BHFF Review: LILLY LIVES ALONE: A Haunting Journey Through Loneliness and Loss

Image courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival

By Tom Milligan

Lilly lives alone. That much is evident from the title of Martin Melnick’s feature debut. It’s a peculiar film - hazy and disjointed like a lucid dream. A collaboration between Melnick and his wife, producer Sarah Johnston, is the type of experience that invites contemplation and conversation. One of the questions asked during the post-film Q&A by an audience member was literally, “What is happening in this movie?” It has a lot on its mind, that’s for sure, even if it tends to bite off more than it can chew.

We already know that Lilly (Shannon Beeby) lives alone, but what else is there to know about her? She works at a grocery store with her best and only true friend, Claire (Erin Way). She might bring the occasional guy home with her. In this case, that’s the odd and intrusive Jed (Ryan Jonze).

Lilly finds it hard to trust members of her community, especially her next-door neighbor, Russell (Jeffrey Combs). Ultimately, she has not fully come to terms with the loss of her daughter some years ago (though the exact period this takes place is purposely obfuscated).

Those are hardly all of the mysteries at play here. There seem to be noises coming from inside her house, such as banging on the walls and creaking floorboards. The townsfolk suspect the place is haunted, but Lilly refutes these rumors when confronted about the subject: “The only spirits around here? You just drank the last of.” She has a lock on nearly every door in the house. Someone seems to be videotaping her from outside her windows.

We’re never quite sure what to make of it all. Is she delirious from loneliness? Overwhelmingly stricken by grief? Are the neighbors gaslighting her? Is this all supernatural? LILLY LIVES ALONE doesn’t get into the heart of what it’s conclusively trying to say until its final moments, and even then, it can be a head-scratcher.

With only a few locations, LILLY LIVES ALONE is not unlike a chamber piece. The vast majority of the action unfolds within the walls of Lilly’s home. It sports a tried and true haunted house flavor, with its peeling yellowed wallpaper, vintage television set in the living room, and retro 70s-inspired bathroom decor.

Melnick cites Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol as the film's primary inspiration, allowing for a better understanding of how the screenplay is structured. If Lilly is Ebenezer Scrooge, the supporting characters represent the specters weaving in and out of her life, embodying her past, present, and future. Beeby carries most of the narrative and thematic weight here and does a commendable job.

LILLY LIVES ALONE unfolds like a series of distant memories asking to be dissected by the viewer. Things start to get murky as more ideas are conveyed to the audience, rendering the emotional climax less impactful than I would’ve liked. Some of its scarier imagery is handsomely rendered, even if it can sometimes read as a darkly layered drama more than a fully cohesive horror narrative.

It’s evident that the grieving mother at its center possesses a complicated history and is littered with easter eggs both within the visuals and the text. This concept of maternal trauma as a cellular trait passed down through birth within the family lineage is perhaps the most significant. “One bad apple spoils the barrel,” so they say.

LILLY LIVES ALONE had its world premiere at the 2024 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.