My quick rating – 3.7/10. The setup for I Will Never Leave You Alone should work: a convicted man gets one last shot at freedom if he can spend a week in a haunted house and clear out the ghost problem. Sounds like the kind of B-horror fun you’d catch on a rainy night. But instead of thrills, we’re treated to 93 minutes of Kenneth Trujillo brooding like he just lost a staring contest with the drywall. There’s no real logic behind how squatting in a cursed house is supposed to “cleanse” it—maybe they thought ghosts just get bored of roommates? Unfortunately, it’s not the ghosts who tap out; it’s us unfortunate viewers. The pacing drags so badly you’d think the film was being projected through molasses. Every time a genuinely eerie moment pops up, it’s quickly smothered under long pauses and conversations with invisible things that may or may not be figments of Richard’s tragic backstory.
And speaking of sweet nothings, there’s allegedly a romance brewing here. Richard keeps professing his undying love, but the flashbacks — which serve more as low-energy therapy sessions than narrative devices — make it feel more like a case of obsessive stalking than anything remotely romantic. He says, “I love her,” and the audience collectively goes, “…Why, though?”
But don’t worry, the flashbacks do offer one high point — and yes, I’m terrible, because it involves some karmic justice that’s amusingly violent and thoroughly satisfying. Blame a woman? Oh, Richard certainly does. This film is practically an extreme case study in the “It’s all her fault!” defense strategy. You’ll find yourself not rooting for him so much as hoping the ghost gives him a solid haunting just for being that guy.
Budget constraints clearly hit the effects department hard — the witch-ghost looks like someone lost a bet at Spirit Halloween and had to be wrapped in papier-mâché. By the time she finally shows up to do something gory, it’s the final ten minutes, and at that point you’ve already mentally redecorated the entire haunted house and written your own sequel out of sheer impatience.
Oh, and special shoutout to the handyman character, who apparently suffers from short-term memory loss. He was having a conversation through a wide-open window earlier in the movie, but later has to unscrew boards to get in. Maybe the real ghost was continuity all along.
In the end, I Will Never Leave You Alone isn’t scary enough, gory enough, or dramatic enough to recommend to anyone except the “I must watch every horror movie ever made” completionists. For everyone else? I’d suggest… leaving it alone.
Amazon and a couple of other streamers have this one. Click Plex to watch for free now.