Director: Reed Morano
MPAA Rating: R
Run Time: 93 Minutes
The intrigue of the archetypal lonely soul finding his or way through the desolate chaos of a world emptied out of life after a nondescript apocalypse is a recent film trend with diminishing returns. Unless your solitary character – who ostensibly will be holding up the narrative – is capable of portraying a raw, silent charisma and can make the menial labor of surviving seem engaging, your film is destined to fail from the onset.
Thankfully, I Think We’re Alone Now has the enigmatic muted personality of Peter Dinklage in the role of the misanthropic Del to lay its dramatic weight on, but it’s when director Reed Morano attempts to expand his premise into more conventional frameworks of post-apocalyptic fiction does the film falter. Though it puts a strong foot forward, the more I Think We’re Alone Now and Del opens up to you the more predictable and meandering its vision of unconventional friendships for the end of the world becomes.
Although a non-pocalypse, wherein the details of how Del becomes the last man alive, are never investigated with any purpose, the impression is that an event has taken place and has left him all on his lonesome in a nondescript university town. A former librarian of the university, he maintains his sanity by sticking to a restrictive routine of clearing out the homes of the surrounding town, scavenging for supplies and library books missing from his catalog in a very Twilight Zone touch, and burying the dead in a systematic and repetitive schedule.
A loner even when the world was freely populated, we come to learn, Del finds solace in his newfound and purposeful existence, which is unceremoniously disrupted by the sudden appearance of Grace (Elle Fanning). Despite Grace serving as a free-spirited, almost Manic Pixie Dream Girl – who serves as the light to Del’s dreary existence – the film’s tired usage of the odd-couple relationship fails to cultivate any interest even with the apocalypse dressing.
We are given the impression that the formula is not at fault but the players slotted into it are because, despite their best efforts, Dinklage and the normally charming Fanning have little chemistry to speak of. Despite their relationship being the cornerstone to the film working, they have the energy of reluctant scene partners working through an improv exercise.
Most of what we see of the mismatched couple are their airless attempts at conversation and their sitcom-esque odd coupling disrupting Del’s sanctimonious routine while wearing down his stony exterior. The film enters into an insufferable middle slump with these characters repetitive interactions, which – outside of a third-act reveal of Grace’s origins – leads to little more than feeble attempts at situational comedy.
Although the film ostensibly is structured with instances of busy work for the protagonists, no personality lurks between the menial tasks they perform, and their relationship remains surface level. Morano seems nonetheless conscious of the genre he is working in to tease potential developments and approach the greater questions that a sudden apocalypse would inspire yet lacks the follow-through.
Del’s collection of stranger’s photographs, the romantic potentials between he and Grace, the ethics of robbing the dead, and even that third-act reveal all offer theoretical directions for I Think We’re Alone Now to take, but it never bothers to develop them beyond window dressing for Morano’s non-pocalypse. Writing within an apocalyptic scenario, the content acceptance of this film’s protagonists does not an interesting film make, and we are left thirsting for more facets to this world, which never come or are flat-out never considered.
Even the perennial theme of loneliness in a pre- and post-apocalyptic society is not as explored as you would expect, as the film gives way completely to the non-starting dynamic of Grace and Del.
I maintain that this could have worked as a project, even with this cast and setup, and there are inklings of a better execution embedded into this current underwhelming form. The evocative cinematography of modern desolation and the barren framing Morano places around his subjects in these empty streets of refuse is saying much more than the script by Mike Makowsky can.
The mind-numbing small talk and the conventional dynamic of jaded recluse and bohemian optimist foraging through a world long gone leaves little impact. As a proponent of the charms of both actors involved, the fact that putting them together into an all encompassing two-hander was somehow bungled seems extra baffling.
