moment shows a close up of Sam’s eye and then Dart’s eye shortly after an intruder starts talking about “an eye for an eye.” Sure, it’s literal, but didn’t The Departed end with a shot of a rat? Sometimes being literal is OK. Unfortunately the film starts to fall apart at the end, reaching a conclusion that never feels justified. How a village like New Macedonia, with archaic practices like punishing adulterers by stoning, came to be is unclear. Why would mankind regress like that? The scene with the intruder also plays out awkwardly. It’s not engaging to listen to a character we just met explain, at great length, about biblical concepts. This World Alone is a thoughtful debut but the script and performances are a little undercooked.