Metacritic reviews

It’s a deft and thrilling conceit, experiencing the highs and lows of life through different people. Stolevski, in a film that feels less like a debut and more a late-stage magnum opus, has found an ingenious vessel to make profound observations on gender, sex and being.

The film’s last act brings everything full circle in a way that should satisfy both horror and art-house audiences, but then the movie, like its protagonist, is never content to be just one thing.

With its painterly, brutal beauty and folk-horror underpinnings, it’s tempting to dismiss Stolevski’s You Won’t Be Alone as “Terrence Malick’s The VVitch.” But it’s so much more than that, a devastating yet highly-attuned exploration of the brutality of the world, and our yearning for identity and connection to protect us from nature’s capriciousness.

It’s a challenging movie, but one so overflowingly empathetic for even its cruelest characters that the emotional beats outweigh the headier structural conceits that make for a narrative often hazy, out of reach, and gorgeously weblike.

You Won’t Be Alone’s strength lies in Stolevski’s ability to balance the gore with the humanity.

Stolevski depicts the young creature’s journey toward humanity with sensitivity and increasing investment.

Though its leisurely pace and sinuous storyline might test the audience’s patience, the Macedonian-Australian filmmaker packs his folk horror breakthrough with enough guts and gore to keep eyes fixed on the screen.

Throughout You Won’t Be Alone, writer-director Goran Stolevski rejects the slickness that defines so-called elevated horror.

The problem is that You Won't Be Alone is a film about identity that doesn't have an identity of its own. It is far too indebted to other films.

Stolevski aims for a life-affirming treatise on the poetics of human existence but strains to be more than a pretty copy of his well-known influences.