Film
Alone With Her
A taut, unflinching portrait of stalking and obsession that trades jump-scares for genuine dread. Colin Hanks plays against type as a disturbed man who engineers an encounter with a woman he's been surveilling, then systematically isolates her. Claustrophobic and morally unsettling—this is a thriller about predation that doesn't flinch or look away.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a lean, unsettling thriller that studies a quiet stalker's patience and lets dread build from ordinary moments, the kind of tense character piece that stays with you.
Skip it if you need a story with some warmth or release, since this stays cold and claustrophobic and offers little relief from its unblinking focus on one man's corrosive fixation.
What it asks of you: Its brief running time of seventy-eight minutes is lean, but it sits with discomfort for long stretches, moving at a deliberate pace and rarely letting your attention drift.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Nightcrawler2014
Jake Gyllenhaal's Lou Bloom is a predator who exploits the city's misery. Like Doug, he's charming, delusional, and utterly without empathy. A masterclass in making the audience watch evil work.
But It's nihilistic and exhausting. The film never offers you moral comfort or a hero to root for.
You2018
Penn Badgley's Joe Goldberg is Doug's spiritual cousin—a stalker who narrates his obsession as romance, carefully orchestrating his victim's isolation. If you want the same premise expanded across seasons with sharper writing, this is it.
But It can feel exploitative of its own premise, and the fandom sometimes celebrates what should repel us.
Marnie1964
Hitchcock explores a psychologically damaged woman and the man who becomes obsessed with controlling her. Gorgeous to look at, but the subtext is deeply troubling—about desire, dominance, and the fantasy of fixing someone.
But It's slow by modern standards. Hitchcock's camera lingers, and his moral stance on the obsession is deliberately ambiguous.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Alone With Her
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Bug2007
Both are about surveillance and the way being watched—real or imagined—can destroy you. Both use confined spaces to trap the audience inside their protagonist's psychological state.
William Friedkin's fever dream about paranoia and intimacy. Two people in a motel room become convinced they're being watched and hunted. It's Alone With Her inverted—the watcher becomes the watched—and it spirals into mutual psychological destruction.
But It's claustrophobic, repetitive, and deliberately unhinged. If you need a coherent plot or rational characters, this will frustrate you badly.
More like this (6)
Shutter2004
A photographer accidentally hits someone with his car, doesn't stop, and then discovers something in his photos. It shares Alone With Her's interest in voyeurism, guilt, and what watching can do to the watcher.
But It's a Thai horror film, so the pacing and logic aren't Western. Some plot points require accepting supernatural logic.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer1986
An unflinching, unglamorous look at a killer in his mundane life. Like Alone With Her, it refuses to make evil interesting or charismatic—it's just banal and sickening.
But It's grainy, cheap-looking, and genuinely disturbing. Not for those who need distance from the violence they watch.
Decay2012
A single-location thriller about a couple held captive. It shares Alone With Her's claustrophobic intensity and the way it makes you complicit in watching someone's nightmare unfold.
But The execution is rough and the twists feel forced. It's worth seeing once but doesn't quite land.
Compliance2012
A con artist convinces a fast-food manager to abuse an employee. Like Doug, he manipulates through psychology rather than force. It's an uncomfortable anatomy of how compliance can be engineered.
But It's based on real incidents, which some find exploitative. The film is deliberately static and will feel slow if you need constant motion.
Possession1981
Both explore how obsession and surveillance of another person can be a form of violence disguised as intimacy. Both make you feel trapped inside a toxic relationship.
Andrzej Żuławski's surreal, violent marriage-dissolution film is about two people destroying each other through obsession and surveillance of the intimate kind. It's hallucinogenic where Alone With Her is grounded, but the underlying sickness is the same.
But It's a 161-minute Polish art film from 1981 with practical effects that haven't aged conventionally. You have to meet it halfway, and it rewards patience with profound weirdness.
Columbus2015
Both are about fixation—how one person can colonize another's thoughts and actions. Columbus asks: what if that fixation were reciprocated and kind? It's the inverse of Doug and Amy.
A quiet film about two strangers drawn into each other's orbits in a small town. It sounds nothing like Alone With Her, but structurally it's about one person becoming absorbed in another's existence—except here it's mutual, consensual, and tender. Same obsession, inverted morality.
But Nothing happens. It's a mood piece about architecture and loneliness that some will find tedious. Watching it requires patience with silence.
People
Cast
Colin HanksDoug
Jonathon TrentMatt
Alex BolingBarrista
Directing
- Eric NicholasDirector
Writing
- Eric NicholasWriter