I Will Never Leave You Alone is a horror film written and directed by DW Medoff. It is about a man named Richard (Kenneth Trujillo) who gets released from prison on parole, and must endure a few nights in a haunted house to cleanse it of ghosts as part of his release conditions? It is about as silly as it sounds. There are a few spoilers, but not of the ending. We typically don't post reviews with spoilers, but there are some things we thought we should address in this review to justify our rating.
This film starts off pretty normal. Richard gets released after doing a few years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. He gets put into a program as part of his release, and this particular program states that he must stay 6 nights in this haunted house, and if he leaves, he violates the conditions of his parole and goes back to prison. Sounds like a weird government program, but we pressed on.
Richard has a bit of a dark past. He had a wife Emma (Katerina Eichenberger) and a newborn baby at home who he was having family struggles with. He would go out gambling and doing drugs, staying out late, ignoring calls, and his home life wasn't going so great. A good indicator of this was when his wife stuck their baby in the microwave to warm it up, and then went out to the garage, started the car, put it into reverse, laid down behind it, and ghostrided the car in reverse to run her own head over, which exploded like a watermelon.
For unexplained reasons, this didn't really seem plausible to the court system and Richard took the fall for all of it, which put him in this situation he finds himself in.
So, aside from that, we have this haunted house situation. He experiences some creepy moments in there while he's also dealing with the grief of losing his family. We will say that this film does a great job of portraying a broken man who can't escape his own depression and sorrow who is now forced to succumb to it in the isolated environment he is trapped in. The haunted house takes somewhat of a backseat in this film as it focuses on the internal battle Richard must fight while facing his own demons.
We thought this film worked well as a thriller. There were some horror elements mixed in there, but it seemed like the building blocks of this film were Richard and his inner demons, which is great, but the haunted house scenario seemed kind of forced and not thought out well. It didn't really make a lot of sense. Richard also does not talk throughout the entire film except for flashbacks, and it did feel a lot longer than it was.
Overall, if you like slow-burn horror/thriller films, this one might be for you. It wasn't really our thing, but we did appreciate the production, and it does have some good moments from time to time.
