PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Leave Yourself Alone is a filmmaker’s film. If you are working in the business, or just have a fascination for the complicated process method actors go through, this is the slow burn for you. The film’s producer/director and main character, Nicole Eckenroad (The Bourne Legacy 2012), provides a long and detailed look at this process and its possible side effects.
Synopsis
Two documentary filmmakers follow a 19-year-old actress, Nicole Grace, while she attempts to restart her stagnating acting career. Nicole Eckenroad acquired the footage from the original filmmakers to present Leave Yourself Alone to the audience in a gritty and unapologetic documentary style re-enactment of the original.
Leave Yourself Alone is a very different film than the one I thought I was going to get when I watched the trailer. What I thought I was signing up for was going to be a more classic take on a whodunit style film, possibly in the vein of a modern Black Dahlia. What I got instead was a drawn out, painstakingly detailed examination of the day to day life of Nicole Grace.
The film’s pace leaves you questioning at times if there is even a story or are they just filming someone in an effort to extend the film’s run time. On the flipside there are moments where you get to feel how genuinely hopeless Nicole’s situation was because you stayed with her for so very long, so there is a duality of interpretation going on while watching which is quite interesting.
There were times when Eckenroad made Nicole out to be somewhat of a spoiled brat, giving one word answers and always in a miserable huff, which got annoying to watch after a while, but then I would feel like I was being pulled back in the other direction, because suddenly one realizes she is acting like an actual human being would which starts to bring depth to the character in a unique and new way.
I felt a definite sense of competing emotions while watching Leave Yourself Alone. The first was that of unease as I saw Eckenroad slowly descend into depression and solitude due, in part, to her alienating herself from her family and friends. Unfortunately, the second emotion was a biting frustration at the lack of forward movement in the plot. While I realize that she was practicing method acting, watching an entitled complainer who was doing nothing to further her own career – skipping meetings, ignoring her agent’s phone calls and annoying receptionists at the few auditions she would grace with her presence – was draining and had me checking the clock more than once.
Some things really stood out as odd to me while watching this film. I couldn’t understand why Nicole, being born and raised in L.A., would chose to move to Philadelphia to rekindle her smouldering acting career. They do try, albeit half-heartedly, to move past this strange fact by explaining that Nicole got caught pretending she was her own agent and was blacklisted, but that seems a little excessive. Also, there are a handful of other cities that come to mind where an actor could move to find work rather than Philly. It just felt so inorganic.
Nicole’s relationships are strange as well. In the beginning of the film, her “best friend” Jackie (Joanna Pickering: Svengali 2013) drives out with her to Philly then the moment she arrives at the door of Nicole’s new house, says it’s time for her flight and leaves. From then on, their friendship feels more like two people who never liked each other constantly threatening last chances on one another. It was an awkward turn that made them seem like completely different characters than the ones we were first introduced to. It didn’t make sense that Nicole would be acting this way and cutting Jackie out of her life before her method acting even started, which didn’t happen until the top of the third act of the film. Once the method aspect of Eckenroad’s portrayal of Nicole begins, the movie gets some much needed forward movement.
Final Thoughts
Leave Yourself Alone is genre-less when it comes to trying to fit it into a category. I felt awkward and uneasy at the times the film wanted me to, which is great, but when I felt like it was trying to keep me engaged, I found myself checking the clock to see how much more of the film was actually left.
Personally, I enjoy everything to do with the film industry, and I like seeing all aspects of that life being portrayed in films. I think this aspect kept me engaged enough to look past some of the film’s other problems. I think Nicole Eckenroad is a seriously talented writer, director, producer and actor. I’m looking forward to seeing more from her, but hopefully in a film paced a little more briskly.
If you enjoy films that are drawn out with attention paid to every little detail of someone’s life, then Leave Yourself Alone is the slow burn you are looking for. If your thing is more action packed where the charters chew the scenery, then you may want to leave this one alone.
