Arthouse Has A Blood Sucker Too In ‘You Won’t Be Alone;’ The Contractor’ Debuts; ‘CODA’ Back On Screens – Specialty Preview

deadline.com:

The heroine of Goran Stolevski’s You Won’t Be Alone is a witch, with echoes of vampire and zombie, yes, but mostly with a haunting desire for human connection in 19th century rural Macedonia.The film’s Sundance premiere got great reviews (see Deadline’s here).

It’s 94% Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh with critics as Focus Features opens Stolevski’s debut feature on 147 carefully curated screens.You Won’t Be Alone is subtitled and its narrator, the witch Nevena, grew up alone in a cave with a limited grasp of language. (“I feel pretty confident that there is little to no crossover” audience with Morbius, said Focus distribution chief Lisa Bunnell, referring to Sony’s scientist-turned-vampire wide release.)Nevena (Sara Klimoska) is freed from her cave by a hideously deformed evil spirit called the Wolf-Eatress, or Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca), who grows increasingly vengeful as they wander the mountainside and it’s clear her protegee prefers the company of humans.

Nevena learns more about them from each body she takes over – two women and a man (Noomi Rapace, Alice Englert, Carloto Cotta).

She uses their corpses to transform herself so there is a lot of scooping out of entrails and drinking and splattering of blood even if it’s not a typical horror pic. “Goran is a director who’s extremely talented and unique,” said Bunnell. “We wanted to audiences to discover his incredible storytelling theatrically like we did.”Focus played festivals, curated screenings and worked with theaters (Alamo, Landmark, Angelika) on marketing along with a push on social media push and on its growing Focus Insider subscription site.Paramount opens action thriller The Contractor at 489 locations with a simultaneous PVOD release.