Alone: "Monster is not alone anymore!!!"

Was it indeed Lalettan or just a figment of my imagination? Do I actually have schizophrenic symptoms as I still cant believe that Lalettan was the protagonist in Shaji Kailas's "Alone". Whenever a Mammookka or Lalettan flick releases, there is understandably a great deal of expectations. However, the latter's recent track record left many including me quite skeptical as to what was in store in a movie where he was going to be the only actor on screen. Well to be absolutely blunt, it was shockingly mediocre. 

After being in the woods for quite a while, Shaji Kailas was back at the helm on the back of the success of "Kaduva". However, one of the primary reasons for his exile was the repeated failure of his movies such as "Ginger", "Madirasi" etc. which was penned by Rajesh Jayaraman. Incidentally, the same person was called onto pen for this flick & that itself raised concerns as to whether it had it in him to provide a compelling script. The simple answer to that is no as the one liner that seemed interesting didn't have any credible content to make it engaging. The story unfolds during the Covid time with Kalidasan (Lalettan) moving into a new apartment in an upscale apartment complex in Kochi. Soon enough he starts hearing voices in his flat & tries to reason whether it was the effect of alcohol or if supernatural forces were at play.

I seriously doubt whether Rajesh had put in serious effort to justify his name as a script writer in this movie as there is hardly anything that manages to keep us hooked apart from the early interest. The dialogues were pathetic & more often than not felt like illogical rants rather than sensible statements. The  settings itself wasn't unique as Ranjith Shankar had already attempted it in "Sunny" except that it was more of a character study of the protagonist performed reasonably well by Jayasurya rather than unravelling the mystery as shown here. None of the technical aspects are worth mentioning as they were average with unnecessary camera gimmicks at times while the VFX in one of the scenes felt like it was done by an amateur.

This is not the first time that Lalettan had featured in mediocre movies but in majority of such flicks he would have done his part aptly. Unfortunately, over here he is downright pathetic as he literally struggles to emote while his dialogue delivery left a lot to be desired. Apart from him, there were a few others who made their vocal presence such as Manju, Nandhu, Renji Panicker, Siddique etc among which Prithviraj has done a fine job.

Verdict: It was a movie that was meant for the OTT but even in that platform it will struggle to come across viewers who would watch it without fast forwarding it. In short, forget it!!!

Rating: 1/5

Regards...Ben