Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Alone at Night’ on Hulu, A COVID Horror Film That Packs More Stars Than Scares

Where else can Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson meet that isn’t just the punchline of a Jay Leno joke? That’d be in Alone at Night, the new quarantine-themed horror film now streaming on Hulu. It’s part COVID chiller, part reality TV parody, and wholly unlike anything else available to stream.

ALONE AT NIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: After a bad breakup where her ex-boyfriend kicks her out of their place, Vicky (Ashley Benson) seeks solace in a friend’s remote cabin so she can stop couch-surfing. The catch: it’s during the peak of COVID, and the closest thing she has to company is the people she connects with while camming on a site called “18 And Over.” (Well, that and Trapped Stars, a Paris Hilton-hosted reality show that uses pandemic-era isolation as the premise for a reality show to trap influencers together for a dating show.)

Just when Vicky thinks she’s going to stick to men who will only admire her from behind a screen, she can’t help but strike up a connection with the one man in the vicinity, Max (Jon Foster). He’s nice enough but his obsession with the progression into marriage slowly reveals an incredibly sex-negative attitude toward her profession. As Vicky pulls back, she’s left with a house that seems to have a legacy for pain and death that predates her — and may pull her into its ignominious history.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s secluded slasher schlock for the COVID era — from Halloween to Scream to this year’s similarly pandemic-era flick Sick, the formula ought to feel very familiar.

Performance Worth Watching: While it’s a far cry from her stellar turn in the generation-defining Spring Breakers, Ashley Benson is giving it her all as the camgirl Vicky. She’s got a stake in the film as a producer and an author of the story, so she’s bringing both a realness and a level of investment that’s missing from most others on screen.

Memorable Dialogue: “Honey, I’m home,” says the crowbar killer as he stalks down Vicky in the film’s climactic moments. This appropriation of a familiar catchphrase to try and call on cultural associations rather than coming up with anything original speaks to the kind of movie Alone at Night is.

Sex and Skin: When a film begins with the login page to an OnlyFans-esque site called “18 and Over,” you know it’s prepared to make good on the promise of adult content. The opening credits are over a bevy of scantily clad women posing suggestively, for heaven’s sake! But if you’re expecting outright 18+ content, lower your expectations — Benson’s camgirl Vicky has black tape over her nipples while camming.

Our Take: It takes a long time to figure out what exactly Alone at Night is doing because it moves clunkily between the main plotline with Vicky and the faux reality show. It at least tries to make something out of the COVID-era setting with masking behaviors and other social anxieties, but none of Jimmy Giannopoulos and co-writer Diomedes Raul Bermudez’s get the development they need. It cannot be written off as entirely dumb — for example, a gag slyly recreating the Home Alone pizza delivery scene shows that Giannopoulos is not just doing this movie on autopilot.

But the film should be thinking more about thematic or narrative coherence, not just stringing together elements that helped the film get financing. From cameos like Pamela Anderson as a sheriff to flashy sequences set to G-Eazy beats that just feel like an extended music video, this film is doing a LOT. Very little of it makes sense, especially not its shoehorned focus on gender and sexual politics.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There may be some interesting elements of Alone at Night in isolation, but the connective tissue that makes them into a movie turns them into something borderline incoherent. Wait for the most ludicrous parts to hit TikTok — unlike what Vicky finds while sheltering in the cabin, it’s more fun in isolation anyways.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.

Watch Alone at Night on Hulu