"Not alone in here" Review
It is obvious that the succession of Dante Alighieri and the solution of theological problems about the construction of the afterlife occupies young filmmakers no less than it was occupied in their time by Pasolini, Greenaway and von Trier. Following them, Aidan O'Hearon borrows from the «Divine Comedy» the main thing - multi-part, staggered, divisible. «Not Alone In Here» materialises this narrative specificity by creating a complex system of empty rooms, openings and frames.
The epilogue to the film, borrowed from Shakespeare «Storm» raises two questions at once: where is this «here» and who are these «devils»? And «here» is in our house, located on our gray street, in the reality where we are, playing video games and sleeping on our beds. The key to how this «here» is arranged is a shot with photo frames, where on one side of the collage - a birthday picture, and on the other - a plaque. This is how this house works, this is how the rooms are arranged, whose spatial metamorphosis can only be held by the rigidity of the doorways. «Devils» are also disarmed by the frame, they are locked in an impenetrable rectangle of the TV screen until the darkness releases them.
«Not Alone In Here» uses post-horror tools, which is not that unfolds in the walls of an empty house, it permanently exists in it. You want to let it out like stale air, air the room, let in the light, dispel the turbidity of this horror. But the plurality of this house, motivated by the structure of «Divine Comedy» will not allow us to get out of it, it only absorbs, immersing us deeper and deeper.
Each Dante must have his own guide, and the descent into this hell is accompanied by the camera, an anti-Vergilius that does not maintain the structure of the framework, but rather deconstructs it. Aidan O'Hearon's camera destroys the rigidity of openings, neutralises the autonomy of spaces, blends them and plunges them into darkness. The immovable, assertive and heavy gaze of the camera, it is not only able to absorb time and light, it realises the potential hidden in the darkness.
«I think we are in hell - devils are here».