I Think We're Alone Now

This post-apocalyptic drama is two acts of a moody character study and one act of a different kind of film that clashes with everything that came before. For the most part, it's a well-made story about a man who's closed off what's left of the world and a young woman who fell out of it. Unlike most movies set after "the end of the world," survival isn't an issue in I Think We're Alone Now; Del is doing just fine, thank you. Hordes of leather-clad Mad Max-style fugitives aren't threatening to kill him and eat the fish he catches whenever he likes in the town's picturesque lake. He's simply putting his limited world (his town had only 1,600 residents before they all died) back together by day and sipping wine and reading at night. Grace's intrusion is more of an inconvenience than an earth-shattering event.

So for about three-quarters of the movie, viewers leisurely observe these two, watching their relationship develop. Then a less-involving movie comes out of nowhere and smacks of "message" storytelling not otherwise present. The hard left turn is particularly problematic because it raises serious questions about circumstances viewers had been asked to simply accept before. That said, the performances are fine (Paul Giamatti and Charlotte Gainsbourg also appear), and the atmosphere set by award-winning cinematographer Reed Morano in her second directorial feature is calm and engaging. And there are a few touching details in the script, such as how Del retrieves family portraits from each house he cleans of the dead. But because the stakes don't seem very high until the ill-fitting third act, I Think We're Alone Now doesn't end up being very memorable.