Trust, Trauma, and Shadows

MOVIE REVIEW
Lilly Lives Alone
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Genre: Horror, Drama
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director(s): Martin Melnick
Writer(s): Martin Melnick
Cast: Shannon Beeby, Jeffrey Combs, Ryan Jonze, Erin Way, Kent Shocknek, Karla Mason, John Henry Whitaker, Eddie Wollrabe, Jerry Basham, Ellianna Kellam, Rylan Andrews, Hattie Olson, Art Krug, Mike Brakefield
Where to Watch: coming to select theaters August 22, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: From its opening moments, LILLY LIVES ALONE presents itself as more than just a haunted house story. Martin Melnick’s debut feature blends small-town paranoia, generational trauma, and surreal horror into a fevered spiral where certainty becomes impossible. This isn’t a film that divides the natural from the supernatural. Instead, it traps the viewer inside the same disorienting headspace as its protagonist, where the only constant is unease.

Lilly, played with conviction by Shannon Beeby, has spent the last decade in self-imposed isolation. The death of her young daughter left her emotionally hollow, her days reduced to the bare mechanics of survival: work at a grocery store, the occasional drink-fueled hookup, and the guarded suspicion of anyone who tries to get too close. The arrival of the tragedy’s anniversary unearths more than memories. It drags her into a psychological freefall where hallucinations, unexplained noises, and increasingly strange behavior from her neighbors threaten to push her past the point of return.

The film’s structure is deceptively simple — most of the action takes place in Lilly’s house, a setting that becomes a living extension of her mind. Peeling wallpaper, locked doors, and the faint hum of an old television lend the space a claustrophobic texture. At first, the walls feel protective, like a barrier between her and the world she distrusts. But as the story progresses, they take on the qualities of a cage, trapping her with her fears, her grief, and whatever else may be lurking inside.

One of Melnick’s most interesting choices is the way he frames supporting characters almost as specters from Lilly’s past, a deliberate nod to the structure of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The people in her life — whether it’s her co-worker and sole confidant Claire (Erin Way), the persistent yet intrusive Jed (Ryan Jonze), or the unsettling neighbor Russell (Jeffrey Combs) — drift in and out like embodiments of different moments in her life. Some appear to offer help, others to test her boundaries, but none seem entirely free of menace.

Beeby’s performance is the glue that holds the film’s shifting realities together. She doesn’t play Lilly as a straightforward victim; there’s defiance under her vulnerability, and moments of self-awareness that make her spiral feel tragically inevitable rather than passive. It’s a performance that captures the contradiction of wanting connection but fearing it, of needing to be alone yet dreading the silence.

The film toys with the audience’s perception through carefully placed cues. Scenes are peppered with antiques — hints of the 1990s mixed with details from other eras — that make time feel slippery. Pregnancy imagery recurs throughout, underscoring the generational passage of trauma from mother to daughter, while moments of visceral discomfort, including sudden bursts of violence and unsettling body horror, punctuate the dreamlike pacing.

Visually, the film uses its limited scope to create an oppressive atmosphere. The muted, slightly washed-out palette and shadows that seem to linger just a moment too long give the impression of a place untouched by time — or perhaps abandoned by it. The sound design is equally potent, with every creak, bang, and whispered rumor from outside carrying the weight of a potential threat. These elements work together to turn the house into a constant question: is it shelter, prison, or predator?

Jeffrey Combs brings a history of presence to Russell, avoiding the temptation to lean into caricature. He’s unsettling, but there’s a restraint to his performance that leaves space for doubt about his intentions. Ryan Jonze plays Jed with an unpredictability that keeps him from being reduced to a stock antagonist, while Erin Way infuses Claire with just enough warmth to make her absence in key moments feel especially destabilizing.

One of the film’s most effective points is its commentary on inherited pain. Through fragments of memory, cryptic conversations, and recurring motifs, it suggests that Lilly’s struggles aren’t only the result of a single tragedy but part of a larger, cyclical pattern within her family. It’s a theme that resonates beyond the confines of the horror genre, giving the film a weight that lingers after the credits.

The film’s willingness to blur genres — to inhabit the space between horror, drama, and psychological mystery — makes it stand out. It’s a character study as much as it is a ghost story, and while it trades in familiar haunted-house tropes, it uses them less as jump-scare setups and more as mirrors for its protagonist’s fractured psyche.

LILLY LIVES ALONE works best when experienced on its disorienting terms. It’s a film that invites discussion, even argument, about what exactly happened and why. But whether you leave convinced it’s a supernatural tale, a portrait of mental collapse, or both, there’s no denying the pull of its atmosphere, the precision of its performances, and the sting of the grief it portrays. For Melnick, it’s a confident debut — one that proves sometimes the most terrifying ghosts are the ones we carry inside.

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[photo courtesy of DARK SKY FILMS]

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