Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl

Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl is an homage or throwback to atmospheric horror films of the 60’s. I’m totally for this. I love films that reference an old thing but update it to make it queer. I just think Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl needed about 20% more spookiness to be fully successful.

The film follows a young woman named Adele who goes to work as a caretaker for her mysterious aunt, Dora. Adele never actually sees Aunt Dora, who stays locked in her room and communicates with Adele via notes and shouting through the door. Adele soon meets a girl named Beth. Beth is open, friendly and attractive. She fosters a friendship with Adele who’s very taken by this effervescent girl who wants to spend time with her. Soon, Beth starts persuading Adele to buy cheaper food and medication for Aunt Dora so Beth can pocket the extra money. She also convinces Adele to spend the night away with her where the two have sex. This obviously goes badly. Adele and Beth’s relationship takes a sour turn. Beth rebukes Adele’s affections yet Adele begins to see Beth in places others can’t. Something mysterious and spooky is going on with Beth.

Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl has really good lead characters that really help the story they’re trying to tell. Right away the film lets you know that Adele is indeed sweet and also shy and awkward. She’s also very young-looking and quite pale. As such, Adele is likeable but also extremely vulnerable. Very early on, the film made me feel protective of her. And Beth is a great counterpoint here. Where Adele is shy and colourless, Beth is vibrant in personality as well as looks. It’s totally understand why Adele would be so taken with this confident, forward girl who wears constantly great lipstick. I sure was. When Beth starts acting less than normal in the third act, there is a sense of betrayal and disappointment. In hindsight, Beth was too good to be true but neither Adele nor me caught on until it was too late.

Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl is a short movie which is good but it has a pacing problem which is all the more exacerbated by its short run time. It feels like over half this movie is first act set-up. It takes far too long for it to descend into true horror. It’s only in about the last ten minutes that it does so punctuated by and ending that’s very good but does feel disconcertingly abrupt.

Because it takes so long to get to the third act horror show, there just isn’t enough horror elements in the film for me. I love the set up of the film but for all that set-up, I’m going to need more from my pay-off. I understand understated, but this verged on disappointing. One summary I read of the film used the phrase “phantasmagoric path.” For that to be a true summary, there needs to be a series of phantasmagoric events. Frankly, Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl didn’t have enough phantasmagoria. It had so few it’s verging on needing to use whatever the singular form of phantasmagoria is (phantasmagorium?).

I really liked the set-up, tone and ideas behind Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl. In execution, the movie needed more pay off and generally more spooky stuff. For fans of vintage horror and understated horror, this still might be a good one to check out. Despite being an uneven film, I’m certainly interested in director A. D. Calvo’s future projects as I like his ideas and point of view.

Overall rating: 5.8/10

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