"You Won't Be Alone" haunting, grimly magical, and oddly life-affirming

You Won’t Be Alone (2022)

“You Won’t Be Alone,” Goran Stolevski’s writing-directing feature debut, is something special. More than just “arthouse horror,” Stolevski’s film is really a haunting meditation on identity, humanity, and how everything is relative, but also a sensory experience with some bloody innards. It’s unsettling yet challenging and magical, and if you just let it wash over you, the spell is rewarding.

Set in a 19th-century Macedonian village, the film begins with a cat that is not actually a cat. That cat eventually morphs into the folkloric Wolf-Eateress, a grotesquely burned old witch. She visits peasant farmer Yoana (Kamka Tocinovski) and her crying infant named Nevena. Standing by Nevena’s crib, the witch asks for just a little blood from the fresh born. As a bargain, the witch allows the horrified mother to raise her daughter until she turns 16 but not before taking Nevena’s tongue. Like Rapunzel, Nevena is kept in a nearby cave for all of her childhood. Once it’s her sweet birthday, the mute Nevena (mostly played by Sara Klimonska) is met by the Wolf-Eateress (Anamaria Marinca), who takes her under her shape-shifting wing and marks Nevena’s chest with her black claws. To stay alive, they try on different skins and feast on blood to heal themselves, but as Nevena begins her journey, she’ll learn what it actually means to be human — empathy, love, despair, everything. It’s like Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” through a farm dog to a desirable man to a little girl. Read the rest of the review at Phindie here.

Grade: B +

Focus Features is releasing “You Won’t Be Alone” (108 min.) in theaters on April 1, 2022.