[Review]: I Will Never Leave You Alone

Kenneth Trujillo as Richard

Exclusive to Arrow Player is DW Medoff’s psychological haunted house chiller I Will Never Leave You Alone. Starring Kenneth Trujillo as recently paroled Richard, who must take on a haunted house in order to avoid being sent back to prison.

The completely silent Richard is released from prison with a warning that he must complete the conditions of his parole to stay out of jail. The only catch is, these conditions include being locked away in a haunted house for six days in the hopes of cleansing the abode of its malevolent spirit. Whilst there, Richard is soon forced to come face to face with his dark past and his failings as both a husband and a father which resulted in his life taking such a down turn to land him in this situation. With rumours of a witch having been buried on the land that the house stands on, Richard finds himself trapped in a nightmare worse than any sort of prison incarceration.

 I Will Never Leave You Alone depicts a man who has spent his life in some sort of prison, whether it be struggling with addiction and familial troubles, a physical prison and then following his release, a continued lack of freedom due to not only parole conditions, but also his own psychological state. Richard is also largely non-verbal due to vocal cord paralysis and so also lives with a body that acts as a sort of prison, preventing him from communicating effectively with the outside world, with only the local handyman occasionally looking in through the window offering company for the main character. Richard’s story parallels that of the supposed witch who once inhabited the house. Treated as a pariah by the local townsfolk, and blamed for a terrible plague, she was locked inside her house and suffered increasingly disturbing torture from the inhabitants of her community.

 The highlight of I Will Never Leave You Alone is the shock tactics employed during its run time. Containing some genuinely shocking sequences which ultimately save an otherwise slow burn of a middle section, and whilst the appearance of the witch herself is a little bit of a Halloween dollar store mask, the practical effects in the final sequence more than makes up for it. Despite these high points, I Will Never Leave You Alone definitely could do with faster progression through its story development, with some of Richard’s raison d’etre becoming lost in the slog of the narration. 

2 Screams out of 5

I Will Never Leave You Alone is now streaming on Arrow Player