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The original was posted on /r/horror by /u/Orange__Blossoms on 2024-11-11 23:40:25+00:00.

I’ve recently watched “You won’t be alone” 2022, I know, a bit late! But felt the need to share my thoughts with you and to discuss it further with others that have seen it too because it moved me so much. This movie was everything I was hoping it would be. Marked it as spoiler because there are some but I tried to avoid getting too much into detail about what happens.

Often horror is used as an allegory or metaphor to show humanity’s depravity, corruption and evil, or to show how the victim becomes the abuser, but in this movie it felt like something different. The symbol of the witch/wolf eatress is not used uniquely as that, or emancipation in womanhood, or revenge, as it is often portrayed (and capably so) but rather something that happens to oneself and leaves us as outcasts but not without choice. Our main character Nevena does not speak, all her lines are an internal monologue, very fragmented, but also very poetic. Throughout the movie we experience many kinds of lives with Nevena, as a woman, as a man, as a dog, as a child, and yet, in all of them, there’s Nevena, trying to learn, to grow, to connect.

Nevena was marked as a baby, and learns almost nothing from her mother that kept her closed in a sacred cave trying to protect her from the Old Maria but also making it impossible for her to connect with the world. Later, already as a witch/wolf eatress, she learns from Old Maria the primal and cruel instincts that are needed to survive, but old Maria is incapable of showing her more than that. She is left to fend for herself in a society she doesn’t understand. An yet, she is curious, and yet she tries to blend with humanity. When we learn the Old Maria backstory, we understand her better, and it also works wonderfully as a juxtaposition with Nevena’s journey. Old Maria’s life was filled with abuse, pain, horror and sorrow. She could never get to actually fit in and live, even as a human, she couldn’t have the life she wished for. Her own community burning her alive was what ultimately turned her into a witch, and from that point on, she regarded all humanity as dangerous and evil, she became that evil herself too, behaving accordingly to that. She felt it was impossible to escape evil. And yet, Nevena was able to find beauty, love and connection in human life, as she found also pain and sorrow.

Old Maria says in the very end, when she finally starts to let go, “How was it so simple for you?” she asks Nevena. She finally sees that hope was a choice for her too and that kindness and good exist just like evilness and horror, she cries. I guess that the final message of the movie could be resumed to saying that the world is very cruel indeed, and evil, and yet, it is also so beautiful and kind. You can become your own evil but you can also grow and find peace, joy and love, as Nevena’s final words are “It’s a burning, breaking thing, this world. A biting, wrenching thing, and yet, and yet…”