Rating: 4/5
Looking like it was shot on film stock reserved for cheap television, with a frenetic and voyeuristic camera watching characters whose motivations it can barely be understood — particularly the titular Alice — the film asks the question, “is Alice capable of murdering her sister? If not her, then who?”
We know more than anyone else in the movie, and yet it feels like we can’t see enough to know anything for sure. Everyone is on edge for various reasons, and the church seems central to the mystery
Even when our questions are answered, we are still left with more whys
Stray thoughts
- There’s something so fucking creepy about a priest laying a communion wafer on a child’s tongue
- “I don’t want to rush you, but mass begins at nine,” says the neurotic aunt — the one who believe Alice to be the killer before anyone else — to the mother grieving the death of her child
- “Too bad she was the one to end up in the box… god always takes the pretty ones,” says the creepy (see queer-coded), cat-hoarding landlord to Alice
- The way people look directly into the camera, and even some of the setups, remind me of Silence of the Lambs