Alice, Sweet Alice

Matt!4.0

Just a moment...Enable JavaScript and cookies to continue

CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️4.0

Giallo and Slasher went out for drinks, had sex and 9 months later Alice was born.

Lexzilla3.0

Yellow raincoats and blush-pink pussy-bow blouses. I know that’s not really the point, but I got such outfit envy watching this. Say what you want about the seventies, but they really did have the best fashion game of all the decades. Although, and I’m sorry to any Catholics reading this, but I’m not including the bridal-ish confirmation dresses for young girls in the sweeping outfit excitement. Because I didn’t get it. Are they meant to be marrying Jesus? As you can tell, I’m clearly not a religious expert, and so much of this film really draws from the pomp and ceremony and community of Catholic life, with its themes of pressure-cooker guilt, repression and suspicion. I imagine its very effective to someone who understands the meaning behind all of it, but to me it felt like watching someone else’s childhood issues; interesting, occasionally mystifying, occasionally creepy, but not something that burrowed into my brain for me to really feel.My ignorance aside, there was still a lot here to enjoy. There’s the giallo feel of it, with its masked and hooded killer stabbing all and sundry. The possibility of a murderous child, played with an excellent dead-eyed ambiguity by Paula Sheppard. The voyeuristic camera angles. The bleak tone. The atmosphere of cramped and slightly-dingy New Jersey apartments, dim churches and very brown hallways. And, of course, cameos some very cute kittens (I’m ignoring the part where something bad happens to one - it’s not really shown, so I can pretend it didn’t happen).It’s a cool proto slasher with a strong aesthetic, a great sense of place, fantastic coats and a mystery that’s interesting. And then there’s a whole lot of religious dread that I can intellectually admire without personally connecting to; which just means some of you may get more out of it than me.