Horror is like a tattoo for Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks– it’s a component of their identities, a part of their flesh, and something they want to show off for all to see. It’s a two-way street, though; while horror might help shape their passions and dispositions, they also put all of themselves into their horror. The writer/directors of the new movie Alone With You inject their filmmaking DNA into nearly every aspect of the piece, with Bennett acting in it and Brooks shooting, coloring, and co-editing. The two have been prominent figures in the atmospheric, allegorical realm of short horror films (Bed, Scream With Me, LVRS, Brooks’ upcoming Pains), but this, their first feature-length, is their biggest endeavor yet. Fittingly, it took the horror of a global pandemic to help bring it about.
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The movie they made is certainly a byproduct of COVID, with its themes of isolation and the disconnect that exists between people (especially through technology), but its themes are universal and timeless. The real horror of the film is located in the often-uncomfortable amount of vulnerability people have in relationships and love’s disruptive, sometimes horrific potential to change and shape a person’s entire perception of reality; can we trust ourselves when we’re not really ourselves, when we give ourselves over to relationships and occasionally become a byproduct of someone else’s love? The terror of total subjectivity, and the effects that grief, guilt, and romance have on it, can be heightened by isolation, and is all on full display here, and was a cathartic process for the filmmakers.
JB: The film was entirely shot during quarantine and in Brooklyn, 2020. The film was in fact conceived, written, shot, and produced entirely during quarantine. It was kind of our way to get through all of that. I mean, both of us […] busy ourselves with work; when we’re not working, it feels super strange, and, you know, it helps that we love what we do.
EB: We were supposed to go into production on a completely different feature film that we had written together that we will co-direct, called Kept, it’s a modern-day gothic horror film that we were supposed to go into production in our home, upstate. COVID kind of shut that down, but our amazing producers Andrew Corkin and Theo James, they are attached to Kept, but we reached out to them. And we were like, “Well, we’ve shot two shorts, we’re locked down, we’re together, Justin’s an incredible DP, he’s got all this gear, I’m an actor, I’m game to do whatever, are you guys behind us to make a feature film?” […] Surprisingly, they were just immediately like, “Let’s go.” And we were like, “Oh God, now we have to make a movie.”
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EB: It’s cathartic. I think honestly, Justin and I have both been through our share of bad relationships and bad experiences, but I have to say, personally, I like to write what scares me. And what scares me is other people, and what other people can do to other people. I think relationships can be profound, and they can change you into the best person you can be; in this relationship, that’s certainly how I feel now. But in other relationships, those can be the most terrifying things. The Shining, you know– what if my father wants to kill me? […] Rosemary’s Baby, you know– what if your husband is keeping this terrible secret from you, and did something horrible or allowed something terrible to happen to you? It’s those relationships, that’s why it sticks with us. That’s the horror that really gets to me. And in the middle of the night, if I’m lying awake at night, those are the things I think about, and so I have to be honest with myself and what actually scares me. And that’s usually what scares me, but luckily I’m with a partner, a creative and life partner that can support those fears and vice versa.
JB: I think it’s important for us both, and it’s been important both in our relationship as it is in our work relationship, that there’s a very open space between the two of us, like it’s not judgmental or these things when we talk about the relationships we have, it’s not like that weird taboo, like, “I don’t want to think that you are ever with somebody else,” like, that doesn’t serve us in any way. So, we both have a very safe space when talking to one another about these, honestly, these traumas that that life serves you, and because we know that we’re going to take that conversation and put it into something creative, put it into something that that is worth telling those stories through our filmmaking. It’s great because, in our filmmaking, we’re able to talk to one another about these deeper horrors and what scares us, and we’re able to kind of work through a great deal of that on screen together.
EB: Yeah, and put them to use, because trauma, you know, trauma is terrible and people experience trauma of all kinds, but it is so good to put it to use and to find a cathartic outlet for it. And, you know, we create a safe space for each other to do that.
JB: I think isolation, being ‘other,’ is definitely something that I’ve explored throughout my films, and something that’s very clearly stuff I’ve dealt with. I mean, it’s funny, whether we alienate ourselves or are alienated, I think a lot of creative people are deeply in their own heads sometimes, and I think that’s something that I do to myself often […] I have a bit of social awkwardness when it comes to first meeting people, and getting past saying hello is like climbing a mountain to me. […] I definitely feel like that that was put into [the character] Charlie, for sure. I mean, the other films we’ve written together, that’s pretty present as well. So if I were to really open the book on myself, I would say, you know, definitely isolation and the isolation of oneself is certainly something that I explore a great deal, probably because I’ve been doing it to myself since I was a kid.
Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks have made a film which explores their (and everyone’s) fears of relationships, isolation, alienation, and trauma, and yet the two sidle up next to each other, snug without separation, seemingly happy; Bennett shows off her beautiful, horror-style engagement ring, and the two seem like they’ve won the war, that decades-long battle of heartbreak and discontent we all engage in until, if we’re lucky, meeting someone we’d happily blur into. Alone With You is a great title for both the film and, perhaps, aspects of their relationship– these two horror connoisseurs, with their own traumas and anxieties, seem to rather be alone with each other than anyone else. Maybe it took a good relationship to exorcise the demons of bad ones.
Bennett and Brooks play together well, and horror fans will surely be reaping the benefits for a while, feeling just a little less alone in the process.
EB: Honestly, we are life partners, as well as filmmaking partners. So we’re now engaged, actually […] Honestly, our first date was over three years ago, and we went to a creepy bar in the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, and all we talked about was film the entire time. It was three hours. We talked about the films that he had made, and that I had made in the past, and then we just started working together. It was pretty seamless […] We’ve just really developed a shorthand, and we love working together.
JB: I think we’ve been working together as long as we’ve been dating. Yeah, it’s honestly like it became so seamless from the get-go […] It’s funny, because we have such a shorthand when talking about the films we make, but the films that we make together are so very different from the films we make separately. We’re very different filmmakers, in our own solo careers, that it’s actually very fun to come together and make our films together, because they’re something that neither of us would make on our own. So it’s kind of like […] this whole new playground, you know?
