Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival January 21,2018
a Reed Morano film
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
Del believes he is the last man on Earth and he is ok with that. Del creates his own paradise, then he discovers that he is not the last person on Earth after all. Del finds a car with an unconscious girl, Grace, inside. Del takes care of the wound on Grace’s head and she assists him in his everyday activities.
Blaine: Reed Morano has spent her career being a cinematographer. She directed her first feature in 2015, “Meadowland”. Reed had also directed a few episodes of the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Reed’s agent found something small she could do as a director. It was called “I Think We’re Alone Now” by Mike Makowsky and Reed loved it because it was new and original. Reed loved that “I Think We’re Alone Now" didn’t explain how the human population had gone down to just two people. Reed thought it was better just to get to know the characters, Del and Grace, and seeing them connect with each other. Reed also wanted to get to know this post-apocalyptic world the characters live in, which made her want the directing job even more. It was also interesting to read a script that didn’t have that much dialog. 75% of the film is silent because there is hardly anything to say in a post-apocalyptic world with no other people around, but the expressions on the actors’ faces show that you can tell what is going on. Peter Dinklage was already attached to the project before Reed and she was a big fan of him and wanted to see him as the leading man in this film.
Screenwriter Mike Makowsky put a lot things he experienced in life into the character Del as he was writing the script. Del is use to being alone because he was the loner type before the post-apocalypse happened. Del makes himself useful in this post-apocalyptic world by working. Del cleans the abandoned houses, takes whatever dead bodies are inside, buries them, finds useful stuff like batteries and food. He grows his own food as well and fishes too. Del knows a lot of useful things in order to survive on his own. Del repeats the same thing every day, but at least he keeps himself busy. Del believes he is the last man on Earth until something strange goes on. Fireworks go off during the night and he doesn’t know what is causing it. Next morning, Del finds a young girl, Grace, who changes things. Del doesn’t want to be alone anymore after spending time with Grace. Del and Grace would never cross paths if the world was still what it was before. The post-apocalypse is what brings them together. “I Think We’re Alone Now” is also a love story between two people who have never met before and not the same age.
Grace had to be a free spirit and Peter Dinklage had Elle Fanning in mind. He had worked with Elle before on another movie and they only did two scenes together, but Peter could see Elle as Grace and Reed agreed with him. Elle thought the script for “I Think We’re Alone Now” had a "Harold and Maude" feel to it and she wanted to be apart of the project because of that. Plus it was a different type of post-apocalyptic movie that didn’t show people looking for other survivors. I mean Grace is trying to find other survivors when she is first introduced, but when she meets Del she doesn’t bother continue looking. Grace is happy that at least one human being is still alive. Grace is also a little mysterious at first. She shows up out of nowhere and you don’t know what her background is except she has been on the road for a bit, trying to look for survivors. Grace is trying to connect with Del because he is the first person she has met who is alive. Grace follows Del’s rules and helps him with his everyday activities. Elle just had to be silly half of the time and she wanted Grace to be an authentic character.
Reed only had 24 days to shoot “I Think We’re Alone Now” and she had to work fast. She was in charge of cinematography and directing. Reed had to think fast of how she was going to shoot the movie. Some of the takes they shot, Reed had a second camera man with her and he would focus a camera on Peter during a scene while Reed was focusing on Elle. Reed loves to operate a camera herself and the look of the film is always important to her. Reed thought a lot about the lenses and how the scenes would be lit. She didn’t want too much light because this is a post-apocalyptic world and there’s hardly any lights on at night. The things that light the scene are car lights, a head light, a lantern and Reed wanted to make it look like you could hardly see anything at night. There’s a lot of silhouette shots I like that are lit up by the background. There’s a shot of Peter Dinklage eating dinner at an abandoned restaurant next to the ocean and in the background there are mountains framed by the setting sun. The sunset slightly lightens up everything outside, while Peter Dinklage is a silhouette inside a building. And then there’s another shot like it later in the film with Elle Fanning added in. Reed used film lights outside the windows for scenes where Peter and Elle are in an abandoned library or grocery store and they are silhouettes in those scenes. Reed likes doing the cinematography herself because she can do the shots however she wants them to be. Cinematography is everything to Reed and she believed in herself doing “I Think We’re Alone Now” as both a cinematographer and a director. Reed had a tight schedule in making this film, but that didn’t bother her.
My rating on “I Think We’re Alone Now” is five out of five stars
